Man in the Dark: A Novel
by Paul Auster
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Read in June, 2008
Back when I was an undergraduate in college (not that I ever did any graduate work, but I'm about to make fun of myself, and making fun of 'undergraduates' is a literary tradition in these parts) I got a total boner* for structuralism. And then post-structuralism. I was dating Sarah and she was like, 'Hey, you like this soulless pomo bullshit, you should read this book I just read and didn't like, the New York Trilogy,' I was all, sweet, empty soulless pomo bullshit! And read it, and didn't real...more
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Read in September, 2008
recommends it for:
everyone
I loved this book for the same reason I've loved every Auster work I've read (which is a lot): I'm self-absorbed.
Something about existence draws me to texts that are self-referential, contained, and yet a part of something larger and more complicated. Also, those texts are often those that, within them, I find many levels of emotional, spiritual, coincidental, etc. with which I can identify. The feeling that I'm not alone in the ways I feel or the things I think about, or the way in which I ...more
Something about existence draws me to texts that are self-referential, contained, and yet a part of something larger and more complicated. Also, those texts are often those that, within them, I find many levels of emotional, spiritual, coincidental, etc. with which I can identify. The feeling that I'm not alone in the ways I feel or the things I think about, or the way in which I ...more
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Read in June, 2008
sigh
i have only read a few of paul auster's books, and one of them turned out to be an annoying inside joke (travels in the scriptorum featured a slew of characters from his previous novels, none of which i had read at the time. it was annoying.) the other was actually a graphic novel adaptation of one of his novels.
that said, i started this book with no expectations, and quickly found myself enthralled. there is an old man unable to sleep, lying in the dark, making up stories in his ...more
i have only read a few of paul auster's books, and one of them turned out to be an annoying inside joke (travels in the scriptorum featured a slew of characters from his previous novels, none of which i had read at the time. it was annoying.) the other was actually a graphic novel adaptation of one of his novels.
that said, i started this book with no expectations, and quickly found myself enthralled. there is an old man unable to sleep, lying in the dark, making up stories in his ...more
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We all live and move in different circles of reality and imagination, it's just that some of us--particularly writers--spend more time in our imaginary worlds. Seventy-two-year-old book reviewer August Brill is one of those people who creates alternative universes and then lives in them. Paul Auster take us to visit him there during one long, sleepless night. It's a fascinating journey.
The world can be a grotesque place, and August Brill has seen it at its worst. He has good reason to want t...more
The world can be a grotesque place, and August Brill has seen it at its worst. He has good reason to want t...more
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Read in April, 2008
recommends it for:
auster fans, idle thought thinkers
sort of like a post 9/11 Neverending Story, where Fantastica is envisioned as a parallel universe America in the throes of civil war and Falkor the luck dragon is replaced with a doomed-but-horny widow. Bastian is an infirm and perhaps suicidal literary critic coming to terms with the end of his life. when you frame Auster's latest in this context, it's actually a lot easier to enjoy. BASTIAN NO!
HOWEVER: the primary difference between Man in the Dark and the Neverending Story is that ...more
HOWEVER: the primary difference between Man in the Dark and the Neverending Story is that ...more
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Read in September, 2008
When I was in undergrad we brought Paul Auster to speak on my tiny campus and gave him a literary award for the New York Trilogy. At the party that night he hit on me. I honestly don't remember the books very well except that I was reading them in a British edition that spelled things "tyre" and "kerb," but I haven't forgotten the flirting. So I picked this one up when I saw it on the new book shelf at the library.
It has an interesting post-modern story-within-a-story ...more
It has an interesting post-modern story-within-a-story ...more
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Read in July, 2008
Man in the Dark resembles an entire series of the Twilight Zone compacted neatly into a single episode. Auster has become known for spinning small stories within larger ones, but now his inner narratives have inner narratives. It all comes to resemble the skin of an onion. I’ve always wished he’d write a book of short fictional pieces, but one only has to look to his body of work for dozens of them. Jorge Luis Borges spoke once about the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia, but Paul ...more
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Read in May, 2008
this may have worked better as two short and unrelated novellas, as auster's narrative seems to collapse two-thirds of the way through this slim book. while, at times, engaging and suspenseful, man in the dark appears hurried, as if few moments had been spent in its organization or development (or, at the least, too few). the premise is appealing (despite being unabashedly reminiscent of his previous novel, travels in the scriptorium), though lacks cohesion, and, thus, never re...more
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Read in September, 2008
recommended to Anthony by:
Shea Donatorecommends it for: Everyone!
