Auster has arrived at the witch’s brew point of honing himself down into the essence of Austerian writing. A celluloid grappling with the life of the Auster has arrived at the witch’s brew point of honing himself down into the essence of Austerian writing. A celluloid grappling with the life of the mind as something in and of itself asserting high value, the inspiring commitment to creativity (writing), the battle for identity then to garner the courage to live and express it, and the occurrence of chance; Dante’s forked path, but in this book it is three pronged. The immersion of how the smallest of events can lead our lives in different trajectories. Each of us can look back and see how if we didn’t go here one night we would not have met so and so and…and…and… But, and I am making this up as I go along, those chance encounters are shaped by the slow tick of our identities emerging as well as shaping them?
So, 4321 is a distillation of Auster’s ongoing existential battle refusing a final answer but anxious to gather arms and confront the marching conflict(s).
Oh no. Something else. I don’t even have to be reading him and my mind swirls. Yes, this book is about writing, the process. Each word inked leads to the next, line to paragraph, to pages, ideas emerging unexpected. Their chance occurrence leading to the work’s insistence on traveling its own path.
A lengthy book that I enjoyed to the end and was disappointed it stopped. Yet, I don’t know if I can recommend it. Auster opened the sap-glued hinges of the gate of literature for me. On vacation I found no book in my suitcase. I picked out The New York Trilogy at a nearby bookstore on a whim based on its cover. Back at our hotel room I opened it up and threw it against the wall. Just the kind of crap I couldn’t stand. A waste of time. I remember peeking into DFW’s, Infinite Jest, a month before after hearing how great it was and thinking I would never want to read such a thing and wondered how and why others enjoyed it. My wife asleep, there I was in our small hotel room with nothing to read. I don’t know if it has ever been recorded, a person able to go to sleep without reading first but I am not one. I sat on a chair and fretted watching the various ways my fingers could twine. Then pacing up and down, back and forth, until the tread of my bare feet were worn into the brown carpet. Finally, I went to where the book laid splayed and un-threw it, tossing it toward the chair. I sat and looked at it on the carpet by an engraved heel mark, watching it out of the corner of one eye. It was going to be a long night anyway so I lifted it off the carpet and opened it. As bad as I thought. Maybe worse. What happened to the linear world? I searched the room for a plot. How about powering myself through it or trying Gideon’s Bible in the bedside table drawer. It proved laborious until I was diverted by this loud click sound. I checked that it didn’t wake my wife up. Returning to the book it was different, completely different. Turning it upside down, dangling it at different positions, the words remained the same. I checked the cover, identical. The door remained locked and latched. Sitting and looking at the page again I…apprehended it differently. Bewildered I continued my appreciation of this new apprehension. I woke my wife to tell her. She asked if I could apprehend in another room in the hotel. Letting her sleep I went back to the chair and wide eyed reveled in this new world which has only widened and deepened in time with my ongoing conversation with GR.
As I am on a daily basis throwing out eternal thanks to Auster for being my guide, how can I judge his work objectively? Maybe somewhat since there has been books of his I didn’t like, even parts of the The New York Trilogy on rereading, due to growth spurts induced and maintained by the wiles of GR and my brilliant Friends.
Here it is, 5/5. Take it any way you want. ...more
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