Paul Auster's final novel, which has more than just whispers of all his usual flights of fancy, of course there is a telephone call, some chaos, some possible autobiography, some history and seriousness. It is a while since I last read him, but I have several of his novels yet to read and will certainly be picking another up later this year.

I heard Auster speak and read from his work many years ago at the Festival Hall. I remember describing his physicality as contorting his body like a pipe-cleaner in his seat. He was long and wirey. ( )

Baumgartner, the latest book by Paul Auster is difficult to read as it is so turned inwards. The work of Auster seems to have developed from a expressionism and surrealistic boundless optimism to introspection, increasingly delving for identity. While previously the search for identity remained general, looking for a connection with Jewishness, often, like other Jewish writers by looking at Prague, Auster delves deeper in Baumgartner by describing a journey, looking for answers that are not found, in Ukraine, in a village where many people are named "Auster". This story seems to be the mirroring point where reality is mirrored into fiction, and fiction in some way is the counterpart of reality.

Baumgartner also seems to be a very mature novel, in the sense that the author feels there is no need to clarify or be clear. The story is as it stands and it is up to the reader to delve in for meaning and significance. Baumgartner is clearly a novel that needs to be read twice, partially if not whole. Like the writer, the reader needs to decide how deep they are willing to delve. The novel suggests depth that may turn out to be a lead to deeper understanding or a decoy, such as the title of the book Baumgartner is writing, nl "The Mystery of the Wheel".

While on the one hand, Baumgartner seems to be a book about aging, and how aging affects the mind, it is also about how the mind works, the mind of a writer. ( )

I fell for this book right away. I almost always like books by this author, and in this book I felt such an affinity with the main character right from the opening pages. Baumgartner is a 70-something philosophy professor, and while working in his study one morning he finds he needs a book which is downstairs. As he heads downstairs, he remembers he had promised to call his sister. He goes into the kitchen where the phone is and smells something burning--he had left the burner on under the pot in which he had earlier cooked his poached eggs. He turns off the burner and grabs the pot, thus burning his hand. He drops the pot on the floor and rushes to put his hand under cold water to prevent blistering. He is trying to remember what he came into the kitchen for when the phone rings. It is the meter man to tell him that he is on the way. He hangs up and remembers he is supposed to call his sister, when the doorbell rings. It's the UPS person--he has taken to ordering books he does want because he likes to chat with the UPS person. After their chat, he heads to the kitchen again to call his sister, but before he can pick the up the phone, it rings--a problem with the cleaning lady. He ends the call when the doorbell rings again. The meter man has arrived. As he is showing the meter reader down into the basement, he falls down the stairs and is briefly stunned--did you ever have a day like this??

Anyway, Baumgartner is still deeply mourning the death of his beloved wife Anna ten years before in a freak accident at the beach. "Ten years later Baumgartner marvels at how little has changed for him since those early months of near insanity." In the novel we backtrack from the present as Baumgartner thinks back on his past, "the lost world of then." We learn of his early life and of his life with Anna, including through some of Anna's biographical writings that Baumgartner has retained and reads over.

Arriving back at the present, Baumgartner contemplates moving on--what will that consist of, what does he want to do with the rest of his life? "Time is of the essence now, and he has no idea how much of it he has left. Not just how many years before he kicks the bucket but, more to the point, how many years of active productive life before his mind or his body or both begin to fail him and he is turned into a pain-racked, imbecilic, incompetent, unable to read or think or write, to remember what someone just said to him four seconds ago...."

I loved this book, which I think may be partly autobiographical, especially in its depiction of aging and the thoughts about the effects of aging. Highly recommended.

4 stars ( )

I love Auster's narrative voice. I still can't exactly put my finger on it, but right at the very first sentence I felt I was at home. Finally. A sigh of relief, and then trying to make this very short book last longer, somehow. Especially towards the end, when a sense of foreboding was added. I was expecting two kinds of ending, and one was what I got but how he was able to make it with one last sentence a completely different experience is beyond me. I know I said it before but what he achieves with words is simply on an entirely different level.

How everyday shared experiences are perfectly described, how a slow, sad flow is so beautiful I want to prolong living in it, what a complete world, multiple generations, beautiful human connections and embedded stories can fit into these less than 200 pages! How he made me cry so that the tears rolling down my cheeks caught me by surprise.

I read the Wolves of Stanislav, one of the embedded stories, written in the first Covid lockdown, before on Literary Hub. I wonder whether the other embedded ones had also been published somewhere earlier, and he wrote a wonderful novel around them. Several inkable sentences without ever being didactic. I can't say it any better than someone here already had: it is indeed a love letter. I hope it's not a farewell. ( )

This slim novel focuses exclusively on Sy Baumgartner, a 70-year-old philosophy professor at Princeton. Ten years before the story opens when Baumgartner and his wife were on holiday, Anna, a strong swimmer, was drowned by a rogue wave. The two were soulmates, and Auster’s book largely documents his protagonist’s bereavement and efforts to go on without his beloved. Some of Anna’s poems and autobiographical writing, Baumgartner’s own writing projects, and the couple’s family histories are included in the book. Baumgartner also tells the story of his falling in love with a younger friend of Anna’s and his hopes for a second marriage to this woman. Alas, it is not to be. As the story nears its conclusion, he looks forward to the arrival of Beatrix “Bebe” Cohen, an intelligent and sensitive Michigan University graduate student. She hopes to make Anna the subject of her doctoral work, and wants to go through the poet’s papers. Baumgartner is excited at the prospect of sharing these and seeing his wife recognized.

This is the first novel of Auster’s I’ve ever read. I was scared off his work for some reason, expecting it to be intimidating. Some years ago, I attempted reading something by his wife, Siri Hustvedt. I don’t even remember what it was—possibly the book about her neurological condition. I recall finding it cerebral, chilly, and difficult, and I believed I would encounter something similar in Auster. To my surprise, Baumgartner was very accessible. I enjoyed it, but didn’t find it a particularly moving, invigorating, or memorable read. There really isn’t much to it. I have no idea if it is representative of his other work. ( )