Paul Auster: Man In The Dark

[beer good]

Man In The Dark.

A recently widowed writer, whose name by pure chance sounds a lot like "Paul Auster", lies on his back in a dark room. A car accident has temporarily disabled him, and so now he spends his nights sleepless on his daughter's couch in Vermont, telling himself stories to pass the time. Upstairs, his divorced daughter and recently bereaved granddaughter (her boyfriend never came back from Iraq) lie, presumably sleeping, as August Brill (for 'tis his name) makes up a story about a young man who wakes up in a hole to find that the USA is at war with itself. In the alternate universe that Brill made up for him, 9/11 never happened and instead the repercussions of the 2000 election led to full-blown civil war between the liberal coast states and conservative (not to mention much better armed) middle America. The young man is told that only he can stop the war. How? Kill the old bastard who's lying on a couch in Vermont making it all up.

Stories within stories, obvious author avatars, seemingly random accidents that throw an entire life out of whack, metaphysical ruminations on how we create our own world... everything is business as usual in the country of Austeria, right?

Well, maybe not. I've been wanting Auster to get back to this kind of willfully too-cleverly metafictional and yet gripping stories he used to do so well; his last two novels - the pleasant but rather pointless Brooklyn Follies and the ridiculously navelgazing Travels In The Scriptorium - had their good sides, but where one had very little for Auster fans to enjoy and the other had very little for anyone who's not a complete Austroholic, in Man In The Dark he manages to get the balance back.

So why don't I love it?

I really should. It's a very clever book. The various storylines - and boy, does he manage to pack a few into less than 200 pages - continuously refer back to the same dead objects and dead people that the novel's characters discuss in their analyses of movies; like his last two novels (and like his wife Siri Hustvedt's excellent The Sorrows of an American), 9/11 and the mad decade that's followed it remain an almost unspoken absence in the centre, just like Brill's and his granddaughter's grief is held off until the very end. It's all about how to get through without losing yourself, how to survive that private/public civil war without one side crushing the other but by finding a way to keep going. Also, this is arguably that rare beast: an Auster novel where nothing happens by chance. The setup, with our narrator incapacitated following a car accident, looks like one - until he retraces his steps and realizes what brought him here, and suddenly nothing looks random anymore. It's a trick that carries a double edge, though, since that's exactly what his granddaughter does too - and ends up with a conclusion that almost destroys her, that everything is her fault. When Brill throws his writer's quill in frustration, it's both an acknowledgement of how useless mere Story can seem (the bookstores and TV stations in New York and LA are no match for bombs, an against-all-odds love story doesn't stop cancer) and one a powerful restatement of how indespensible it is in knowing who we are. Because obviously, even when Brill gives up his attempts at fiction, Auster continues his. And as long as he does, this preposterous world keeps a-spinning.

So why don't I love it?

In a lot of ways, this is probably both the key to Auster's latest couple of efforts and to whatever is to come; a reboot. He has taken apart his fiction machine, polished and reconditioned each part individually, and then put them back together into something similar to the old one but with some new features. And that I love. But I expect a lot of Auster, and there's still some bugs to work out. Man In The Dark is a very nice novel, but it doesn't soar, damnit. When I reach the end it feels like it's not done; it's too short, too sprawling, with ideas and substories that barely have time to develop into anything but an obvious illustration of his theme before he ditches them; as if he suddenly has so much to say he can't figure out where to start or end. That gives me a lot of hope for his future novels, but for this particular one, I can't really love it. A strong .

 

[pontalba]

I have to agree with all you've said BG, that said, I did thoroughly enjoy it. No, it wasn't long enough, or quite developed enough, but I loved the characters, was totally involved with their fates.

 

[Peder]

Very nice review and analysis, Beer Good.
You say it a lot better than I can, because Auster has never given me a warm fuzzy feeling about his writing, Man in the Dark included. Sometimes the intricacy is so overwhelming that it seems clearly artificial; other times it is so easily foreseen that it is clearly artificial. Either way interferes with my getting involved into the story. I would hazard a guess that, either way, these alternatives interfere with my suspension of disbelief. Or, perhaps put another way, there are styles I would rather read "from the outside," if suspension of disbelief were not a necessaary requisite. In short, he doesn't quite do it for me, and I hesitate to add the word "either."

