A city of dreamers

Paul Auster's typically fluent novel of New York and its quirky inhabitants, The Brooklyn Follies, has a powerful sting in the tail, says Toby Lichtig



The Brooklyn Follies
by Paul Auster

'I am not normally prone to bouts of self-pity', comments Nathan Glass, the narrator of Paul Auster's latest novel, The Brooklyn Follies. We have little reason to believe him. This is the same Nathan Glass who, at the novel's start, declares his desire to seek 'a silent end to my sad and ridiculous life'; the same Nathan Glass who is writing a book dedicated to his life's collection of 'verbal flubs, physical mishaps, failed ideas, social gaffes'.

Fifty-nine, retired and divorced, Nathan lacks self-belief. He also, it seems, lacks self-awareness, a trait not uncommon to Auster's existential heroes. Familiar, too, is the questionable narrator, and the metafictional play (the book Nathan is writing is partly, but not wholly, the book that we are reading).

Auster's postmodern metaphysics are built around a host of such recurrent themes (see also the power of coincidence and its relationship with meaning; the slipperiness of identity and character; lost children and searching parents) and reading him can sometimes seem like moving through a checklist. In this sense, The Brooklyn Follies ticks all of the boxes, and as predictable as it is in terms of trope and foible, so, too, is it recognisable for the excellence of its writing.

Auster's prose is sharp, simple, compelling. His characters and vignettes are well constructed and often entertaining. We warm immediately to Nathan. He is curmudgeonly, urbane and funny, but also insecure, generous and wide-eyed. He has moved from the suburbs to Brooklyn and claims he doesn't wish to last the year, but the charms of the metropolis soon re-energise him. Nathan chose Brooklyn for the anonymity. He grows to love its vitality and endless possibilities for chance connections. He hadn't really wanted to die; he had just been bored.

Witnessing this transformation is affecting. So, too, is Nathan's self-mocking infatuation with an attractive waitress; and his (accidental) reacquaintance with a nephew who becomes his closest friend. Tom, we are told, 'is the long-suffering hero of these Brooklyn Follies', (though we don't take this authorial direction at face value). Clever but disillusioned, he has dropped out of university to drive taxis and work in a bookshop. He and Nathan share long conversations about the nature of things, their enthusiasm imbued with desperation. 'You love life, Tom,' Nathan tells him, 'but you don't believe in it. And neither do I.'

Action begets belief. Tom's nine-year-old niece turns up, refusing to reveal the whereabouts of her mother, Aurora (Tom's sister); Tom and Nathan take her on a car trip and fatefully escape a crash; the bookshop owner dies, leaving it to Tom; Nathan rescues Aurora from a lunatic husband; Nathan, Tom and Aurora get girlfriends.

This synopsis is cursory: plenty more goes on, and again one gets the impression of a checklist. Transvestism? Tick. Extortion? Yup. References to the 2000 US election to bind the sense of alienation and lack of agency to the wider sociopolitical spectrum of contemporary America? Gotcha. Because Auster is such a gifted writer, The Brooklyn Follies is always a pleasure to read, but it does carry a sense of literary coasting. It is strong on setpieces and conversational digressions.

But as the story gathers pace, the thread between these fragments starts to fray. Auster's fiction has occasionally been criticised for its implausibility and the same complaint can be levelled against The Brooklyn Follies. His preoccupation with chance means that the reader must practise a lot of belief-suspension as the characters start to pinball from one odd encounter to the next.

More problematic are aspects of his message. There is nothing wrong with being anxious about humankind's ignorance and impotence, but Auster can be too eager to shoehorn in reminders about the randomness of fate and the effects this has on character.

'All men contain several men inside them and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are,' Nathan reminds us towards the end, in case we missed the point. But he remains preoccupied with pinning down these selves. The book ends with him in high spirits, contemplating a new business writing biographies of the recently deceased for their families.

As fate would have it, his good mood is not set to last. It is the morning of 11 September 2001 and two planes are flying towards the World Trade Centre.