Paul Auster- The Brooklyn Follies

The Brooklyn Follies

Faber&Faber

Paul Auster

2005

Other Paul Auster Reviews- The Invention of Solitude - In The Country of Last Things - Moon Palace - Auggie Wren's Christmas Story - The Art of Hunger - Mr. Vertigo - Hand To Mouth - Timbuktu - The Book of Illusions - Oracle Night - Travels in the Scriptorium - Man in the Dark - Invisible

“As long as a man had the courage to reject what society told him to do, he could live life on his own terms. To what end? To be free. But free to what end? To read books, to write books, to think.”

In 2005, Paul Auster was coming off a six-year run consisting of three phenomenal novels. Seemingly determined to shed his reputation as a promising novelist to be recognised as the real deal, Auster did so in  style with three distinct, powerful novels that showcased his range and imagination as a talented postmodernist with a continually improving grasp on realistic human emotion; in 1999's Timbuktu he toyed with readers' emotions through writing from the perspective of homeless dog Mr. Bones. He followed with 2002's The Book of Illusions, a more complex story about the legacy of fictional silent film star genius Hector Mann, and continued with dark novel Oracle Night, refocusing on Auster's primary concerns of the meaning of identity and coincidence. The Brooklyn Follies, released just two years later, was under the pressure of matching-up to the collective twisted penmanship of that period while offering something new.

Auster's new approach, then, was in hindsight the obvious thing to do in order to create a new challenge for a man who, over the last twenty years, had mastered the art of alternative contemporary literature; he went completely back to basics, and wrote a novel without the aid of his once-impressive box of post-modernist tricks. Though Auster was lauded for the intelligence of the timing of his various unexpected techniques, perhaps by this point he simply tired of the pressure of coming up with another ingenious concept The Brooklyn Follies, then, is Auster's response; his most realistic novel yet, focusing on a busy period in the life of his central character Nathan Glass, where the remnants of his fractured family are brought back together following a series of dramatic events.

60-year-old Glass is at a pivotal point in his life, after having narrowly survived a battle with lung cancer and divorced his wife. This 320-page novel tells Glass' story upon his return to his native Brooklyn, where he meets the cast of characters set to change the rest of his life. At first he befriends his estranged nephew Tom and learns of the misfortunes of the separated side of his family, then Tom's charismatic and flamboyant boss Harry, and three three plot together to find a way of alleviating the financial difficulties of every day life. It's from this point that the novel begins to seriously differ from Auster's typical direction; though I was expecting the beginnings of a certain labyrinthine direction and perhaps a tinge of magical realism, in The Brookyln Follies Auster goes against these expectations to swing in the direction of a much more realistic human interest story.

I found it to be an easy, enjoyable read. Auster's central characters are likable and sympathetic, particularly the narrating Glass whose aged introspection and growth in confidence through the novel give it real direction. It's well-plotted and paced, with the shifts in tempo well-timed to prevent any dullness and emphasis the tempestuousness of this period in Glass' life. The central thread is revealed when, out of nowhere, Glass' nine-year--old great niece arrives on his doorstep, determined to stay while observing an apparent vow of silence, and as the protagonist moves to protect her he learns to reconnect and be there for other lost family members. 

Of all of Auster's novels it's relatively feel-good stuff, perhaps from an author at this point tired of the intense mystery and character misery of his earlier work. The catch to making this novel more accessible than most of his other work, though, is that it still has to be compared to it, and in comparison to Auster's best this falls short. The removal of all postmodernism or magical realism may be refreshing for Auster, but removes one of his most potent weapons. I'm not saying that every Auster book requires rampant postmodernism to be worth looking at, but his past novels decisively proved that he is at his best when incorporating certain aspects of the surreal. Moon Palace is the perfect example in a novel that doesn't break any storytelling rules but relies upon hints of surrealism through atmospheric depictions of larger than life, but technically possible situations. The Brooklyn Follies strictly keeps to real-life, and while it was engaging to read at the time, upon completion just didn't leave a particularly large impact. Overall an enjoyable, interesting read, but not up to the top standards of such a talented author.

