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Roger Sarao, August 24, 2008

Imagination Goes to War in Paul Auster’s New Novel

The year is 2007, April, to be more specific, and the President of the United States is George W. Bush. Beyond those basics, little else seems familiar in the world described in the pages of Man In the Dark, the 12th novel from New Jersey-born author Paul Benjamin Auster.

In this alternate world, the 9/11 attacks on American soil did not occur. Instead, the contested outcome of the 2000 Presidential election resulted in 16 states seceding and an all out civil war. With 13 million dead already, the Independent States of America continue their bloody battle with the Federals. Eggs cost five dollars each, as does a cup of tepid tea. The one-dollar bill and coins are no longer accepted.

Wait. Stop. The narrator of our story – for it is indeed just a story – needs to urinate, in a jar by the bed on which he lies. His name is August Brill, an elderly man, ex-literary critic, recovering from a recent car crash in the downstairs bedroom of the house of his only daughter. Sharing the house with them is his granddaughter, Katya, a young woman who recently lost her boyfriend to the real war of our time, the one in Iraq.

August is a certified insomniac, and a man with a lifetime of memories, both good and bad. Rather that dwell on those unpleasant memories, he begins telling tales to himself in the darkness of his room while the rest of the house sleeps. Thus, the U.S. civil war of the 21st century is merely a tale told to no one but August Brill himself.

But what a tale it is. In the hands of Paul Auster – the undisputed king of American meta-fiction – Brill’s story begins with Owen Brick, a simple magician who earns a meager living entertaining kids at birthday parties, waking up in the middle of the night not beside the love of his life, his wife Flora, but in a deep, 12-foot diameter hole whose clay sides are slick as glass. No way out. He is not dressed in his pajamas (or however he normally dresses for sleep), but in a ragged military uniform. Come morning, he is hoisted up to ground level, given a gun, money and a crucial assignment by his sergeant: He must assassinate the man who started the war, a man named August Brill.

Back in reality, Brill contemplates suicide, using his stories as elaborate strategies for completing this final act. Yet here in this house, with his daughter and granddaughter – the only family any of them have left – be searches for a purpose to his life and finds not one but two. Miriam, his daughter, is writing a book on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s youngest daughter, Rose.

Why does Auster choose to incorporate such an obscure, real life person into this fantastical tale? Rose Hawthorne was a failed poet, but late in life dedicated herself to the care of indigent patients diagnosed with incurable cancer, and later founded a religious order of Catholic nuns to further their mission in life. In other words, Rose Hawthorne had nothing until she found a cause. And this is important to our story.

The second purpose in Brill’s life is to help his granddaughter, Katya, overcome her grief at the loss of her boyfriend in Iraq. She blames herself for his death. Rather than resuming her life (she is still young, in her mid-20s), she spends the days watching old films with her grandpa, August Brill. Ozu’s masterpiece “Tokyo Story” gets special attention – a fact that other reviewers felt slowed down the plot, but one that this reviewer felt was an astute connection that demonstrated the universality of life in all its suffering and happiness.

This novella (at only 180 pages) is a constant surprise. As always, Auster’s prose is beautiful, and his literary tricks of the trade are still very much in play. In the final analysis, Man In the Dark is a very good Paul Auster novel, though falls just short of being a great one.

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