I just finished reading the latest novel by Paul Auster published in French: Alone in the dark. A round trip by car, four hours away and presto! Swallowed. Swallowed quickly, not eaten either. The main story is that of August, 72, a writer with no ambition and no glory. He gathered in his home his daughter Miriam, 47 years old and his granddaughter Katya, 23. All three are wounded by life, but this strange world keeps turning .
August, it is he who is alone in the dark. While Miriam and Katie are asleep upstairs, he sits with his leg in bulk, its companion in the darkness of his obsessions, his desire also that Katya sort of trouble. He thinks he is God and that one of the two was saved , probably.
The first row and the first few pages are written in a very refined style. The text with its punctuation is melodic, almost incantatory. I heard Paul Auster to read those first pages to the radio and I must admit that I had been hypnotized. I spun immediately bought the book.
This stylistic tension is consistent with the rigorous construction of the main action, which tells the story of August, Miriam and Katya. Sonia, of Titus, of Virginia Blaine why not ... but the tension is relaxed, too fast for my taste, and we are drawn into a parallel world where the United States of America are waging a civil war. A world that exists only because Giordano Bruno said it could exist. A world that only exists in the mind of August Brill.
Each character is endearing, including the characters created by August Brill: Brick, Flora, and the famous Virginia Blaine. And then Paul Auster makes beautiful people, with all their faults and their injuries and their hopes dashed. In fact, Paul Auster mixes here all the ingredients we love found in his novels: the confrontation of generations, the idea of a man who arrived at the end of his life provides a kind of balance, the experience of bereavement told with a kind of benevolence relating to life, the idea that reality is illusion, or that there multiple realities coexist together, and that some people have the strange power to slip from one to another. And Brick is a magician, the pet name is Augie August ... one feels on familiar ground, even when you do not read any of the author.
Still: that Paul Auster obsessed with September 11, 2001 and the war in Iraq, for the taking of hostages and beheadings broadcast on the Internet ... I'm not sure if these subjects are those he knows best and if they can give rise to a literary work, I'm pretty sure we should not simply adopt towards them the simple view of the spectator, or lead the same time the reader's sympathy for the victims. If Paul Auster was traveling to Baghdad or Kabul to overthrow the point of view and tell us with the same talent as a novelist the lives of three generations of Iraqi or Afghan disturbed by abuses of the U.S. military, it would interest me much. For now, he keeps both feet on American soil and his criticism of the Bush administration is agreed and superficial. I know quite a few Paul Auster and his work, but I feel it feels compelled to give evidence of these conflicts of civilization, and for my part I find it unfortunate that he does not want to stay at the individual level where he excels.
182 pages, ed. Actes Sud - € 19.50
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