In Mr. Vertigo, his dazzling eighth novel, Paul Auster introduces a quintessentially American hero who, early in his life, masters the art of the u...
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Oct 22, 2011
Lorenzo
rated it: 
When I was a young dumb teenager unaware of the complexity of the whole world, one of the hit songs I use to listen again and again and once more on a self recorded tape was "I wish I could fly" by Roxette.
Ehm.
Have you noticed that "When I was a young dumb etc." at the beginning of the sentence? Please do it.
Thanks.
This novel speaks about flying. This novel speaks about the hard training that a depaupered American child have to do to beco More...
Ehm.
Have you noticed that "When I was a young dumb etc." at the beginning of the sentence? Please do it.
Thanks.
This novel speaks about flying. This novel speaks about the hard training that a depaupered American child have to do to beco More...
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Feb 10, 2011
Marcelo
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Fantastic. I read this in one sitting. Auster writes a fable of America's growth in the 20th century without losing sight of giving us a good story. By the end, I wished it would keep on going.
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Aug 06, 2011
A spiritual journey for the soul of a nation. From humble beginnings in the bowery of St. Louis, Walter Claireborn Rawley, aka Walt the Wonder Boy, lives an adventure that most boys could only dream about.
After meeting the mysterious Master Yahudi, who promises to teach him the secret of levitation, Walt embarks on a rocky road to self awareness, as well as eyewitness to the unfolding of history. A makeshift family forms around Walt, his adopted brother Aesop, a brilliant Negro foundling, su More...
After meeting the mysterious Master Yahudi, who promises to teach him the secret of levitation, Walt embarks on a rocky road to self awareness, as well as eyewitness to the unfolding of history. A makeshift family forms around Walt, his adopted brother Aesop, a brilliant Negro foundling, su More...
Dec 04, 2011
Hana
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Walt Clairborne Rawley was no ordinary boy, destined to become a not-so-ordinary man. Despite being orphaned at a very young age and left to abusive relatives, Walt was perfectly fine with the kind of life he was leading, scraping by on the nickels he chalked up from begging in the streets, until a strange man who called himself Master Yehudi pulled him aside one day and told him:
“If you come with me, I’ll teach you how to fly.”
And what boy would say ‘no’, seriously? Althoug More...
“If you come with me, I’ll teach you how to fly.”
And what boy would say ‘no’, seriously? Althoug More...
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Feb 15, 2010
Larry
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Paul Auster almost always delivers a provocative mind-bending story. Mr. Vertigo is no exception – the story of a young boy, living on the streets in the 1920s, who is taken in by Master Yehudi, a mysterious older man who promise he will teach the boy to fly.
After a grueling series of physical tests and challenges, some of which almost kill the boy, the promise is realized. Walt the Wonder Boy is born – a 10 year old who can levitate and move through the air performing acrobatic tr More...
After a grueling series of physical tests and challenges, some of which almost kill the boy, the promise is realized. Walt the Wonder Boy is born – a 10 year old who can levitate and move through the air performing acrobatic tr More...
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Jan 23, 2012
4evagreen
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Once again if it had not been for the 1001 list this is a book that I would never have read and that it would have been a shame. To be brutally frank I had never previously heard of Paul Auster let alone Mr Vertigo.
Initially it took me a little while to get into this book and I also found it a little hard to particularily like any of the main characters but as I got further into the book the more it and they grabbed me, so much so that I found it a little hard to put down at the end. More...
Initially it took me a little while to get into this book and I also found it a little hard to particularily like any of the main characters but as I got further into the book the more it and they grabbed me, so much so that I found it a little hard to put down at the end. More...
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Jun 26, 2011
Agnes
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When people find out that I have a ridiculous hard-on for Roth, Updike and Bellow, inevitably they recommend one of two authors – Jonathan Lethem or Paul Auster.
I finally got around to giving Auster a shot and I have to say that Mr. Vertigo didn't do it for me. I can certainly recognize why people would enjoy this book – the plot is interesting and there are many twists and turns that kept me interested. However, the book was very plot heavy and way too light on character development More...
I finally got around to giving Auster a shot and I have to say that Mr. Vertigo didn't do it for me. I can certainly recognize why people would enjoy this book – the plot is interesting and there are many twists and turns that kept me interested. However, the book was very plot heavy and way too light on character development More...
Dec 28, 2011
Oceana2602
rated it:
I first read this book probably in 1996. It's an estimate, but it must have been around the time it was first published.
Then I forgot all about it.
No, wait, I didn't! The premise, human levitation, was so bizarre to me, and the execution so skifully done, that there were bits and pieces that I didn't forget through all those years.
Which is why 15 years later, when I was unsuspectingly reading a book about the history of Lhasa (by Peter Hopkirk, another recomme More...
Then I forgot all about it.
No, wait, I didn't! The premise, human levitation, was so bizarre to me, and the execution so skifully done, that there were bits and pieces that I didn't forget through all those years.
