Paul Auster’s new novel, subtle as it is, doesn’t start out as expected. It all begins with the famous Baumgartner, a seven-year-old writer, long widowed, trying to navigate a normal morning at a time in her life when business is often fraught with problems. (Old age is a cruel mistress.)
He’s sitting diligently at his desk when he remembers that he needs to call his sister. This requires some adjustment: The phone is at the bottom. When he gets there, he realizes that he forgot to turn off the stove after breakfast and throws the pan into the sink, burning his hand. He treats the painful wound and then calls his sister, but the doorbell rings. Delivery by UPS. Then the phone rings and his cleaning lady tells him that her father has just sawed off two of his fingers in a terrible accident. And there’s the door again, this time a man reading the meter. He later manages to fall down the stairs.
When, Baumgartner increasingly asks himself, did things get so complicated?
Paul Auster, 76, is not only one of America’s best-known novelists, but also one of its most prolific and detailed writers. He has written 30 books and is shortlisted for the 2017 Booker. 4321his twentieth-century epic, in which the hero lives four different lives, ran to more than a thousand pages.
He often brings old characters back to life and often cannot resist the temptation to write himself into his stories. (He does both here, inserting into the story people astute readers will remember from earlier novels, as well as others who bear the Auster name.)
Baumgartner It’s only 200 pages long, but after a charmingly absurd, if pathetic, start, things take a turn and devolve into ruminations on lost loves, early life background, and various other random distractions.
The author begins to remember his wife of ten years, and how the loneliness he felt after her death prompted a “dark interlude of masturbation” before he began “chasing women again.”
Like seemingly all American male writers of a certain age – see Richard Ford, Philip Roth, etc. – Auster has an older protagonist who prefers much younger women, whom Baumgartner pursues out of the firm belief that they will be lucky to meet with him. Life obviously still has lessons to teach.
The plot then changes dramatically again, this time to pre-invasion Ukraine, and Baumgartner remembers a trip there to research his maternal family tree, the “unknown oyster side.”
If the reader is confused by this last, unmarked section, Auster himself acknowledges this particular section of the introduction as “a short and confusing text.” He breaks the fourth wall again later when a minor character agrees to return “to the story after a few chapters of absence.”
It is probably unnecessary to emphasize that there is no specific plot here. Auster seems to simply, and perhaps not entirely unreasonably, believe that no one needs anyone and that his joy lies in the accomplished, sophisticated writer giving of himself and looking out to sea for the exciting bits of life, with a capital L L. . and its enduring ability to intrigue, compel and ultimately disappoint.
He has undoubtedly written the best books: 1995’s Postmodern. New York trilogy remains a highlight – but Baumgartner still has a soft charm, both in the character and in the somewhat rough-hewn story he lives in, that’s hard to shake.
Source: I News
I am Mario Pickle and I work in the news website industry as an author. I have been with 24 News Reporters for over 3 years, where I specialize in entertainment-related topics such as books, films, and other media. My background is in film studies and journalism, giving me the knowledge to write engaging pieces that appeal to a wide variety of readers.