Book Review - 'Leviathan' by Paul Auster

“A novel is a long sentence spoken by its author.”

Or so goes the truism expressed by philosopher and literary critic Roland Barthes. Another of his observations was:

A novel is the question without the answer.

Both of these assertions are true of Paul Auster’s Leviathan, which is deliberately and unashamedly a confessional mind-trip that defies genre descriptions.

As to being a long sentence, much of Auster’s work reads that way. I made the same comment in my review of his 4 3 2 1. His style defies the show-don’t-tell rule often doled out by writing instructors. In both novels, there is very little dialogue and only occasional action. Thoughtful might be an apt description. Auster relates events as if setting them down in a history book. Then he muses on their meanings, along with the narrator’s opinions about the motivations and mindsets of the actors.

Leviathan by Paul Auster (Viking Press 1992)

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