CA: What style do you think chapter is most like

[Tom, Supreme Laser]

Several reviews I've seen have compared the styles of the various sub-stories to major authors. I'm curious what y'all think. Here's a list of the stories and a couple of possible authors I've seen mentioned:

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing - Defoe, Melville.
Letters from Zedelghem - Waugh, Isherwood
Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery - Grisham, Sue Grafton
The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish - Martin Amis, Ken Kesey
An Orison of Sonmi~451 - Aldus Huxley, PK Dick
Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After - Lem, William S. Burroughs

[Tamahome]

I am sending the Jenny signal.

[Jenny (Reading Envy)]

Some of my thoughts (also realizing that I never remember Timothy Cavendish, my brain just doesn't care for some reason)

Adam Ewing - Walter Scott (Rob Roy)
Somni-451 - I kept thinking of Michel Houellebecq (The Possibility of an Island), but that's more content than writing style. Or maybe Murakami! Yeah!
Sloosha - I'd add Russell Hoban (Riddley Walker)

[Tamahome]

Actually the 1st chapter kind of reminded me of HG Wells The Island of Dr Moreau, or that Jack London story A Thousand Deaths.

[Steve]

The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing - Voyage autour du Monde, Louis Antoine de Bougainville. Chateaubriand.

Letters from Zedelghem - very Choderlos De Laclos, don't you think ? A libertine view, in an epistolary genre. I immediatly thought about him.

Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery - I am almost ashamed to link with... Mary Higgins Clark.

The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish - The description of the old age made me think of Philip Roth.

An Orison of Sonmi~451 - The end particularly is so like Philip K. Dick's style. Amélie Nothomb wrote some books composed entirely of dialogue ("Peplum" for example).

Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After - Perrec, or any writer from the Oulipo.

(Yeah, I'm french)

[Tom, Supreme Laser]

Now I want Sloosha's crossing to be rewritten without the letter e.

[terpkristin]

Tom wrote: "Now I want Sloosha's crossing to be rewritten without the letter e."

I read the entire book while I was in London on business. I found it a LOT easier to read the Sloosha chapter by imagining my Cockney-accented colleagues reading the story. When I showed it to one of my colleagues, they agreed, it was just like how natives from more rural parts of England (such as Bath) talk.

But if it had been written without the letter "e," I think it would have been a bit tougher to read.

I also agree that Sonmi has a bit of a Haruki Murakami feel.

[Jonathon]

I found that there's a certain Joseph Conrad-ish feel to The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing. It really put me in the mind of Heart of Darkness which I re-read not too long ago.

It's really clear that Mitchell was going for an imitation of the narrative style present in the latter half 19th century (Melville, Wells, Conrad,Dickens)and I think it was brilliantly done because it reads, at least for me, so much like these authors that I grew up on (Particularly Wells and Dickens)

[Spriggan1]

Here's an article written by Mitchell in which he cites his direct literary influences for the novel's structure as well as each individual story.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/...

[Jenny (Reading Envy)]

Spriggan1 wrote: "Here's an article written by Mitchell in which he cites his direct literary influences for the novel's structure as well as each individual story.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/...-..."
Woo hoo I got one right.

And he is pretty handsome!

[terpkristin]

"My teenage reading diet was rich in colourfully jacketed science fiction, so conjuring up an underground dome staffed by clones for my novel's fifth section came naturally enough. Architectural features from pioneering SF classics such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Yevgeny Zamyatin's We and The Machine Stops by EM Forster – yes, that EM Forster – are present, with rich dollops of Blade Runner."

I KNEW that the 5th story reminded me of something I couldn't put my finger on. It was The Machine Stops, a frightfully appropriate and applicable story for the modern day...published in 1909. It's a short story in the public domain, I recommend everyone here read it. http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/praj...

[Jenny (Reading Envy)]

Okay so the Calvino reference is pretty funny. I went back and read my review of If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, where I said this gem:

"Calvino is like a mix of Stanislaw Lem and David Mitchell, based on my limited reading experience."

[Tamahome]

Calvino has a time machine!

[Katie]

After I finished the second half of the Sonmi story it really reminded me of (view spoiler)[ 1984. Not necessarily writing style but plot-wise and the rug of hope getting pulled out from under you. Not as much of a downer as 1984 though. (hide spoiler)]