Man in the Dark - Paul Auster
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008A couple of weeks ago I bought on ebay an advanced readers copy, the kind they send out to reviewers and such, of Paul Austers newest book called Man in the Dark. It doesnt come out until august but I have been having trouble getting into anything recently and i have found that I can always read anything by Paul Auster. If I start it i have to finish. even if it is a repeat read, halfway through the book i seem to forget how it ends and the strange mystery that surrounds all of his books takes me over and im hooked. The book finally came on Monday, Im not going to leave a negative comment or anything since it only cost me $.99 plus $2.99 for shipping, and i read it today. It isnt the best thing he has ever written, that honor goes to the New York Trilogy and The Invention of Solitude however it is the first book i have read by him that struck me on any kind of personal level. There is a song on the Elvis Costello record Trust called Pretty Words and one of the lyrics is “You’re loosening all the screws that hold the hinges on my life.” Man in the Dark is about three people who at various points in the their lives are finding those screws. The 72 year old invalid narrator tells himself stories at night when he cant fall asleep to, unsuccessfully, keep himself from thinking about all of the tragedies that have befallen him and his family, His grand-daughter watches classic films, it appears as if they are all from the Criterion Collection, to keep herself from thinking about the death of the man she loved who was working as a contractor in Iraq, and his daughter is writing a biography of Rose Hawthorne as a way to remind herself that it is possible to start your life one way and finish it in a completely different one. yet, throughout the book Auster is always quick to give us examples of how small and fragile those screws can sometimes be and how a life in chaos and a life in harmony are not all that different from one another. Like i said, it isnt the best book he has ever written but it might be one of my favorites.
