Man In The Dark ~ Paul Auster
Paul Auster’s new volume is a slim one. But Auster is such a masterful story-teller that he packs a lotta ’story’ in this 190 odd pages. In fact, he almost packs in two. I say almost, because the second meta-fictional one is sort of cut short. Auster’s alter-ego is an aged man of letters – a literary critic, book reviewer, and writer, August Brill is on the downside, having recently lost his wife of many (with a gap in the middle) years and been taken off his feet in a serious car accident. So it is that he’s come to live with his middle aged and divorced daughter, Miriam. Joinig them a bit later is his granddaughter who has lost her lover in Iraq in a kidnapping and brutal execution (posted on the Internet, no less). Here, Brill spends his days watching movies with his granddaughter, reviewing his life for her. Their discussions on movies (Tokyo Story, The Bicycle Thief) are a singular treat in themselves and make one wish for just such a companionable film partner. His insomniac nights are spent spinning a story in his head about an America that is not a “future” one, but an alternate one of the present: One where America has not been attacked from without by terrorists, but one which has begun to fall apart from within. Civil war, secession.
In this story within a story which circles back on itself in good Auster style, magician (must have a magician!) Owen Brick finds himself plopped into this unfamiliar America with a mission thrust upon him. That mission? To assassinate the man responsible for the whole state of affairs. Right. The man responsible for imagining this alternate America.
The story is about a man who must kill the person who created him, and why pretend that I am not that person? By putting myself into the story, the story becomes real. Or else I become unreal, yet one more figment of my own imagination. Either way, the effect is more satisfying, more in harmony with my mood – which is dark, my little ones, as dark as the obsidian night that surrounds me. [pg. 102]
The power of storytelling, and the unstable nature of reality. Auster’s characters make their way through the dark in a tango of self-discovery and acceptance. As Auster (through Miriam) quotes Rose Hawthorne: “the weird world rolls on.”
Like a great athlete, Auster makes this whole effort look easy. You know, as if spun out of his head one night when he couldn’t sleep…Inventive and full of compassion, Auster’s novel may be his most widely accessible yet, while compromising none of his talents.
♦♦♦♦⁄1/2 ♦♦♦♦♦
