Paul Auster- The Invention of Solitude

One of the best things I got from University was knowledge of the existence of Paul Auster's work. About six years on and I'm so easily distracted by random books I see everywhere that I haven't finished reading his whole bibliography yet, though I'm trying much harder now. Meanwhile, I just started reading George R. R. Martin's A Clash of Kings, which is a pretty huge book and might keep me busy for a while.

The Invention of Solitude

Faber & Faber

Paul Auster

1982

Other Paul Auster Reviews- The Invention of Solitude - The Country of Last Things - Moon Palace - Mr. Vertigo - Timbuktu - The Book of Illusions - Oracle Night - Invisible

"The pen will never be able to move fast enough to write down every word discovered in the space of memory. Some things have been lost forever, other things will perhaps be remembered again, and still other things have been lost and found and lost again. There is no way to be sure of any of this."

Paul Auster's The Invention of Solitude was the acclaimed author's first accredited (there's an earlier book written under a pseudonym) published work, a non-fiction memoir of sorts carefully divided into two thematically linked novella-length pieces. Combined, the two pieces as a whole explore the issue of fatherhood, as an extremely personal, complex and multi-faceted situation that Auster himself was clearly obsessed with at the time of writing. These two elongated essays differ by each focusing on a different major viewpoint, and also by using a notable different style of narration to do so, resulting in a very three dimensional piece of writing that exists both as a personal exploration and an experiment with form.

The first part of the book is entitled Portrait of an Invisible Man, and it's a no-holds-barred intimately personal journal written by Paul Auster the human being, regarding the thoughts, actions and emotions visited upon him prior to the death of his father. Written as an attempt at catharsis, Auster begins by mostly detailing the first reaction to the news, and then explores his own memories regarding his father, a very difficult and distant man, as Auster and his wife go through the painful process of detailing and removing the myriad of possessions littering his father's long-time home. As they do so, many of the items bring back more thoughts and memories, to the extent that Auster begins to explore and explain his recent family history, including a shocking murderous family secret that his father never spoke about. Auster talks about some things at great lengths, while other memories are placed on the page as one sentence of nostalgia among others. Everything here is intensely personal, almost to the point of being uncomfortable. It's a very open and honest memoir, written with care and affection at a very difficult time, and read by itself would be a powerful piece of work.

The second section of the book is The Book of Memory, a very different stylistically essay that looks at the relationship between Paul Auster and his own son Daniel, but does so in a far less direct way than Invisible Man, contrasting with that intensely personal work by being written in the third person (titling Auster as merely A.) and directing itself on numerous related critical tangents taking in literature and philosophy. In essence it's stylistically very similar to much of Auster's later work, taking in themes of coincidence and absurdism as it follows its lead character around the world and back to experience muffled revelations regarding life and its properties, but without any real definite conclusion. As Auster drifts back and forth between such topics such as Anne Frank and Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio, he creates a very interesting read, and one that works very well as a counter piece to Invisible man through its differences. I don't think Auster pretends to offer any solid answers or concrete epiphanies about the complex human issues he experiences, but instead treats it all as a part of his own shared odyssey, where each new thought and experience adds to the last and changes the direction of the next.

It's easy to see why The Invention of Solitude got Paul Auster noticed in the literary world and provided a great standpoint for his next ground-breaking publication, the sequentially-published New York Trilogy. Not only is it a very impressive technical piece, but there's an enormous amount of personality involved that turns what other authors might have presented as mundane into often-fascinating philosophical musing. It's a book that I would recommend to almost anyone, as it's complex without being difficult and will undoubtedly leave the reader feeling far more thoughtful than they did upon entry.