Paul Auster- Travels in the Scriptorium

Travels in the Scriptorium

Faber & Faber

Paul Auster

2007

Other Paul Auster Reviews- The Invention of Solitude - In The Country of Last Things - Moon Palace - Auggie Wren's Christmas Story - The Art of Hunger - Mr. Vertigo - Timbuktu - The Book of Illusions - Oracle Night - Man in the Dark - Invisible

“Without him, we are nothing, but the paradox is that we, the figments of another mind, will outlive the mind that made us, for once we are thrown into the world, we continue to exist forever, and our stories go on being told, even after we are dead.”

If there's anybody who's looked at this blog more than once and become reasonably annoyed at the constant stream of positive reviews for Paul Auster books, then this is your lucky day; an Auster book that I really did not like. Preceded in the author's bibliography by The Brooklyn Follies (which I have not read yet, though I hear and expect good things), and followed by the previously-reviewed similarly-sized novella Man in the Dark, the novella Travels in the Scriptorium is, an ambitious and confident piece of post-modernism. It's an author literally calling back to his characters and concepts of the past in order to try to create something distinctly new with the aid of a ton of metafiction. Far too much of it, as it turns out.

Auster, like all of the authors I most enjoy, has made a career out of focusing on certain deep-seated philosophical themes that become the basis for most of his novels. He's also a pioneering postmoderinist harking back to his debut collection of stories The New York Trilogy (mandatory reference complete) who uses his characters to toy with our notions of identity. I can see why the intensely focused strangeness of the genre can (fairly) put off casual readers, but usually with Auster's books, no matter how strange a plot development or how seemingly irrelevant a side-story might be, it all pays off for the dedicated reader by the end, and then I write an annoyingly positive review.

Spot the difference

The problems I had with Scriptorium arrived at the beginning. First of all, the main character is a non-entity with no memory and barely any personality. His name is Mr. Blank (or at least that's the name the narrator gives him, while insinuating he has another) and he lives in some sort of medical facility. Throughout the novella he is visited by a selection of different people whom he doesn't remember, but who know him, and they have a selection of pointed ethereal conversations where none of them actually explain what's going on (just like watching Lost). The real kicker, and the thing that's set to initially appeal to dedicated Auster fans, is that these visitors are all characters from prior novels of his. Anna Blume, from In the Country of Last Things is the most prominent one. Ultimately, though, there's no real established connection bar the character names.

The overall tone is a little bit irritating, written in the present tense with a certain sense of smugness, also minimalistic in style and explanations to the extent where I found it hard to care. I get the sense that Auster was trying to present an ourobourian piece of metafiction; Mr. Blank is clearly meant to be a simulacra of Auster himself, and some of the characters hint at knowledge of a higher relationship between them and he. I found it to ultimately be an unappealing mess thanks to the incoherent structure. Auster's typical elements are there in various ways, like a story-within-a-story tangent, but none of them hit the right note, and in this 120-page paperback have little time to leave an impact. Maybe other readers out there have deconstructed a clearer understanding of Scriptorium, but even if there is one the overall writing drove me away from seeing it. i hate to criticise Paul Auster's writing because I usually love it, but Travels in the Scriptorium was a big miss for me.

Paul Auster- Man in the Dark

Man in the Dark

Faber & Faber

Paul Auster

2008 

Other Paul Auster Reviews- The Invention of Solitude - In The Country of Last Things - Moon Palace - Auggie Wren's Christmas Story - The Art of Hunger - Mr. Vertigo - Timbuktu - The Book of Illusions - Oracle Night - Invisible

“Betty died of a broken heart. Some people laugh when they hear that phrase, but that's because they don't know anything about the world. People die of broken hearts. It happens every day, and it will go on happening to the end of time."

