[.ca] Travels In The Scriptorium (ISBN 0312426291)

It's only a paper-moon.:
'The New-York trilogy' and 'The music of chance' are a part of the best novels I ever read. In these novels imagination becomes reality, leading to psychological chaos and loss of identity in a meaningless world. Disappointed by novels like 'The Book of Illusions' and the 'Brooklyn Follies'. They suffered from long-windedness and a rather insipid plot not to mention a tendency to banality. Just as I almost removed his name from my list of favorite writers, he publishes 'Travels in the Scriptorium'. Are we back in the days of ' Music of Chance'?. I believe not. There is more social engagement , but above all there is more sense of absurdity. It is as if the author wants to create more distance between him and the reader, as if he wants to be alone with his characters. In 'The Music of Chance', the sense of the absurd was already very strong but there was a total social disengagement. A word or to about the principal characters. An old man finds himself in a small room. A miniature camera is planted in the ceiling right above him and a few microphones are also hidden. The camera takes one picture after the other of the old man ( Big Brother is watching.) He knows nothing: where is he? why? Who is he? Is this a prison? Or a psychiatric hospital? He has a strong sense of guilt but at the same time he feels that he is the victim of an injustice. Then there is Anna. Anna is... is what? Well we don't know exactly. Is she a nurse? An angel? A Guardian Angel maybe? Is she family? In any case she is always very kind and helpful. For an unknown reason she gives him three different pills every morning along with his breakfast. "I'm not sick!" "It's for your treatment". Ah, his treatment! Anna says she loves the old man and she wants a kiss on her lips. Mystifying, isn't it? The story is build upon what several people wrote down during their stay in a similar room - or the same room ? - the moment in time is also different. Are the manuscripts written by one person or more? (In a medieval abbey, the room where some of the monks copied their manuscripts was called a scriptorium. You could "travel" from one desk to the other.) I gave this novel five stars because this is Paul Auster at his best. He writes with a sense of humor about people. These people are trying to make the best of it, living in a hostile, cruel or indifferent world.

Full of itself, but just what is it full of?:
Not ten pages in I was already flipping back. Didn't you just tell me the character had his slippers ON? So why now is he pressing his bare feet against the floor? I bring this up because this is a book of details and when the author is careless enough to let details like this slip, I begin to question whether the author wasn't careful or didn't care. It's a groundhog day story for the most part, a man wakes up goes about his daily routine, does it again the following day. We are to ask what he is, who he is. He's also a man who can read, but can't remember or know what things are, except the author has allowed him to remember (sometimes) and to know what things are when it's convenient. Auster also used a authorial omniscient voice but then asked questions like he suddenly didn't know why someone was doing something. Maybe the idea lurks in here somewhere, but it's not a wonderful read. The secondary story, by the way, is very very much like the start of Millard Kaufman's novel Bowl of Cherries, which I'd recommend over this any day. It's condescending without reason too, the author talks down to his character and the reader, mainly to say, I think, that the tried a more experimental novel and isn't it great? No, sorry, I don't think so.

A wild ride - give it a read.:
This was a good book. The premise is that this man awakens in a room not knowing who he is. There are photos on a desk, several written transcripts, and some other items - which I won't describe here for fear of giving away key story elements. As the story progresses, Auster does a good job of pulling the reader in to the plot. Why is the protagonist - referred to as Mr. Blank - in the room in the first place? Who are the various people who come to visit him? Are the transcripts that he's reading telling the story of his life? Can he leave or is he a prisoner? These questions, are more. Auster manages to highlight in the readers mind as he or she reads through the book. This is my second Auster novel and I quite enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to reading my third novel.