Paul Auster is My Homeboy

I love Paul Auster. I do. At least I loved the New York Trilogy because it blew my mind.

I came home from volunteering at the library tonight (which is also blowing my mind with awesomeness) with a stack of books including Paul Auster's latest novel 'Man in the Dark'. Outside of the 'trilogy', Auster can be a bit...melodramatic? Is that the word? But I always pick up anything I see by him. Anyway, here is a tease from the inside jacket

"I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the Great American Wilderness." (Oh my, how thouroughly existential)

So begins Paul Auster's brilliant, devastating novel about the many realities we inhabit as wars flame all around us. (I love devastating, go on...)

blah, blah blah, an old man and what I'm sure are crucial plot points

...Passionate shocking, Man in the Dark, is a novel of our moment, a book that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence. (well, I'm sold)

Seriously, that's how it happened as I was restocking the new book display tonight. It's kind of why I'm a freak, I guess, and neither my husband or my Mom can understand why I like some of the books I like.

And I'll be honest, I'll probably get to page 40 while Max finishes up his radio shift here at the radio station, and then become enamored with another 'devastating' book. Oh, I finish books, but not even a third of all of the ones I bring home from the library. I think I like mostly the idea of books, or rather the ideas in the books. I like to take them home and own the ideas for a while, think about the implications and scope of what I'm sure lies between the two covers...while not always actually reading them.

I am appreciating the luxuriant reading of a book more and more, but I'm still an ideas girl. If it sounds conflicting and thought provoking and 'devastating' - 'forcing me to confront' the complexities of the world I live in and celebrating the beauty and joy that is also there - hand it over.

I have found, however, that sometimes big ideas fall a bit short of their potential. I am currently reading "The Archivist: A Novel" which is about a librarian who watches over a sealed collection of letters that T.S. Eliot wrote to a woman named Emily. Eliot donated the letters with the instruction that they not be opened until the year 2012. A widower of 15 or so years, our protagonist is intrigued when a young, passionate graduate student tries to gain access to both the letters and his closely gaurded personal life. There is all this jazz about identity and privacy and relationships, and a pretty interesting look into the complex histories of both his wife and new interest's Jewishness. Take a librarian (awesome), some sweet special collection materials, lots of T.S. Eliot references, issues of loss and trust mixed in with a tortured self- perception rooted in The Hollocaust and the Jewish Identity and you've got a great read, right?
Great until about page 135. I haven't given up, but I'm just not entirely committed to the deceased wife's 50 or so page journal rants she wrote from an institution before she committed suicide. I"ll report back.

Did I just ramble into a corner?