The Book Tower

You might think that wanting to read Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark because it was such a short novel is an odd reason for choosing a book. Perhaps you are right, but after listening to the author being interviewed I was intrigued to find out how he managed to pack to many interesting ideas into something so brief.

You might also describe the night hours that one spends sleeping as also brief; not so if you are an insomniac like August Brill. Recovering from a car accident (and, indirectly, recovering from the brutal murder of his grand-daughter’s boyfriend), Brill lies awake at night, inventing stories to while away the hours and prevent himself from addressing stark reality. Auster’s premise is an alternative America, a country where there was no 9/11, subsequently no war in Iraq – Brill sketches out in his waking dream a second US civil war. He invents his own hero, a man called Brick, who wakes up in this weird alternative world. The premise works wonderfully. As a fantasy in the mind of a sleepless narrator it is perfectly justifiable and believable. Eyes wide open, I found myself caught up in Brick’s plight.

Auster switches between the imagined narrative and Brill’s more sober existence. We slowly learn about his life and his relationship with his bereaved grand-child. The two spend hours watching classic films, and there’s an interesting meditation on the relationship between novels and the cinema, and some excellent criticism of European films. But just as things begin to fit into a comfortable rhythm Auster does something unexpected – he kills off his invented hero. Goodbye Brick. It’s so shocking, possibly as shocking – to compare an artist from the world of cinema – as Hitchcock killed off Janet Leigh halfway into Psycho. This turns Man in the Dark from a quirky novel that flirts with science fiction into something more thought provoking.

Despite Auster’s bold move I did feel let down. Secretly, I want neat and resolved endings. At least a conclusion of the absurd premise I’ve been given. Brick, in the alternative US, is ordered to kill Brill in the real universe. A sort of “kill the author, save the world”. But Auster isn’t interested in neat endings, and wants us to be reminded of the sometimes horrible world we’re stuck with, with means him delivering a final, and disturbing, incident from the Iraq war. This is a novel I will have to read again. While Auster is keen to offer an alternative world he’s sketchy about how we got there. He’s also unclear that if you remove horrors from recent history the outcome isn’t necessarily preferable. It’s a book of paradoxes. And it will probably keep you awake.