It opens, like a classic rags-to-riches tale, at a low point: Dean Moss, a bassist who has been kicked out of his band, is about to be robbed of his rent money – the first in a series of catastrophes that costs him his job and lands him homeless, in a bar, where he is spotted by a “bookish-looking” stranger, Levon Frankland, with dubious intentions.ĭean needn’t worry – yet. Mitchell’s new novel, Utopia Avenue, creates – or, really recreates – a world of intense imaginative abundance: the English music scene of the late ’60s. The artist has to maintain a sense of what works in the real world and be willing and able to prune back the wild imaginings into something that the rest of humanity can make sense of. However, to shape these visions into a work of art the creative person must also be relentlessly pragmatic. Like a person suffering from delusions, the artist must experience that which isn’t – seeing the impossible. Random House, 592 pp., $30Ĭreating – making any kind of art – requires a form of split personality. These days, I worry that David Mitchell is losing touch with reality.
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