Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Behold the Kind-of Hero, in a Sort-of Civil War

By Richard Eder writing in the New York Times, August 25, 2008

Civil war rages between America’s 16 seceding blue states — incensed by the rule of George W. Bush — and the red-state-backed federal government. Twelve million have been killed so far. Brick, a children’s magician from New York City, is conscripted by the blue leadership to put an end to the war by assassinating the man who invented it and keeps it going.

MAN IN THE DARK
By Paul Auster
Henry Holt & Company. US$23

That man is not President Bush. He is a 72-year-old book critic named August Brill who, afflicted by all manner of troubles, spends an insomniac night making up stories. The main story, which takes up the first half of “Man in the Dark,” invents both the war and the travails of Brick as he tries alternately to carry out his kill-Brill mission and desperately to evade it.

And so, the latest product of Paul Auster’s more than 20-year career as the most meta of American metafictional writers. It is a career that has won him considerable esteem in European literary circles, where the project holds pride of place over the product; and more restricted esteem here, where it is the other way around.
Link here to read Eder's full review.

Bookman Beattie is a great fan of Paul Auster and can't wait to read this latest work.

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