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Title: Oracle Night : A Novel (AUSTER, PAUL) by Paul Auster ISBN: 0-8050-7320-5 Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. Pub. Date: 02 December, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.28 (36 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Better than his last one, but still not up to his best
Comment: For the first half, ORACLE NIGHT seems promising -- it's easily the best thing Auster has written since LEVIATHAN. (Unfortunately, that just means it's better than the dreadful MR. VERTIGO, the slight TIMBUKTU, and the dense, unsatisfying BOOK OF ILLUSIONS.) However, Auster can't sustain it: The story-within-a-story reaches an impasse and gets abandoned (why? it was the most interesting thing in the book!), while the "real" story goes off in bizarre directions that cross the line between intriguingly peculiar and outright cartoonish. (When the owner of the stationery store takes the main character to a Chinatown whorehouse, it works -- it's a bit strange, but in a properly Austerian [Austere?] way, and you go along with it. When the man's store mysteriously disappears and reappears and then he starts attacking the main character with "karate chops," you just roll your eyes and conclude that Auster has lost his marbles...or at least his previously excellent ear for what works and what doesn't.) And the ending is wholly unsatisfying -- hugely anticlimactic and adding up to nothing much.
I loved THE MUSIC OF CHANCE, MOON PALACE, and LEVIATHAN, and though it was a little too self-consciously clever for its own good, THE NEW YORK TRILOGY as well. But ever since those, Auster's been unable to regain the level of quality that once seemed to come so easily to him.
There are delicious bits in the new book, but not a whole book's worth of them. Here's hoping that Auster returns to form some time soon.
Rating: 2
Summary: Gassy, precious, arrogant, and ultimately merely deflated
Comment: A novel about a NYC loft-type writer-guy writing a novel about a NYC writer-gal writing a novel about a guy who can see into the future. Please.
It had much promise, too---especially his tale about a man deserting his old life to forge an anonymous one in a new, non- New York city (yes, Virginia, they exist), who, by a circuitous and well-tried route via An Old Black Cab Driver, ends up locking himself in a....well, I won't give it away. It's one of the few bright spots of the book.
I don't think Mr. Auster actually meant to be so tired and shopworn. I just don't think that some writers realise that not everyone is enthralled with the NYC Writer-As-Mage image. Of course words have meaning. Of course they have power. In the right hands, they transcend everything human. Not so here. The prose is weirdly stilted and empty of all subtlety. The story meanders around nine days of disjointed happenings, with the writer seeming to shout periodically, "This is Important!" Nope. It's not.
Other writers have tackled the city as character, and the writer as shamen---the lilting, dreamlike "Mother London" of Michael Moorcock comes to mind. This weird offering is either too subtle--or too silly---for my poor sensibilities and unfortunately, I don't care enough about the characters to discern which it is.
Rating: 1
Summary: Disappointed
Comment: Heard a wonderful interview several weeks back with Paul Auster and Terry Gross on "Fresh Air," so I was very much looking forward to reading this book. While there were some entertaining and thought-provoking passages in the book, I, overall, have to agree with the previous posters who've given this book 1- and 2-star ratings.
I don't want to repeat their criticism or rephrase it with my own so much as I want to underscore it. The book imploded about half-way through and never recovered -- forced happy ending and all.
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Title: The Book of Illusions: A Novel by Paul Auster ISBN: 0312421818 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Red Notebook: True Stories by Paul Auster ISBN: 0811214982 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation Pub. Date: 01 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The Fortress of Solitude : A Novel by JONATHAN LETHEM ISBN: 0385500696 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 16 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Collected Poems by Paul Auster, The Overlook Press ISBN: 1585674044 Publisher: Overlook Hardcover Pub. Date: 12 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster ISBN: 0140106286 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1988 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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