Timbuktu - Paul Auster

[Kristel]

Read 2014 and 2015
Timbuktu is a 1999 novella by Paul Auster. It is about the life of a dog, Mr Bones, who is struggling to come to terms with the fact that his homeless master, Willy Christmas is dying. The story is set in the 90s. The title comes from the name Willy has given to the afterlife and Mr. Bones is afraid that he won’t be able to go to Timbuktu to be with Willy.

My thoughts: The story is told from Mr. Bones perspective. It is the second book this year, having read Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein last December that is written from the dogs perspective. This one is similar in that both dogs are contemplating existential themes of the afterlife. Mr. Bones regrets that Willy didn’t teach him to read, Enzo wanted thumbs. Both dogs do a lot of thinking but Mr. Bone uses words like “peripatetic”. Now I have dogs and I believe they do learn a lot of human language as they live with us but I don’t believe they learn words like peripatetic. When you read Auster, at least in my experience so far, you know the ending isn’t going to be a feel good ending. I felt so bad that Mr. Bones was going to be abandoned in a strange town with no friends when Willy dies but the rest of the story loses my sympathy. It really goes on with the difficulties of adjusting to new families and the loss of Willy. The ending, and I won’t give it away, but it is an Auster ending.

Quotes that I liked:
“Even now, as I enter the valley of the shadow of death, my thoughts bog down in the gunk of yore. There’s the rub, signore. All this clutter in my head, this dust and bric-a-brac, these useless knickknacks spilling off the shelves.”

References to memory-- “wallpaper, background music, zeitgeist dust on the furniture of the mind”.

[Gail]

I found it odd that this book was on the 1001 list. There are a lot of Auster's books on the list and although I have read Auster before, I actually have never read any of the other books of his on the list.
Auster is a prolific and accomplished author who is capable of capturing a touch of sentiment, while investigating the nature of living during modern times. He also investigates the nature of writing during this same age. However, I didn't see this book as an example of Auster at his best. The book is told from the point of view of Mr. Bones, a dog who has spent his whole life with a homeless wanderer who is touched with mental illness and has a gift with words. As his owner transitions over to "Timbuktu", the oasis of afterlife, Mr. Bones is left to fend for himself for the first time. Mr. Bones can, of course, understand human speech to a certain extent and he also evidently has the gift of being able to dream the future. Once Willy, his owner, passes, I really thought the book lost both its charm and its edge. One comes to respect Willy for all his inability to manage in this world but as Mr. Bones moves over to a Chinese family and then a suburban family, I thought Auster lost the plot. Yes, dogs understand this dog life better than we do because they are dogs and the traits of loyalty, boundless love and zero judgement are wonderful traits but I didn't think Auster captured anything new in this one.

[Rosemary]

I really enjoyed this gentle story of Mr Bones, an ordinary yet extraordinary faithful dog who fears for his master, the wandering homeless Willy Christmas, and has to face existential questions when he realises that Willy is suffering from a potentially fatal illness.

As usual with Paul Auster there is a supernatural element. In this case, the dog understands English almost perfectly. The only words and phrases that are unknown to him are those that Willy never uses. Some of these prove more important than Mr Bones could have imagined ("have him fixed" and "family vacation" being two examples).

I didn't think this book deserved to be on the list - a lovely book for dog-lovers, but not that special. But it was only in the first edition, removed in 2008, along with two other books by Paul Auster. So I think maybe for the first edition the editors were somewhat desperate and added lots of books by certain authors which were then deleted as soon as they'd had a chance to think about it. (Ian McEwan is an even more extreme example, who had 5 books deleted in 2008.)