Oracle Night
Paul Auster Faber & Faber, 244pp, £15.99
ISBN 0571216986
Many novelists become so grand that no editor will dare alter a word they write. They can publish almost anything, and it will be taken seriously. This can be the only explanation for the publication of Paul Auster's baffling new novel. It's a jeu d'esprit without much esprit: a kind of commonplace book of miscellaneous ideas, which the author with considerable effrontery and technical skill has reheated as a fable about writing and its supernatural power to disclose uncanny insights and premonitions.
The narrator is Sidney Orr, a young Brooklyn novelist who is professionally stalled and recovering from a debilitating illness, the nature of which, exasperatingly, is never explained. Chancing upon a stationery store called the Paper Palace, Orr becomes entranced by an elegant Portuguese notebook. The sheer pleasure of handling and writing in this handsome object cures his block and Orr is soon pouring out a novel which appears to have disquieting parallels with his own life.
There are still more curious correspondences. His great friend and men- tor, the world-renowned novelist John Trause, owns a similar notebook (having lived in Portugal). And when Orr's wife, Grace, pops into his study to see how his writing is going he appears to have vanished into thin air - only to reappear once his stint is over, and he is back from the parallel universe of creativity.
Curiouser and curiouser! At first what the book resembles, apart from earlier books by Auster, is a playful Woody Allen short story, or one of the comic screenplays by Charlie Kaufman: Being John Malkovich or Adaptation. There's plenty to keep the reader interested. Orr's novel, entitled "Oracle Night", is itself a novel-within-a-novel, and has a gripping cliffhanger when its hero abandons his old Manhattan life, scoots off to Kansas City and finds himself imprisoned in an underground bunker. I was eager to see how that would turn out. But Orr and Auster abandon him - and us - heading instead into lots of other anecdotes and blind alleys. Orr sketches out a film treatment for a version of Wells's The Time Machine. He has an encounter in a sex club, to which he is introduced by the proprietor of the Paper Palace. Plenty of intriguing episodes and ideas are set out, and for a while the reader can enjoy the half-baked mystery of each, and even tolerate Auster's tiresome affectation of long and supercilious footnotes.
But where, oh where, is it all leading? Panic creeps in as the end approaches, extinguishing all hopes of a tying-up of loose ends. Then Auster delivers a spurious shock of violence, a laboriously explained twist, and in retrospect we can see, just about, how all these bits and pieces come together as premonitory phenomena - all except the disappearing-at-the-desk-while-writing thing.
Does the novel have anything substantial to say about literary creativity, and the influence of the writer's experiences and reading on his work? Not really. These ideas are presented too casually, with the uncomfortable sense that Auster considers riffs and doodlings interesting because they come from his pen. And what is still less forgivable is that Auster clumsily throws in a description of Belsen and a self-congratulatory photo-reproduction of part of the 1938 Warsaw telephone directory: a "book of the dead".
Auster's reputation is now so stately, and weighty, that Oracle Night won't make any difference. But this trite and self-regarding book is best forgotten.
Peter Bradshaw's most recent novel is Dr Sweet and his Daughter (Picador)
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
