Review – Man in the Dark by Paul Auster
Man in the Dark tells the story of August Brill, a 72 year old retired book critic, recovering from a car accident in his daughter’s house. Brill’s leg was shattered in the accident, his wife has recently died after a long battle with cancer, his daughter is recently divorced and his granddaughter has recently lost her fiancé in horrific circumstances. He cannot sleep at night, and in order to stop him thinking of all the recent personal tragedies, he tells himself stories.
One story is about an alternative view of America today. Owen Brick wakes up in a dark hole and finds himself in uniform. America is at war with itself and Brick is now a soldier. He gradually discovers that following the flawed 2000 election result, sixteen states have seceded from the Union, tens of thousands have died, there was no Twin Towers event and no war in Iraq.
Brick is told that the reason he has been transported to the parallel America is to assassinate the author of the war; a miserable 72 year old man in a wheelchair who is thinking it up – August Brill. It’s an interesting device that makes the listener think about fiction and authorship. “There are many worlds, and they all run parallel to one another, worlds and anti-worlds, worlds and shadow-worlds, and each world is dreamed or imagined or written by someone in another world. Each world is the creation of a mind.”
Finally his granddaughter comes into his room before dawn and Brill recounts the family history. This is a moving section of the book, as Brill and his granddaughter confront the past. It is a story about how families deal with life’s sorrows and the ugliness sometimes present in the world.
Auster reads the tale without much differentiation between the characters, but his deep & clear enunciation is rhythmic and soothing. It is always interesting to hear an author read his own work as emphasis and pauses are of course as the author intended.
