Henry Holt, August 2008
Paul Auster's newest book, Man in the Dark, creates an alternate universe in which the twin towers never toppled, the war in Iraq never began, and instead the United States wages against itself, divided in civil war. More than a compelling what-if, Auster's book confronts the most important questions of our times in a way that is gut-wrenchingly real.
Auster is the author of over a dozen other novels, including Oracle Night and The Brooklyn Follies. In his latest, the focus is political and personal, and with an imaginative frame, Man in the Dark becomes not just one story, but the stories of three generations grieving the consequences of love and loss.
As his main character, Auster chooses an ailing literary critic named August Brill, who lives in the same house as his daughter and granddaughter. It seems as if pain is what binds these family members together: there's Brill, who's mourning the loss of his wife to cancer and mending from a car crash that shattered his leg. Brill's daughter Miriam is recovering from a divorce, and his granddaughter Katya watches film after film to numb herself from the reality of her boyfriend's horrific murder.
Paul Auster's newest book, Man in the Dark, creates an alternate universe in which the twin towers never toppled, the war in Iraq never began, and instead the United States wages against itself, divided in civil war. More than a compelling what-if, Auster's book confronts the most important questions of our times in a way that is gut-wrenchingly real.
Auster is the author of over a dozen other novels, including Oracle Night and The Brooklyn Follies. In his latest, the focus is political and personal, and with an imaginative frame, Man in the Dark becomes not just one story, but the stories of three generations grieving the consequences of love and loss.
As his main character, Auster chooses an ailing literary critic named August Brill, who lives in the same house as his daughter and granddaughter. It seems as if pain is what binds these family members together: there's Brill, who's mourning the loss of his wife to cancer and mending from a car crash that shattered his leg. Brill's daughter Miriam is recovering from a divorce, and his granddaughter Katya watches film after film to numb herself from the reality of her boyfriend's horrific murder.
"I am alone in the dark," says Brill in the book's opening lines, "turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness." In order to get through the sleepless nights, Brill tells himself stories, and the ones collected here range from the substance of sci-fi to those of real life, but all have one thing in common: war.
"War stories," says Brill, "Let your guard down for a moment, and they come rushing in on you, one by one by one." In a book of this length—a slim 180 pages—the stories do seem to rush on the reader with the emotional force of an iron fist.
In Brill's first war story, which Auster has constructed within the frame of his family's narrative, a magician named Owen Brick wakes up to find himself stuck deep inside a hole he can't climb out of. When a sergeant comes to his rescue, Brick finds that he's in an alternate world where he has been enlisted as a corporal and marked as an assassin. His job? To kill the mastermind of the war, who happens to be August Brill, none other than the storyteller who has created it.
"War stories," says Brill, "Let your guard down for a moment, and they come rushing in on you, one by one by one." In a book of this length—a slim 180 pages—the stories do seem to rush on the reader with the emotional force of an iron fist.
In Brill's first war story, which Auster has constructed within the frame of his family's narrative, a magician named Owen Brick wakes up to find himself stuck deep inside a hole he can't climb out of. When a sergeant comes to his rescue, Brick finds that he's in an alternate world where he has been enlisted as a corporal and marked as an assassin. His job? To kill the mastermind of the war, who happens to be August Brill, none other than the storyteller who has created it.
Owen Brick makes an adventurous foray into a world where the United States has been engaged in a civil war since the 2000 election, which resulted in a secession as several states pulled away from the union in protest. Auster could have easily developed this story into one that dominated the entire novel, but he instead ends it abruptly two-thirds of the way through.
The quick end to that plotline is momentarily jarring, but Auster swiftly ushers readers back into the story of August Brill, a man whose life is more realistic, in contrast to Brick's, but just as tragic. When Brill's granddaughter Katya comes to his room late one night, the two insomniacs lay together in the dark, and Brill fills the time by telling her about his beloved wife Sonia, about his life as a writer and his affairs.
The quick end to that plotline is momentarily jarring, but Auster swiftly ushers readers back into the story of August Brill, a man whose life is more realistic, in contrast to Brick's, but just as tragic. When Brill's granddaughter Katya comes to his room late one night, the two insomniacs lay together in the dark, and Brill fills the time by telling her about his beloved wife Sonia, about his life as a writer and his affairs.
Late in the night, after Katya is asleep by his side, Brill finally addresses the question that has been lurking since the book's inception. Katya's boyfriend had been killed working for a contractor in Iraq, and as the book's final blow, Brill reveals the gruesome details of his death.
Auster's Man in the Dark offers little comfort for those seeking solace in literature. Instead, it uses fiction to signpost the harsh realities of our times. And it doesn't overtly seek to point us in a better direction. Just as August Brill consoles himself by repeating a line from the poetry of Rose Hawthorne, readers will also find themselves thinking as they turn this book's final page: yes, "...the weird world rolls on."
Auster's Man in the Dark offers little comfort for those seeking solace in literature. Instead, it uses fiction to signpost the harsh realities of our times. And it doesn't overtly seek to point us in a better direction. Just as August Brill consoles himself by repeating a line from the poetry of Rose Hawthorne, readers will also find themselves thinking as they turn this book's final page: yes, "...the weird world rolls on."