Continuing on my rapid exploration of Paul Auster's bibliography, I came to this curious, thoughtful and sometimes bewitching novella, taking a premise featuring an amalgamation of some of Auster's most prevalent ideas from both his earlier and later authorship styles. Weaving in a series of short, tangential stories of varying realism into the framework of one dominating main narrative, Auster was attempting the potentially paradoxical (alliterative mood) goal of fitting a meaningful, multi-layered series of reflective stories into the very limited space of a 180-page (in my Faber & Faber paperback edition) novella. Featuring the strong post-modern styles of Auster's ground-breaking and edgy earlier fiction- like obviously The New York Trilogy, which I think I must have mentioned in every Auster review I've written on this blog and have to re-read one day- mixed in with the more grounded, contemplative character-study-based, magical realism-tinged fiction of his latter days, Man in the Dark  is far from perfect, but overall is a great story containing a nice mixture of drama, suspense, and even a bit of action.

The main plot, from which the narrating lead character inter-weaves a series of other stories, is an intense, realistic human interest drama stylistically most comparable to Auster's later fiction, such as Invisible or Sunset Park. Lead character August Brill is an elderly writer living with both his daughter and granddaughter, all three of them grieving over separate losses that are explored further towards the end of the book. As the unwavering framework of the whole book, grief and the search to overcome it permeates every page, as Auster presents it with the utmost seriousness. So seriously, in fact, that when it came towards the very end, where Brill and his granddaughter face-up to the rather horrific death of her fiance, things had become so serious and straightforward that I started to find it actually a bit silly, which I suppose isn't a great recommendation. Thankfully things are kept from being bogged down in a potential mire of seriousness by the other stories that Brill tells with his own, one in particular.

Auster doesn't do colour.

August Brill, the narrator, changes from the past to the present tense to narrate a story he's composing in his head, a story much different in tone and style from the 'real' main story about his family. In this story a man named Brick goes to bed next to his wife one night and then wakes up in the morning to find himself stuck down in a hole, in the middle of nowhere, in a parallel universe. He soon learns that, in this world, the US is embroiled in a bloody, modern civil war, and that he specifically has been chosen to cross worlds and act as an assassin, one who could end the fighting with a single bullet. I'm refrain from giving many details, since half the pleasure of this side-story is the thrilling suspense- for the first time in a while, possibly since In The Country of Last Things, Auster embraces more contemporary popular storytelling techniques and genres, and it's a lot of fun. I don't think I'd want him to switch to this kind of thing more often, but I do think that he was perhaps making a conscientious effort to catch the eye of new readers, to lure them into his web of postmodernism as he balances the stories of Brick and August Brill.

I have to admit that it disappointed me to discover that Brick's story ends rather abruptly, mid-way through Man in the Dark, since it was very entertaining, but the truth is that Auster's key concern was always with the realistic human drama of his center story; August Brill's grieving widower-hood, and his efforts to connect with his daughter and granddaughter, so the three of them can together overcome the tragic losses they've suffered. Brill ruminates on other short stories and memories, with the cumulative effect all relating to the whole. Auster packs quite a lot into a small book, keeping things constantly fast-paced; something that also might appeal to newbies. The same quickness and short length of the book is in some ways a hindrance to the overall story, since I don't think it allows Auster the space he needs to create enough of an emotional impact; especially in regards to the revelations as to how Brill's granddaughter's fiance was killed, something that was meant to shock and move the reader, but left me feeling somewhat unmoved through its over-the-top nature. Very topical, though.

In conclusion then, Man in the Dark is a very enjoyable, but rather flawed novella that thankfully overcomes its flaws to stand as a notable achievement. Though far from Auster's best work from a critical standpoint, the suspenseful nature and quick pacing make it a very easy read with far more crossover appeal than Auster's typical novels. Cautiously recommended as probably a good introductory novel, with a nice blend of the author's preferred styles from across the years.
 

Haruki Murakami- Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Vintage

Haruki Murakami

 2005
Translated by Jay Rubin

Other Murakami Reviews- A Wild Sheep Chase - Dance Dance Dance - Underground - Sputnik Sweetheart - after the quake - After Dark - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - 1Q84- Books I & II - Book III - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Strange Library

“There are three ways you can get along with a girl: one, shut up and listen to what she has to say; two, tell her you like what she's wearing; and three, treat her to really good food...If you do all that and still don't get the results you want, better give up.”

