It reads like an obituary, written by the protagonist of a life whose end looms very close. Last March, the writer Siri Hustvedt, wife of Paul Auster, announced that the author had cancer. Among the 18 novels written by the American writer (New Jersey, 1947), the last, Baumgartner, just published in the United States (Planeta will publish it in Spain), surprises with its emotional depth and the simplicity of its narrative depth. It is as if it contained, distilled, everything that over the years the author incorporated into his celebrated novel corpus. After playing with all the registers within the reach of fiction, exploring its limits, Baumgartner distills five decades of narrative wisdom. Paul Auster’s latest novel is a volume of barely 200 pages that contains subtle echoes of many of his previous stories, mimicking the dance of death performed in Journeys through the Scriptorium (2006), a novel in which the writer said goodbye to the ghosts of literary creation that had been his characters.
A little less than a year ago, Auster disappeared from public life, suffering from cancer. Shortly before his diagnosis, he was seen along with other writers on the steps of the New York Public Library, in an action to support his friend Salman Rushdie, who had been the victim of a savage attack. After that, a long silence occasionally interrupted by the ads that her wife, Hustvedt, posted on Instagram, in which she reported on the state her husband was in, celebrating his strength and capacity for resistance, subjected to a devastating medical treatment. The images did not bode well, giving rise to speculation about his situation. A wall of concern, respect and sympathy surrounded his image. Until then, Auster had not stopped writing a single day of his life.
The monumental surprise, even for himself, was that after having put an end to The immortal flame, his imagination required him to give life to who is destined to be one of his most endearing characters, the septuagenarian Baumgartner, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University. Although he retains his autonomy as a character, in more ways than one Baumgartner is a double of his author, a creature who arrived late to the celebrations of the scriptorium which is Auster’s imagination. In this book, Auster dispenses with the games of artifice characteristic of other moments in his career. A host of influences come together in the novel, one of the most palpable being that of Hustvedt, whose ideas on phenomenology reverberate in the old professor’s thoughts. And, surprisingly, there are echoes of the great Philip Roth. The pages dedicated to the life of the Jewish communities of New Jersey make one think of Roth’s fictions set in Newark. There are also echoes of the historical recreations of another great, EL Doctorow. Effects of late style? No. It is about something deeper and more complex.
In Baumgartner All the Austers come together, even those that are not part of his fictional world, but go back to the author’s family history. The novel incorporates texts from various areas, both from Baumgartner’s companion, who died 10 years before the beginning of the narrative (again echoes of Hustvedt in the tracing of her personality) and from the character himself. One of them published by Auster under his name, The wolves of Slivovitz. A memorable chronicle of a trip made by the author to Ukraine, in search of the origins of a branch of the Auster family, Baumgartner takes over in the novel. Author and character merge in a surprising alchemical ritual of imperceptible workmanship. This is the sense in which the novel reads like an obituary, as if Auster were telling us that the only one who has the right to shape the farewell to his life is he. Auster couldn’t, he didn’t know how to stop writing. Seeing him helpless, Baumgartner immediately came to his aid.
After starting out as a poet in 1987, Auster published what is probably his most influential work, the New York Trilogy, detective narrative of a philosophical nature that inaugurated a new way of writing novels. A parade of titles followed that celebrate the power of fiction from a dizzying multitude of angles, presided over by the sign of chance. Some: The Land of Last Things, The Palace of the Moon, The Music of Chance, Mr. Vertigo, The Book of Illusions, The Night of the Oracle, Travels through the Scriptorium… Let us pause to point out the caliber of his memorable contributions in the field of non-fiction: The invention of solitude, The red notebook, Winter diary, Inside report. The list closes this year with A country bathed in blood, about the insane massacres that plague the United States with chilling regularity as a consequence of the free circulation of firearms.
A suggestive filmography
One cannot talk about Paul Auster without referring to his suggestive filmography, which includes such memorable titles as Smoke, Blue in the Face, either Lulu in the Bridge… Returning to the jurisdiction of fiction, the center of gravity of his work, and without exhausting the list, it is necessary to remember novels such as A man in the dark, Sunset Park or the monumental 4321, a thousand-page novel where he twisted the loop of his own poetics of narration, telling the story of Archie Ferguson from four possible perspectives. After its publication, Auster announced that she was saying goodbye to the novel, turning to the biography of Stephen Crane, a brilliant poet who died at the age of 28. Similar in extension to 4321, The immortal flame It reads like a novel.
The action of this new novel takes place between 2018 and 2020, before the diagnosis that has his friends and admirers in suspense. Amidst the speculation, the real obituaries are waiting for the starting signal, archived in the newsrooms of newspapers around the world. I had not dared to do it before, but reading this unique and moving novel, different from anything Auster has done so far, decided me to write a brief note to Siri Hustvedt, asking her to congratulate her husband on the happy achievement. of his novel. After a few hours I received her response. Paul thanks the e-mail, write Siri. She is doing well, recovering from the atrocious treatment she has been undergoing for months. Hustvedt’s words make it clear that the future is uncertain. Everything is in the hands of chance. In the case of Auster, it could not be otherwise. At the end of the novel, Baumgartner’s car crashes into a tree, trying to avoid a deer that came into his path in the middle of the night. The reader sees him get out of the car and walk away towards the lights of a nearby house.
All the culture that goes with you awaits you here.
Subscribe
Babelia
The literary news analyzed by the best critics in our weekly newsletter
RECEIVE IT
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#midst #agonizing #battle #cancer #Paul #Auster #publishes #enormous #human #literary