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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Read in August, 2008
So far this is Auster's strongest text since ORACLE NIGHT. As usual, the debt to Beckett, Kafka, and Hamsun is very apparent - not that that's a bad thing. The metafictive nature of the text is also, as usual, a bit heavy-handed. But something is different and inspiring here. Auster's texts have gotten more overtly political over the years, and MAN IN THE DARK is probably his most political text yet. The sci-fi narrative of the second American Civil War raises real and believable possibilities, ...more
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Read in July, 2008
Meh. I feel sort of like a fraud reviewing this book when it is the first Auster I have actually read, but whatever. I was not so impressed. The story-within-a-story, blurring-the-boundaries-between-narrator-and-characters might have felt fresh and exciting back in 1992, but now it just seems cliched and boring. I liked the idea of an alternative United States at war with itself instead of Iraq, but when the narrative abandoned this thread, I lost interest. Do we really another book with an agin...more
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Read in August, 2008
Auster is at his best when he writes about the complex effects of the world on the human heart. Using an interpretation of the current political climate, what with our useless, endless war and the useless, endless president, Auster has taken a dark snapshot of society's pull on one man, August Brill. Brill takes us on a roller coaster through his imagination on a single sleepness night, incorporating his grief and projecting it onto an imaginary character of his own making in a hope to heal hims...more
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Read in September, 2008
Auster is a writer concerned with the relationship of art and the artist, so it is possible that the faults of this novel are intentional. However, setting aside this possibility for post-modern slight of hand, this is a book without a center. The novel concerns the struggles of an aging writer, and the parallel travels of an exile to in an alternate America stuck in the quagmire of a second civil war. Problematically, the novel never comes around to explaining or showing why we should observe t...more
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Listen: Owen Brick has come unstuck in time awakened in a hole in a battlefield in an alternate America. He's now been chosen as the assassin (after a fashion) of the man in the high castle responsible for imagining this war-torn America into existence. Along the way he meets a feisty waitress (blonde) and his high school crush (brunette). Meanwhile, an old man recovering from a car wreck (the same man who is imagining this alternate universe wherein Brick is trapped) has an incr...more
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What an amazing, yet brief, book. Just bacause the story includes an alternate history doesn't mean that non-science fiction fans wouldn't like it. The story is written on several levels all with interesting charachters. The teller of the story is an older guy living at his daughter's house after he shattered his leg. His granddaugher also lives there, and she is recovering from the brutal death of her boyfriend in Iraq while the narrator is still dealing with death of his wife. He can't sl...more
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Read in September, 2008
I was disappointed with this book, in exactly the same way that I have been with another of Auster's that I have read. This one also begins with an interesting story for the first three-fourths of the book, which is then abandoned in mid-stream for a totally discontinuous and simple-minded ending to be tacked on. The front-cover inner-flap tells us it is "a book that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the...more
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I am a real fan of Paul Auster even though I don't like every book he has written. His latest is a beautiful story that lives up to the promises of his great books (New York Trilogy, Moon Palace, Leviathan).
With the twist you can expect from Auster, there is the surreal plotline of a character sent on a mission to kill the author of his story. But most of the plot focuses on an elderly man's look back on his life and the people in his real story -- his wife, his daughter and his granddaugh...more
With the twist you can expect from Auster, there is the surreal plotline of a character sent on a mission to kill the author of his story. But most of the plot focuses on an elderly man's look back on his life and the people in his real story -- his wife, his daughter and his granddaugh...more
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Read in July, 2008
I strongly believe that Paul Auster is one of today's smartest, most thought-provoking writers. He is not only exceptionally smart, but he can also be exceptionally infuriating, as evidenced in mixed-bag books like "Man in the Dark."
I absolutely loved the beginning of this novel, but was really disappointed with how it progressed. The first part of the novel is brilliant, meta-fictional, Auster fare, with an exciting and indistinct separation between a storyteller and the story he ...more
I absolutely loved the beginning of this novel, but was really disappointed with how it progressed. The first part of the novel is brilliant, meta-fictional, Auster fare, with an exciting and indistinct separation between a storyteller and the story he ...more
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I just finished, in one sitting mind you, Paul Auster's Man in the Dark. What a trip! A 72 year old man, a widower that has been injured in a terrible car crash lies in bed night after night in his divorced daughter's home with his granddaughter downstairs who has suffered a terrible loss herself. Three generations of a family in mourning at different stages of life and their way of coping with the losses.
His method is to lie in bed and make up a continuing story of an alternative united Sta...more
His method is to lie in bed and make up a continuing story of an alternative united Sta...more
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Read in July, 2008
If this novel had ended on page 120, I would've given it at least three stars. The first part is engaging and inventive and well-written, all the traits I've admired about Auster's works over the years. However, the last sixty pages really ruined the whole work, not to mention the surface level attempt to say something about 21st Century America and the Iraq war in the last ten pages, that just seemed a trite and embarrassing attempt at profundity. Having always been an avid Auster reader I mu...more
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.54 (242 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 3.44 (62 ratings) number of reviews: 105
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quote
"I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness."
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