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Review
of Paul Auster’s The Brooklyn Follies
Paul
Auster, now regarded as a major American writer by many critics, ordinarily
concerns himself with large, abstract notions of fate, destiny, chance,
coincidence and other quasi-mystical matters typically categorized as
existential in nature. Auster is, after
all, fluent in French and has translated the work of many obscure French poets
into English. He may also be the
closest thing we have in this country to a café society intellectual. Like some of the better known writers of
post-war Paris, Auster examines the dark side of human nature; think of
Sartre’s No Exit with its famous adage “Other people are hell” and
Camus’ The Stranger with its bleak insight “A man who has lived only one
day can easily live for a hundred years in prison. He will have enough memories to keep him from being bored.”
Indeed,
in Auster’s novels and essays we generally see men who deal with the twin poles
of hellish interpersonal relationships and total isolation. The titles of his books often tell you
everything you need to know: The Invention of Solitude, Hand to Mouth,
The Book of Illusions, In the Country of Last Things, The
Music of Chance.
In
his new novel, The Brooklyn Follies (Henry Holt, 2006), Auster returns
to these familiar themes, weaving his way through a labyrinth of interconnected
tales, but this time around he veers off in an entirely new direction, for a
short time at least. The novel concerns
itself with a middle-aged man named Nathan Glass who, after retiring from his
job as a life insurance agent, moves to a secluded apartment in Brooklyn
(inasmuch as one can be secluded in a metropolis of that size; ironically, not
a difficult thing to do) and begins writing the story of his life, which he
tentatively calls The Book of Human Folly. This memoir, jotted down on scraps of paper, consists of random
stories and insights and bears more than a passing resemblance to Fernando
Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet.
There
are other allusions along the way.
Auster offers us engaging anecdotes about Franz Kafka, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, and pays homage to that neglected American masterpiece The
Recognitions by William Gaddis. In
no time at all Auster’s grand themes emerge.
Nothing is wasted. Everything
from the protagonist’s name, to his former occupation, to his big city retreat,
to his haphazard scribbling resonates with existential (and often metaphysical)
overtones. Few modern writers are as
adept at creating self-contained worlds that hint at larger ideas.
But
midway through the novel, Auster dares to leave his carefully constructed
simulacrum of the cosmos and explores, albeit timidly, life outside New York
City. Think of Woody Allen leaving his
beloved Manhattan to film Match Point, but whereas Allen was somewhat
successful in his journey into the heart of darkness (in his case London),
Auster gets lost and confused and can’t find his way back home.
The
book begins prior to the presidential election of 2000 and ends on September
11, 2001, and in between these dreadful dates we meet a three ring circus of
conservative caricatures, including a couple of demented evangelicals, one of
whom, a perverted southern preacher, flaunts his freakishly large “holy bone”
that can “engender the lives of angels” and demands that a whimpering woman
take sustenance from his sacred seed.
The episode in question takes place far from Brooklyn in some scarcely
believable North Carolina of Auster’s imagination, a city that has more in
common with the backwoods towns of Deliverance than, say, the grotesque
hamlets depicted by Faulkner, O’Connor, Wolfe, or even the late Larry Brown.
The
scene seems more absurd than horrifying.
In an interview he gave during the composition of The Brooklyn
Follies, Auster claimed that he was writing a comedy, but I’m not so
sure. Part of the reason for Auster’s
failure to get laughs is that we can sense his venom, his unadulterated hatred
for all things red…states and necks included.
He writes, “You can talk to your God and hope he listens to you, but
unless your brain is tuned to the twenty-four-hour Schizophrenia Network, he
isn’t going to talk back.” A reasonable
comment, it seems to me; the problem is that Auster lunges too quickly, too
clumsily for the Republican jugular and winds up falling flat on his face,
injuring only himself in the process.
What’s
called for here is not a caricature of religious conservatives but a close
examination of their lives and beliefs, something more in the spirit of
Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry than James Agee’s The Night of the
Hunter. In his rage, Auster loses
sight of the fact that these seemingly irrational zealots are wily enough to
have co-opted one political party, a party that has, like a virus,
systematically taken over the House, the Senate, the Presidency and, with the
recent confirmation of Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr., the Supreme Court. Even the best political satirist could have
envisioned a more nightmarish scenario (think of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr.
Strangelove with its unforgettable image of Slim Pickins riding a nuclear
warhead like a bull and waving his Stetson above his head).
Auster
takes a quick look around the hinterland and quickly scurries back to his
native Brooklyn where the narrator introduces us to “his people,” an assortment
of gays, lesbians, Jamaican cross-dressers, bi-sexuals, unwed mothers,
duplicitous children, slackers, con artists, jail birds, and philandering
husbands. Auster, who clearly loves the
rich pageantry of his fellow man, doesn’t seem to understand why so many
Americans are reluctant to embrace the ideology of the left and have instead
flocked to the party of the good ol’ boys camouflaged in suits and ties from
Brooks Brothers.
Before
casting stones (to appropriate the rhetoric of the far right) perhaps Auster
and the rest of us lefties should address some of the perceived shortcomings of
our own party. Our philosophy of “We
hate you, too” hasn’t helped us win any popularity contests, and Auster’s The
Brooklyn Follies sounds more or less like a secular sermon preached to the
choir.
Kevin P. Keating teaches English at Baldwin Wallace College in Cleveland, Ohio.
His fiction has been published in the prestigious literary journal Exquisite Corpse (Summer/Fall 2004).
In April 2004, he was awarded 2nd Place in the Lorain County/Ohio Arts Council Contest for Fiction,
which was judged by Nancy Zafris, editor of the Kenyon Review. The story was subsequently published
in Subtle Tea (May 2004).
His work has appeared (or will soon appear) in a number of literary journals, including Inertia (December 2004),
Pierian Springs (Fall 2004), Slow Trains (September 2004), Tryst (September 2004), Cherry Bleeds (September 2004),
Numb Magazine (September 2004), Skyline Magazine (September/October 2004), Tattoo Highway (August 2004), Raging Face
(August 2004), Exquisite Corpse (Summer/Fall 2004), Kant Magazine (July 2004), Wild Child (July 2004), Cerebration
(June 2004), Thunder Sandwich (June 2004), Subtle Tea (May 2004), The Circle (Summer 2003), Eyes (Summer & Fall 2001),
Eschaton’s Terminal Journal (Spring 1999), The Inflated Graveworm (Winter 1997), Whiskey Island (Spring 1997),
and Bohemian Pupil (Fall 1996).
E-mail Kevin P. Keating
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