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Travels in the Scriptorium
by Paul Auster
by Paul Auster
Xysea 's review
bookshelves: fiction, book-on-home-shelf
Feb 12, 09
bookshelves: fiction, book-on-home-shelf
Recommended for:
Paul Auster fans, people who like quick reads
Read in January, 2008
Okay, well I read this entire book (90 pages) within a few hours in the Barnes & Nobles. Truth be told, I read it there for two reasons: (a) I have been told to read something by Paul Auster by a few people and (b) I didn't want to pay $16.00 for it.
(My daughter read the Guiness Book of World Records for Kids, lol)
It's an interesting story within a story. The writing, initially, is pretty solid, pretty tight. But the story is hard to keep interested in. A lot of the plot is a description of the main character, Mr. Blank, and his activities. You get bits and pieces of the story as you go along, and there is to be some great reveal/allegory at the end. I wouldn't say it was a great revelation, but it was interesting - I'll give Mr. Auster that much.
I've also been told this isn't the best of Auster's works, and I can accept that. It wasn't painful to read; it went quite smoothly for the most part, but I didn't find it particularly memorable or inspiring. Just meh.
Which is how it ended up with three stars...
PS The cover *is* great, isn't it? lol
(My daughter read the Guiness Book of World Records for Kids, lol)
It's an interesting story within a story. The writing, initially, is pretty solid, pretty tight. But the story is hard to keep interested in. A lot of the plot is a description of the main character, Mr. Blank, and his activities. You get bits and pieces of the story as you go along, and there is to be some great reveal/allegory at the end. I wouldn't say it was a great revelation, but it was interesting - I'll give Mr. Auster that much.
I've also been told this isn't the best of Auster's works, and I can accept that. It wasn't painful to read; it went quite smoothly for the most part, but I didn't find it particularly memorable or inspiring. Just meh.
Which is how it ended up with three stars...
PS The cover *is* great, isn't it? lol
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Michael
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Jan 07, 2008 06:38am
I almost picked this up just for the cover design..i mean how could you not?
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it does doesnt it?!?!!?makes me want to read it that much more.
i actually finally bought my own copy of Raw Shark Texts with the intention of reading it again, but then i went on this crazy book buying spree over the last week and a half...and now i have 10-ish new books that i haven't read just waiting there for me to pick them up.
i blame holiday sales.
cheers
M
Yes, if this one had been on Barnes & Nobles' 'Blue Dot' table, I probably would have bought it and read it at home. But, it was $16.00 and I ended up reading it in 2-1/2 hours sitting in a chair at Barnes & Nobles - I'm a cheapskate - and bought three items off the Blue Dot table for $9.99 total. Sometimes it pays to be penny-wise and not pound-foolish. :)
This book was ubiquitous when I was in Spain this summer - in fact, there was a lot of Auster's work in all the bookstores. But 'Travels in the Scriptorium' was being pushed even in places one might not expect to see it - there was a whole table given over to it in the menswear department of the Corte Ingles (the main department store), and it was also being sold in one of the non-Starbucks coffeeshops. I think he is quite popular all over Europe.Personally, I have yet to forgive him for the soul-destroying pointlessness that was "The Music of Chance". One of the single most depressing books I have ever read.
I haven't read The Music of Chance yet, but maybe I'll skip that one for now and read something else of his?lol
I just noticed that the book detail says it was 160 pages. I could swear it wasn't that long, or if it is I read pretty fast. lol It seemed much shorter than that to me...I'd have to go back and look at it now. Sometimes Goodreads' # of pages in a book are wrong; I've seen that before. :)
Read the first three or four Auster books. They're excellent. The new ones are horrible. He's stuck in a rut. I couldn't even get through "Travels in the..." He is going through his past books, and it is sort of like a writer's block thing. In the 80's I would easily say he was the best living American author. On the other hand he's still a very good translator.
tosh is 100% correct. auster was a man with a singular vision, with something original and spooky to say. and he said it in The New York Trilogy. and it was excellent. his next few books were interesting as supplements to that original vision... and after that? well. he was a writer. that was his job. so what's he gonna do? go pump gas? work in an office? nope. so (much as tim burton is doing in film), he applied his old style to newer works. they are flat and dull and unoriginal and boring. read the NY Trilogy and stop there.
Good advice, Brian. I think I'll do that. My boyfriend is a huge Auster fan and I think he likes the NY Trilogy, too. I'll start at the beginning, and forget the latter stuff.PS Thanks to you too, Tosh.
Brian is actually correct in that manner. The New York Trilogy is awesome. It would be a shame to have the new stuff turn you off on him by avoiding his early works. He also translated a lot of French poetry to English - and his essays are good as well. With respect to Tim Burton, the new one is a masterpiece. So even Brian is wrong at times.... Not often, but just sometimes.
Well now i'll have to look into this NY Series everyone is chatting up, espescialy since i've never read any Auster.
I absaloutley envy your ability to read a whole book in the store! That book took me a few days, please give me your reading powers :)
As a writer, I was thoroughly drawn into the novel, which shares some of the paradoxes/absurdities of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. Where do these fictions go after the writer is through with them? Well, they don't go anywhere, and just as they competed for attention with the real world while they were being created, they continue to compete with the disintegrating real world. I like wandering that corridor (Wittgenstein's Mistress, too). I do think he made it too neat with the moebius strip at the end/beginning. Not that I haven’t done it, but should one feel at all guilty at reading an entire book at a bookstore?
