Man in the Dark: Paul Auster

It was a great book. My first one from Paul Auster. I am more the Romance or detective book fan but I really loved this one. The story is very well written, it goes always straight to the point and I always had fun reading.I'll definitely buy another one from Auster.

個人的にはオースターのベスト。例によってメタフィクションの体裁をとっています。老人とその娘と老人の孫娘、それぞれの悲しみを抱えていて、徐々にそれが明かされていきます。よくオースターは抒情的過ぎるとか通俗だとか言われますが、この作品にはそういったつまらない型を超えた悲しみとそれを乗り越えていく力があると感じました。

事故で足を痛めベッドから起き上がることすらままならない老人と、彼が空想する内戦状態の現代アメリカに迷い込んだ男性のお話が同時並行的に進行して行きます。最近のムラカミ・ハルキの作品風の展開なのですが、ポール・オースターが時々（いや、よく？）書く「観念世界」的な小説っぽくもあり、ちょっとヤだな、とヘボ読者の私は思ってしまいました。しかし、読み進めて行くうちに、その余り良い印象を与えなかった前半部の二重構造の意味合いが全て、それも自然に解き明かされてしまいます。どうしてジイちゃんは夜な夜なベッドでシコシコと「アメリカの内戦」を妄想してたのか･･･。ジイさんとその娘とそのまた娘の三人のお話だとも言えるのですが、私は最後読みながら目に涙さえ浮かべてしまいました。死んじまったバアさん含め、作品の主な登場人物の全てを愛することが出来た（別に皆偉くも立派でも、それほど魅力的であるわけでもないのですが）素晴らしい一編だと私は、心から思いました。

I began to read Paul Auster in the eighties. I was captivated by the bleak, mysterious, and inimical atmosphere of his novels. But at the same time his sense of humor, his love for the absurd, and the relentless search for The Father formed a counterpart for the dark side of his novels.All these things are together again in his latest novel "Man In The Dark". I love this novel because it's the real Paul Auster. He writes without commercial afterthought and he refuses to go easy on us (like in his novel The Brooklyn Follies).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 granddaughters' boyfriend, Titus.August 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 the secession, as state after state pulled away from the union, and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, August's story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told.Passionate and shocking, Man in the Dark is a novel of our moment, a book that forces us to confront the darkness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.

Despite a well-crafted writing style, and the author's ability to drive the story forward, "Man in the Dark" is a ripoff. SF writers have pulled off Auster's thematic format with much more credibility, if with less eloquence. Colonel Brick, the alternative main character of this part fantasy novel is more human,and deserving of more sympathy than his "imagineer", August Brill. Brill is old, and damaged by the emotional trauma of his life, family, and so creates this alternative story which is actually more interesting than Brill's recollections of his past. Corporal Brick appears to be just a working class guy who has found a niche of happiness in his life without much money, and with marriage to a sexy, loving woman. August Brill, despite his traumatic life(dramatic may be more accurate) has fared well in his life, not rich but comfortable and achieved a degree of public success as a journalist and writer. Auster would have better served his readers and "characters" by continuing Brick nightmarish story; but Brick is killed off in the fantasy "war" in Brill's mind. The novel proceeds like a juggernaut from this point onward--wallowing in supposedly connected incidents of tragedy and serendipitous mishap. Brill's life despite his burdens has been not that bad: he married a beautiful, talented French woman who gives him an equally talented, though troubled daughter. He knows Europe culture, has an appreciation for good food and art and is reasonably well educated....The first Auster novel I read was "Moonpalace and then "Leviathan". I was struck by Auster's artisty and craftmanish. I thought he would possibly be the next F.Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe or Saul Bellow. I have not read all his books, but it seems that "unlike" those other classic American authors, Auster has no thematic context to build a catalogue of novels. He seems to be flailing to find a theme but substitutes a temporary situation-- for example, his ludicrous novel, Timbuktu(which I abandoned after 40 pages) Fitzgerald wrote about the rich, Bellow about Jewish experience and culture. Faulkner wrote about the South. Despite the achievements of his earlier novels, Auster seems recently to be squandering his stylisitc brilliance on unimportant, if not trivial themes. It seems unworthy of his skills to continually attempted to capture the situational chaos of modern life. Every middle-class parlor tragedy may be not worth capturing---who cares!! Surely, the ruminations of the existential mind, does not have to eventually examine the life of a Sarah Palin, or Joe the Plumber.... I recently viewed again on cable, Oliver Stone's film "W". Bush almost seems like a tortured St Augustine seeking spiritual affirmation. Stone brilliantly portrays Bush's angst as a product of his ignorance, shallowness, and stupidity, not a voyage toward personal identity. Stone's thematic context is therefore political and provocative....I think Auster's reputation as an American writer may be only identified in the future by a literary footnote.