 

[pontalba]

Very nice review and analysis, Beer Good.
You say it a lot better than I can, because Auster has never given me a warm fuzzy feeling about his writing, Man in the Dark included. Sometimes the intricacy is so overwhelming that it seems clearly artificial; other times it is so easily foreseen that it is clearly artificial. Either way interferes with my getting involved into the story. I would hazard a guess that, either way, these alternatives interfere with my suspension of disbelief. Or, perhaps put another way, there are styles I would rather read "from the outside," if suspension of disbelief were not a necessaary requisite. In short, he doesn't quite do it for me, and I hesitate to add the word "either."

I do have to say I've preferred other Auster's more, Moon Palace and Book of Illusions for example, still, MitD was most satisfying for me.

 

[beer good]

I have to agree with all you've said BG, that said, I did thoroughly enjoy it. No, it wasn't long enough, or quite developed enough, but I loved the characters, was totally involved with their fates.

I agree. And that's the first time that's happened to me in an Auster novel since... well, Oracle Night. Auster when he's on top form is one of the best novelists working today IMO, and this is definitely the best he's produced in a couple of years, but it still feels more like a warm-up than a proper novel. Which ties into what Peder says a bit, even if I guess we disagree on some of Auster's other books; even though he gets both the characters and the ideas right this time, he doesn't give himself room to develop both enough to get rid of that artificial feel. He shows his work too much.

 

[pontalba]

Does Auster ever, or has he ever done sequels? Could he be working up to that, do you suppose? I thought it was ripe for a sequel.

 

[beer good]

Does Auster ever, or has he ever done sequels? Could he be working up to that, do you suppose? I thought it was ripe for a sequel.

Depends on how you define "sequel." Given his fondness for metafiction he tends to revisit certain themes and plots, and Travels In The Scriptorium even has a bunch of characters from Auster's own novels show up to torment the protagonist, but as far as I can recall right now he's never done a straight sequel as in "Music of Chance II: The Return of the Killer Violin."

His next novel sounds promising, though.

“One of America’s greatest novelists” dazzlingly reinvents the coming-of-age story in his most passionate and surprising book to date

Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Paul Auster’s fifteenth novel opens in New York City in the spring of 1967, when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University, meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born and his silent and seductive girfriend, Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life.

Three different narrators tell the story of Invisible, a novel that travels in time from 1967 to 2007 and moves from Morningside Heights, to the Left Bank of Paris, to a remote island in the Caribbean. It is a book of youthful rage, unbridled sexual hunger, and a relentless quest for justice. With uncompromising insight, Auster takes us into the shadowy borderland between truth and memory, between authorship and identity, to produce a work of unforgettable power that confirms his reputation as “one of America’s most spectacularly inventive writers.”

 

[Peder]

Now that Pontalba has mentioned it, I should really moderate my rather sweeping generalization and say that I thought Book of Illusions was excellent. Subject matter, events and personalities clicked for me on all levels in that one. Falling Man might be another I could relate to in a similar way. But, so far, Auster is an author I approach with caution rather than unreservedly, in part because of one protagonist who managed to lock himself into an unlockable room and leave the key outside -- after being warned! Several times.

 

[saliotthomas]

I can't imagine a sequel when he kills is main characteres half way and the others is a very old writer.(Actualy it's the first time i read it in a novel,the abrupte killing of the hero.It is fisrt frustrating but then the story goes on and we get use to it.)
I agree with BG on the work showing a bit too much but it's true that the novel is still a pleasure to read.Paradoxaly i though it's "lightness" would desolve it quickly in my memorie but no.It still quite vivid.
The observations about cinema are very just and interesting.They reminded me a lot of some of those i read just before in the Elegance of the hedgehoge by Muriel Barbery,specialy about Ozu.