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Title: The Book of Illusions: A Novel by Paul Auster ISBN: 0-312-42181-8 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.14 (49 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Magical
Comment: For Auster devotees, plenty will be familiar here: a tantalizing unsolved mystery; a literary-intellectual protagonist with ruptured relationships and sudden access to money; and, less pleasingly, the occasional too-convenient plugging of plot holes. In its style of execution - novel as testimony - "The Book of Illusions" echoes Auster's "Leviathan", and it's no surprise that it deals with many of the same themes: the power of art; the limits of language; the value of what he leave behind; the importance of taking something forward; creativity as atonement; the power of accident and coincidence; the interconnectedness of lives. But here, Auster throws philosophical nominalism into the mix, and a surprisingly profound appreciation of film, to deliver a novel with all the Auster trademarks and quite a bit more chilling depth. Some reviewers complain that Auster keeps writing the same book. That charge could be leveled at any number of writers, but with Auster it misses the point. Writers often have big themes they want to explore, recurring issues they like to grapple with, and a talent for a particular kind of story. If, as in Auster's case, those themes, issues and story types happen to be brilliant and engaging, then where's the problem? Auster could go on writing the same book forever and it would be perfectly fine by me. I hope he does. And even if he doesn't, I know I'll be re-reading this one. I get the sense that "The Book of Illusions" is a book to be returned to, rediscovered and enjoyed all over again. The novel proceeds by a kind of patterned symbolism: aspects of the lives and works of Zimmer, Chateaubriand and Mann recur and intersect, and we can read "out" from these instances, making sense of what comes before them as much as what comes after. Their lives aren't linear biographies; they fold, double-back, intersect and amplify each other. This technique is more poetic than prosaic: in poetry, repetitions of sounds and images open up new strata of meaning beneath the surface. So it is with Auster, and especially in this novel. I expect that, on the second and third readings, echoes and intersections previously unnoticed will suddenly appear. It makes "The Book of Illusions" a rare find: one not only immediately engaging, but also endlessly enjoyable.
Rating: 5
Summary: An illusion you'd like to see again
Comment: "If someone makes a movie and no one sees it, does the movie exist or not?" This is one of the tantalizing paradoxes which underlie The Book of Illusions, Paul Auster's tenth novel. Auster is consumed with delineating the myriad mirages which the world is made of, the mysteries which consume us and the personal realities which no one else can comprehend.
The narrator of Illusions, David Zimmer, is a man in the throes of grief over the accidental deaths of his wife and sons. While channel surfing one day, he happens upon a film clip of silent film comedian Hector Mann, who had disappeared in 1929 and is considered long-dead. He begins to search out the forgotten films of Mann, eventually publishing a book on the subject, and is floored when he receives a letter inviting him to visit with Mann, who is now a recluse directing films for his own satisfaction.
In past efforts, Auster has veered stylistically from the post-modern mysteries of his New York Trilogy to the Saul Bellow-like personal explorations of Moon Palace and Leviathan. Here, Auster balances his two passions, intertwining a warmly graceful tale of personal loss and redemption with his obsession with stories within stories, coincidences, mirrors, mazes, and masks. As Zimmer tells it, it is "a book of fragments, a compilation of sorrows and half-remembered dreams."
Auster manages an impressive feat within his pages; he creates a written world of celluloid illusions so wonderful, so precise, that one wishes Mann's filmography was not only a myth of Auster's imagination. Zimmer's discourses on Mann's use of facial expressions, slapstick, and melancholy within the silent film framework prove Auster could have a second career as film historian if he so wished.
The illusion of film is not Auster's only quest; it is the illusions that make up the solid universe which ultimately fascinate him. Understanding that the novel itself is an illusion, Auster opts for a stylistic artifice along the lines of his entirely style-driven City of Glass, deliberately luring the reader in with his involving tale, then disassociating the reader with clever statements that draw attention to themselves (for example, a sexual encounter is described as a "spectacle of verbs").
Auster's post-modern sensitivities can alienate the reader to frustration at points; the coincidences in the narrative pile up at a frightening pace. He is aware of this conundrum, explaining that "the truth was that most things made no sense . . . the laws of physics stipulated that every person in the world occupied a certain amount of space - which meant that everyone was necessarily somewhere." It's a neat piece of writing, but it comes across as a cheat, a deus ex machina to hang plot contrivances upon.
However, the ultimate effect of The Book of Illusions is an elegant despondency that never outstays its welcome. Auster fashions a world of loss, of grief, of mourning, rebirth, and betrayal. If, in the end, it is all an illusion, then it is a masterful one.
Rating: 5
Summary: Another Surreal Disappearing Auster Hit!
Comment: Make no mistake, Mr. Auster is one of the finest, strangest, and most mesmorizing fiction writers out there, and this book is among his best! His dreamlike lucidity make the narrative flow like the smoothest river, and you'll be wondering about the real verses the "possibly real" in any of his books, including this one! Specifically, his descriptions of the silent film era, and unique artistry of the period are all near perfect, the bitterness of the narrator's feelings towards his sadly lost family, and the strange lassitudes of the the writer/narrator's descriptions of this long lost silent film star (alter-ego?) are pure Auster-land! The only possible weak links here may be the love affairs throughout, which may seem a bit contrived, but still, another wild wonder ride through the surreal landscape of Mr. Auster.
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Title: The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, the Locked Room (Contemporary American Fiction Series) by Paul Auster ISBN: 0140131558 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster ISBN: 0140106286 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: May, 1988 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Oracle Night by Paul Auster ISBN: 0805073205 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 02 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Timbuktu : A Novel by Paul Auster ISBN: 0312263996 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Leviathan (Contemporary American Fiction) by Paul Auster ISBN: 0140178139 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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