Which is why 15 years later, when I was unsuspectingly reading a book about the history of Lhasa (by Peter Hopkirk, another recomme More...
Aug 05, 2011
i was surprised at how well the different themes in this book were told rather seamlessly. together, you experience fear, hope, loss, and excitement as the main character, walt, progresses through the joys and tribulations of growing up. there is a slight science fiction aspect to the book that doesn't take away from the other more-grounded topics discussed later on in the book. this book follows walt through his life very similarly to how "the legends of the fall" followed the brot
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Feb 05, 2010
Encryptic
rated it:
First time reading anything by Auster - wanted to start with his New York trilogy, but the library didn't have it. I enjoyed it, but it definitely seemed lacking a bit of something. Walt is an interesting character and Auster can turn a phrase with the best of them, but I feel like the message he was trying to get at got a bit lost behind all the "telling" how Walt spent big chunks of his life. Maybe if the book had been longer and/or not quite so rushed-feeling, it would sit better wi
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Oct 17, 2009
Glenn
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Jan 02, 2012
oppem
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Once upon a time.......this is a 'fairy story 'about 'Walt the Wonder Boy' and it takes us on a lifetime journey with a street urchin named Walt, turned 'Wonder Boy', turned killer, turned mobster, turned bread factory worker, turned ??!!!.. Maybe I have missed some on the way but it really was 'quite a read'..My first novel by Paul Auster so had nothing to compare it with...I enjoyed most of it but have to confess to getting a little 'weary' with it by the end.For me the first part of the book
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Dec 29, 2010
Carlos
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Mr Vertigo cuenta la historia de la vida de Walter Clairebone Rawley, un huérfano en los Estados Unidos en la época de la Gran Depresión, desde que un hombre misterioso que se hace llamar el Maestro Yehudi lo rescata de las calles con la promesa de enseñarle a volar. El libro narra la vida de Walter: desde el extraño y duro entrenamiento con el Maestro Yehudi, pasando por el momento en que aprende a volar, hasta la serie de catastrofes que sacuden su vida, la pérdida de la capacidad de volar y s
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Aug 15, 2009
Shane
rated it:
An episodic story, "told" in strong narrative about the life and times of Walt the Wonder Kid, a.k.a. Mr. Vertigo, the boy who could walk on air.
Walt, a young castaway, befriends the Master Yehudi who puts him through 33 trials of endurance - some pretty gruesome, like being buried alive for 24 hours - before Walt ultimately collapses in utter hopelessness, only to find his body rise above the floor and commence his startling career as a circus and stage performer, mobster More...
Walt, a young castaway, befriends the Master Yehudi who puts him through 33 trials of endurance - some pretty gruesome, like being buried alive for 24 hours - before Walt ultimately collapses in utter hopelessness, only to find his body rise above the floor and commence his startling career as a circus and stage performer, mobster More...
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Oct 17, 2008
Benjy
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Reading this book, I couldn't stop thinking about a very different author, Paul Coelho, who wrote a very similar kind of novel, The Alchemist. Both of them are more a parable than a book, a motivational speaking seminar designed to make you wake up and realize the miracles that you (yes YOU) could make happen if you only dared to believe they were possible.
In Mr. Vertigo, the feat is flying, in the Alchemist it's "becoming the wind" or something of the sort. Mr. Vertigo's More...
In Mr. Vertigo, the feat is flying, in the Alchemist it's "becoming the wind" or something of the sort. Mr. Vertigo's More...
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Oct 20, 2008
Zerbe
rated it:
I wish I could suit myself with simply writing, "The man is a genius," and letting my review at that, because that is what Paul Auster is absolutely deserving of. 1994's Mr. Vertigo is nothing short of astounding in its breadth and vision, encompassing a nation's loss of wonderment and innocence in the story of a poor boy from St. Louis who learns to fly.
Walt is a Holden Caufield of another era--a down and out, harsh little man in a boy's body, trying to keep a step ahead More...
Walt is a Holden Caufield of another era--a down and out, harsh little man in a boy's body, trying to keep a step ahead More...
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Sep 19, 2008
Sarah
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This could sound snobby and euphemistic, but I don't mean it that way at all--this is an extremely readable book. It's fairly short (compared to some of the stuff I've read in the past year or so, anyway) at less than 300 pages, and it moves pretty quickly. I think Auster does a very good job of creating this rich, convincing persona of the narrator, Walt--he's often but not always likable, he's imperfect and he knows it, he's got this fun early 20th-century vernacular. My only real complaint is
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May 26, 2009
Oliver
rated it:
The last two Paul Auster books I read, Timbuktu and Travels in the Scriptorium, were so bad that I almost gave up hope of his books being great. But Mr. Vertigo was pretty amazing. It's one of the few Auster novels where everything wraps up in the end; he leaves no unanswered questions, which it's kind of his style to do. I always wondered if he was even capable of writing a novel that actually comes together in the end, but now that I know that he can, it's clear that all of the novels that
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Jan 15, 2011
Devin
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I love the first two thirds of this book. It is amazingly written and compelling but the last third is incredibly disappointing. I have read many books by Paul Auster (you would think I would have learned by now)and think that he is a brilliant short story writer who tries to stretch his short stories into novel length. Auster has a hard time ending his great beginning ideas. I wish this was in a shorter format and dropped the last section.