Haruki Murakami's third short story collection, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman was one of the first works I ever read by the author; taken out from the library in hardback format not long after it was released, almost ten years ago. In the meantime, despite becoming a massive Murakami fan, I somehow managed to forget all about it and, crucially, failed to notice I didn't own a copy (I think I just subconsciously assumed that I did, my mind playing assumptive tricks). It wasn't until after finishing and reviewing Murakami's latest release, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, that I noticed via a goodreads list that I was missing this book from my collection. Thanks to the magic of Amazon, that was soon rectified, and soon after I was jetting off to Greece with the rather larger story collection in my suitcase. As it turned out, though, I ended up reading the vast majority of it upon my return to England, during an otherwise torturous seven hour wait for a bus from Gatwick Airport, from two o'clock in the morning.

Like his earlier collection The Elephant Vanishes, Blind Willow is comprised of various previously published short stories,  originally published in various Japanese periodicals and a Japanese-only smaller collection (Strange Tales from Tokyo). The big difference between the two collections, however, is that the range of stories in Blind Willow cover Murakami's writing career for over twenty years, from 1981 to 2005. Such a diverse range, then, gives the reader the opportunity to look at how the authors' style changed and hopefully improved over the years, as well as offering a pretty diverse selection of story ideas. From a more negative standpoint though, the sheer comprehensiveness of this collection left plenty of room for a few inclusions that, for me, brought the standards down just a little.

In the introduction to the book, Murakami explains to the reader that he is, at heart, a short-story writer, one who has to work very hard at composing long novels but who loves to sit down and create a brief window into strange and haunting worlds. I can completely understand this; while I love his long-form work, the effort and composure it must take to create and sustain such intensely specific yet ethereal plots, characters and themes must be immense- a novel like Kafka on the Shore or The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle can be overwhelming to read in long bursts, I find, thanks to the concentrated intensity, but each one of Murakami's short stories revels in its lack of space; free from the confines of expectation, his words float across the page with as much or as little context as he feels like offering, inevitably leading the overall feeling of unsettling magic- something even more powerful when you're reading at four in the morning in the entrance lobby of a massive airport, for some reason. 

So, the stories themselves then. The book opens with its title story, but I found it to be somewhat of a false start., at least in terms of its quality. Thematically it's very recognisably Murakami; the simple story of a very introspective narrator who tells of his strange companionship with his younger cousin, and compares their trips to hospital together to memories of his own youth. It's initially absorbing, but lacks a strong direction and seemed somewhat bland as a choice for an opener- to the extent where I think a reader checking him out for the first time might find him uninspiring. Thankfully I found the second story, Birthday Girl, to be much more interesting, and probably one of his best stories. It's an almost perfect slice of magical realism, the author at his best as he mixes mundane life with unexplainable surrealism, and crucially doesn't try to explain it. The collection continues on in this vein, with a run of stories that I found to almost all be great.

There were a few notable exceptions that broke up the flow as I read them. A 'Poor Aunt' Story is comfortably the longest in the collection, and the silliest, as an example of Murakami extending his postmodern style a little too far for too long. Crabs was just intentionally disturbing with no good reason. "The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day" was very stereotypical for Murakami, almost a plot someone might use to satirise him. Although maybe my viewpoint on all of these was skewered thanks to the circumstances in which I read them, for better or for worse. It's difficult to judge Blind Willow as a whole thanks to the wide timespan in which its contents were written, I suppose, but it does highlight Murakami's early focus on blatantly strange and unnerving ideas verses his later development into an author with a greater grasp on his characters. Personally I've never had a preference for his earlier or later works, since it really depends on what the reader is looking for; the earlier stories and novels are abrubtly odd and disconcerting, while the later ones far more emotionally resonant.

