January 1, 2010
The first thing to say about Paul Auster's new book, Invisible, is that it is a great read. It is an absolute page-turner, thrilling and provoking and deeply moving. It is a book to be devoured and then digested, thought-about, talked-about, and considered. Auster's writing is, as always, hypnotic and intoxicating; his characters are fascinating; and his plot is perfectly rendered in an arc of engagement, catharsis, and satisfaction.
What is Auster trying to do in Invisible, other than tell a great story? In Invisible, Auster takes on everything that matters in life. In the story of Adam Walker, Auster deploys sexuality, memory, war, love, death, sorrow, and identity to explain why we do the things we do: why we seek beauty and knowledge; why we love, desire, cry, read, wander, struggle, and survive; why we create stories about ourselves. He examines the question of what survives after death, the hold that memories can have over us, the desire to record the past but in recording it, also to change it, whether presented as fiction or as truth. Constructing a story of one's life -- one's identity -- what parts will be left untold and invisible? The dangerous parts, the damning parts, the humiliating parts -- or the deepest core of the person, the most important defining part, and then what kind of story is left? What is left untold in a story becomes invisible. But even the unseen has a presence in the hole of unspoken truth that it leaves. Nature abhors a vacuum and facts and fancies will rush in fill the hole with explanations, false or true.
In Invisible, Auster explores absolutes. Adam Walker is dramatically handsome and richly intelligent, drawn to women who grant him full
license in exploring sexuality, and in love with a woman who is
everything to him, soulmate, sister, and savior; Rudolph Born, Walker's nemesis, is capable of the most horrendous deception and evil acts; Walker's mother grieves on an epic scale. What do absolutes do to our
ability to perceive truth, or if not truth, at least the full picture? They diminish our perceptions by cloaking what lies underneath beauty, sex, sorrow, and evil. Absolutes are a form of invisibility, and invisibility is the cloak that hides what we don't want others to know about ourselves. But what is the risk of hiding? Truth wants out, and will finds its way through the telling of a story, fact or fiction, fantasy or reality.
The question of presenting one's story to another person -- the translation of one person's reality to someone else's understanding -- is a big theme in the novel. Walker is a translator, as are other characters: Cecile translates an obscure Greek poet but is defeated by its complexity; Born is a translator of cruelty into gamesmanship; Margot, a lover, translates sex into a necessity; Gwynn, Walker's sister, translates family tragedy into a two-person cocoon of safety. Walker translates not only the poetry of Bertran de Born and other less worthy writers, but also, as a final act, his own story; he takes his story and tells it, through different narrators and perspectives but with a heartfelt struggle to present truth, even in fantasy. Invisibility gone, a compelling and true story comes to life. Invisible is a great book.
Per FTC regulations, the book reviewed here was a review copy received from the publisher.
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| November 14, 2008
I just finished Paul Auster's Man in the Dark (published in 2008). Tears are in my eyes and my heart is pounding. This book is perfect, a genuine communication from the heart. Auster is always a good writer but in this book he is great. The writing is sincere and true, even the parts that are grim fantasy (the United States torn apart in a secessionist war). The story of a man, his daughter, and his granddaughter, all facing their own heartbreaks -- "life is disappointing, isn't it?" -- and yet "the weird world rolls on." What joy there is in that knowledge that it does roll on, that with all the unkindness, and worse, brutality and evil, the generations go on and there are moments of connection that are so beautiful that they can be understood as proof of God (as one character believes, for a while anyway) or just wonderful, passing luck.
Joy, connection, peace, responsibility: Auster takes all these themes, really big themes that have been written about for hundreds and hundreds of years, and he writes a book that is utterly fresh, a book that is ancient and new. A truly beautiful accomplishment. I will read this book again, I know, and find even more there, more sentences and visuals and hints at both misery and joy. Auster is a natural writer, and so gifted; with this book, he has given us something wonderful.
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