Aug 16, 2011
Elizabeth
rated it:
This was a great vacation book. The main character Walter Rawley is consistently brash throughout the book with the smart mouth of a street kid yet again and again lives up to his chivalrous namesake. He tells of his life as a vaudeville act where he is billed as "Walt the Wonder Boy", a boy who can fly, and introduces the reader to the America of the late 1920s. I'd never read Paul Auster and I'm glad my son introduced me to him.
May 30, 2011
Bob
rated it:
Auster steers well clear of the shifting shoals of post-modern uncertainty here, going for good old-fashioned American tall-tale telling. His main character has magical powers as a boy which he cannot sustain as an adolescent, thereafter falling into a picaresque life roaming the country and making his way from the 1920s to 60s. It seems likely that the debt to Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March is a conscious one.
Jul 16, 2009
Liz
rated it:
I never got the impression that this was the "Story of America Itself" as the back cover claims, but it was an enjoyable little book. It starts out strong with engaging characters I liked reading about and a really fun premise, but it loses the plot a little more than halfway through. At that point it feels like the book is killing time until a "meh" conclusion. Would have been a 5 star short story, but the padding in the third act just dragged it down.
Jul 20, 2011
John
rated it:
Something pretty great at the start: a panorama of types and conditions and places in the American 20's and 30's. All done up as a magical- realistic fantasy. That's Parts 1 and 2. Then there are two crappy little sections tacked on at the end. Their size and clumsiness truly make it feel like Auster just ran out of interest or steam, and just wanted to 1 get it over with and 2 use up some material he had on Dizzy Dean. Too bad.
Oct 12, 2010
Steve
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This is the story of the rise and subsequent fall of Walt ‘the Wonder Boy’ Rawley, plucked from obscurity from the streets of 1920s St Louis to defy gravity under the tutelage of the mysterious but enigmatic figure of Master Yehudi. Auster once more reveals his inventiveness in storyline, and peoples his novel with an assortment of colourful, and memorable characters, none more so than the entourage of misfits which surround Master Yehudi. This is a gripping tale, which has our protagonist vivid
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Dec 05, 2011
Conor
rated it:
I love Paul Auster, his style, hsi concepts, his prose, all of that. I quite enjoyed Mr. Vertigo as well but it felt a little lazy in terms of its pacing. You had this tight, well structured first act, where we see Walt transform into Walt the Wonder Boy but then after that it seemed like certain events were told too quickly or too much time was spent dwelling on one moment.
Still though, it is a Paul Auster novel, so it is still good.
Still though, it is a Paul Auster novel, so it is still good.
Dec 16, 2009
liz
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This was a book club book for a meeting I never made it to. Fictional autobiography of Walt, a street kid from St. Lous who is taken under the wing of a magician named Master Yehudi. The master teaches Walt how to levitate (for serious), and after his showbiz career is cut short at 14, we follow him through life as a Chicago gangster and eventual family man.
"Well, my fine-feathered rascal," he said to me that first morning, "give me the lowdown on what you know about t More...
"Well, my fine-feathered rascal," he said to me that first morning, "give me the lowdown on what you know about t More...
Oct 07, 2011
Georgina
rated it:
I enjoyed this book in a small way. It didn't rock my world, but it was an enjoyable tale, well told. I think I have missed allegorical layers, as I was unable to pin down the arc of North American history that I understand was there. I could have done without the pages and pages of baseball stuff - but the characters were quirky without being ludicrous and the voice of the narrator was strong, consistent, and believable.
Mar 18, 2011
Allie
rated it:
Probably the most un-Paul Auster book by Paul Auster I've read, even more so than the one about the dog. Brooklyn, and Brooklyn writers, make no appearance. Instead the story is about a boy (from St. Louis!) who learns to levitate from a mysterious man out on a farm in Kansas (if I remember right). It was all very strange...and after he stopped levitating due to headaches or whatever, I kind of lost interest. But the writing was still good, since this is Paul Auster. I'm just curious where this
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Sep 08, 2009
Weldon
rated it: 
I didn't love this book. It has some fun points and some interesting points in the book, but I thought the book kind of sagged in the middle with little happening. Then, the final 2-3 chapters rush through about 60 years of the narrator's life. The rush makes for some huge contrivances to move things along. I give it 2 out of 5 stars as a generous rating.
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Nov 27, 2011
Elaine
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It started off great, and he writes beautifully, as always, but after the first half of the book he lost me a little. It seemed like he really developed the story at the beginning, and I was really sucked into it, but then it was like he jumped from idea to idea and crammed a load of things into the second half of the book, without really developing any of the stories too well. He does a great job of describing characters though. It was worth a read, but didn't blow me away.