As I start drastically running out of steam in this review, I suppose it's fair but easy to say that Blind Willow is a book for the converted, one that I wouldn't necessarily recommend for a prospective fan of the author. It's collective nature cares preaches to the converted more than anything, with some of the author's weirdest short pieces. I enjoyed it again, as I knew I would, but I do think it struggles as a single piece when compared with The Elephant Vanishes or after the quake. It's a treat for the completest with some individually outstanding stories though, so if you're already a Murakami fan then there's literally nothing stopping you.

Haruki Murakami- Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Haruki Murakami

2013 (Japanese)/ 2014 (English)
Translated by Jay Rubin

Other Murakami Reviews- A Wild Sheep Chase - Dance Dance Dance - Underground - Sputnik Sweetheart - after the quake - After Dark - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - 1Q84- Books I & II - Book III - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Strange Library

Around two-and-half years ago I, like an idiot, decided to create a simple blog with a single objective; to obsessively compulsively review each book I read, as a personal exercise designed to make myself write more, and to understand the literature I'd read a little bit better. One of the first things I (badly) reviewed was Haruki Murakami's probably magnum opus 1Q84 (it really is quite a bad review, sorry about that), a book that I'd been extremely hyped for ever since I heard about it. So, when I finished reading, and after writing and posting my review, I automatically started tormenting myself with the knowledge that it'd no doubt be quite a while before Haruki Murakami wrote another book. From that point forward like any crazed fan I scoured the likely news sources for anything I could find, devouring each  eventual new snippet of information with aplomb. In the meantime I re-read After Dark and read Dance Dance Dance for the first time, and even wrote a pretty lazy preview of the upcoming Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. I think what annoyed me the most about waiting was how the novel was being quickly translated into seemingly dozens of languages from all around the world, but the English translation (from the trusted Jay Rubin) kept me waiting and waiting.

When Colorless (which I'm going to spell without the 'u', even though as an Englishman this sickens me) finally arrived in the post, I didn't have the patience to allocate it a spot on the to-read pile and as soon as I'd finished The Art of Hunger I happily dove into it. Twenty-four hours later and I'd finished it, though its imprint has held tightly onto my thoughts ever since- to be absolutely honest, to do a fair review of this book I think I'd have to read it twice. I did contemplate doing that but there's only so many hours in the day and so many books to read, so for now I can only give my still raw impressions of a fascinating book. First things first, the immediate urge for many people on the Internet has been to classify this book within Murakami's bibliography in relation to its fellows. I hesitantly have to agree with the majority of opinions in classifying this as a 'minor' work, in that it's not an extremely complex odyssey in the manner of his longer works like Kafka on the Shore or 1Q84, but more in the vein of a more realistic psychological character study through relationships, like Norwegian Wood and South of the Border, West of the Sun. Again I emphasis I hesitate in using the word 'minor' since it seems to downgrade a book by its usage, which in this case would be very unfair. 

So, to the plot. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is the tale of a man named Tsukuru Tazaki who was caused great pain under mysterious circumstances in his youth and as an adult is finally ready to discover what happened. As a student and adolescent, Tsukuru was part of a very close-knit group of friends whom he loved and relied upon, until one day the other four ousted him from the group permanently, without a single explanation. After going through a period of great sadness, Tsukuru is pushed into confronting his past by a new girlfriend, to finally contact his old friends to discover just why he was ostracized. I'll refrain from going in to more detail, since the magic of Murakami's writing is in his beautiful contemplative prose, the quality of which is so great that my clumsy attempts to describe it only does it a disservice. I will say that the hook of an interesting mystery, one that proposes more questions when investigated, drew me in to the narrative very quickly, but, in a slight criticism, I must confess to being disappointed that the book doesn't really follow the detective direction for very long.

