The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 6 May 2006
by Paul Auster
David Zimmer is a university professor and an author who, as this novel opens, is swimming about in a torrent of grief after the deaths of his wife and children in a plane crash. And with him, Auster draws us into the darkness of his tragedy. Until, one late drunken night, David catches a glimpse of the possibility that life could go on. He catches a television documentary about silent film comedy stars, and one, Hector Mann, manages to make him laugh. David embarks on an exploration of Mann's work after learning that he vanished from the face of the earth after just a year of silent film stardom. A book results, and after its publication, Zimmer returns to Vermont to work on a translation of Chateaubriand's Les Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe. There, David figures, is the end of Hector Mann's influence on his life. Within months of its publication, though, David receives a bizarre letter that indicates Hector Mann hadn't completely vanished from the planet. Zimmer is forced to accept the possibility that his assumptions are wrong, and that life, itself, might draw him away from his obsessions, albeit into the obsessions of others arguably more screwed up than he is.
There are several interwoven stories here. Auster lovingly describes the (imaginary?) works of Hector Mann and Zimmer's absorption into them. When an epic story of Mann's life surfaces, the author turns with as much absorption to that story. This reader does not wish to give too much away, but, in the end, all the characters have some level of disfunctional obsession, and that of the character on whom so much of the denoument hinges is, perhaps, the least described and the least understood. The writing here touches, as do so many of Auster's books, on some basic existential questions. Auster's narrator, as is often the case, is a writer. "Write what you know" they say, and Auster does know the world of intellectuals and of writing. There is occasionally the danger, though, that this comes off as somewhat self-indulgent. In this, the book resembles his earlier New York story The Locked Room. Still, over time, Auster's stories are likely to endure. The layered feeling of this book is possibly a detraction, as the plot seems to fragment into many subplots in the past and the present. Yet, in the end, there is some connection between the overall structure, and that of the compelling writings of Chateaubriand, who is mostly, himself, tangential to the tale. Interesting reading.
Also by Auster: [The Locked Room] [Ghosts]