Man in the Dark
Ratings13
Average rating3.6
A new novel with a dark political twist from “one of America’s greats.”* Man in the Dark is Paul Auster’s brilliant, devastating novel about the many realities we inhabit as wars flame all around us. Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter’s house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would prefer to forget—his wife’s recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughter’s boyfriend, Titus. The retired book critic imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the twin towers did not fall and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, Brill’s story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts the story of his marriage. After she falls asleep, he at last finds the courage to revisit the trauma of Titus’s death. Passionate and shocking, Man in the Dark is a novel of our moment, a book that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence. *Time Out (Chicago)
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I was rather surprised to receive this slim book for Christmas, never having heard of the author before, but today I sat down and read all 180 pages.
I found it readable enough. Auster is a good writer, who can conjure up characters and scenes fluently, and it all flows quite well.
However, unfortunately there's very little to it. The book is about an elderly widower who lives with his daughter and granddaughter, all three of them mourning people who have passed on in one way or another. The old man remembers his past life, talks a bit to his granddaughter, and also, to pass the time while awake at night, conjures up a half-baked fantasy about someone yanked into an alternative world in which the USA is fighting another civil war. After a while he apparently gets fed up with the fantasy and kills it off, without having achieved anything with it.
And after 180 pages Auster likewise stops his story without having achieved anything with it.
I don't actively dislike the book, but I find it rather annoying that someone with the skills to be a decent writer should sell such a idle daydream to the public while other writers are putting real work into their books. Clearly, little or no research and little or no planning went into this; I guess it was all written in one draft over a short period of time, with perhaps just a little tidying up afterwards.
Probably Auster would say that I've missed the point of his book completely. If there was a point to it, I've certainly missed it. But, if he wants to sell me books, it's his responsibility to write a book whose point is clear. I'm not going to rack my brain searching for meaning in this one. I have a pile of books by other writers waiting to be read; I'll go on to the next one.
(Review written in January 2009)
starts out promising then meanders half-heartedly through its novel within a novel concept, never quite deciding what it wants to be