The overriding factor to Colorless is that it's extremely introspective, and Tsukuru Tazaki might be Murakami's most introspective character yet. Murakami goes to great pains to describe his mind, to emphasise and clarify the emotions that life's troubles have forced upon him, and how his discoveries through the novel change him in certain ways. The theme of psychological rebirth is fairly upfront, as is the trauma of emotion, the pointlessness of hindsight, and a constant feeling of surreality. Unlike say, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, here Murakami chooses to limit his supernatural surrealist tendencies to strange dream sequences, leaving a few open-ended possibilities for the reader to mull over (that I won't spoil, but which hark back to previous situations in Murakami novels where characters are unsure what they have or haven't done and can never find out the truth).

Overall I can't help but agree with the majority that Colorless isn't on the same level of quality fiction as Murakami's epic longer novels because in comparison it's very limited. The cast of characters is small, the events are subdued, and it lacks a particularly dramatic ending. It's based around an easy to understand concept, tackled from a few different directions with the aid of a likable, normal main character, but without the aid of the excessive surrealness Murakami gives some of his novels. It's an experimental character study that revels in the development of said character, using episodes of his past and present to paint a cohesive picture of depression and eventual recovery, of the folly of youth, and of the power of a good relationship. I really enjoyed it on the same scale as I did Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart, where the weirdness is controlled and mostly limited to tone, and the characters can breathe with the advantage of a realistic environment. I do, however, admittedly prefer Murakami's weird side so this definitely wasn't amongst my favourites, but I did remain enthralled throughout. It demands a re-read, and although that probably won't happen for a little while, the events of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage will be floating in my mind for some time to come.

Michael Crichton- Pirate Latitudes

Pirate Latitudes

Harpercollins

Michael Crichton
2009

Back in around 1994, at the age of 8-years-old, Michael Crichton introduced me prematurely to the world of grown-up people's fiction with his magnum opus, Jurassic Park. Being an impressionable young lad with a passion for all things dinosaur, I loved it immensely, and proceeded to re-read it at least once a year for about ten years. In the meantime, I gravitated towards many of his other novels, and while I didn't enjoy any of them as much as I did Jurassic Park, that's not to say that I didn't get enjoyment out of them. Books like Congo, Sphere, The Lost World and Timeline were great adventure stories wrapped around a frame of pseudo-science, eventually made into sub-standard movies. Unfortunately at some point, I feel, Crichton lost his spark a little, and his more recent novels such as Prey, State of Fear and Next were all lacking in ingenuity and  character for me. Then, in 2008, Michael Crichton suddenly died. The man who played a major part in my personal literary development was no more.

One year later, Pirate Latitudes was published, having been discovered on Crichton's hard drive, fully formed. Apparently he'd been working on the book for around thirty years, but clearly was never happy enough with it to publish it. Posthumously he didn't have a choice. Pirate Latitudes, as the title suggests, is a book about pirates (yargh!), set around the Caribbean in the 17th Century. Unlike most of Crichton's work, this isn't a sci-fi parable regarding the misuse of technology, it's purely an adventure story, about a motley group of pirates led by a fearless captain out to do some piracy on the hated Spanish navy. To be honest, it's not a complicated plot, relying more on character presentation and scenes of action and adventure more than anything else. Captain Charles Hunter is Crichton's lead protagonist, and, even though he sticks to many pirate stereotypes, he's a typical Crichton lead in that he's brave, intelligent, and ultimately takes the moral high ground. The other characters are all cliche variations on typical pirate motifs.

Ultimately while I hesitate to condemn Pirate Latitudes as bad, unfortunately there's not really much to endorse, specifically nothing that helps the novel stand out amongst the deluge of new and old adventure fiction available. It's certainly better than the shit that Clive Cussler produces, and it has its moments of excitement and amusements, but it's lacking the incisive sharpness and general masterly feeling of control that Crichton's best quality works contain. At his best the man was a master of the thriller genre, combining a solid presentation of interesting science (not being a science-minded person I can't tell you if it was at all realistic, but it did seem authentic in context) with solid, gritty characters and some great plot twists. Pirate Latitudes doesn't live up to his standards, which is undoubtedly why he didn't send it for publishing while he lived. Readers who enjoyed Crichton's previous work and read all of his best should consider this, but anyone looking to try it for the first time would be well advised to pick an earlier effort.