Man in the Dark - Books (Paul Auster, Hardcover)

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Customer Reviews of Man in the Dark

J. Minogue
UK
29th November 2008

'The weird world rolls on' ------some spoilers------
`I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle though another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness.'

Man in the Dark opens with August Brill, a Pulitzer prize winning critic, lying in the pitch black as he recovers from a car accident in his daughter's house. Grandfather, daughter Miriam and granddaughter Katya share the house since the `the roof fell in on Katya' and she dropped out of film school.

Brill tells himself stories as he lies awake - he wants to divert his mind from his worries; the death of his wife, of his granddaughter's boyfriend Titus, of his daughter's failed marriage. He and his granddaughter Katya have been spending their time watching films together, conscious displacement activity to avoid thinking about their lives.

In the alternate world he conjures up an alter ego - Owen Brick wakes up in a deep hole dressed in uniform. It's a world where the twin towers were never bombed. Instead of a war in Iraq the disputed US election of 2000 has led to a civil war in America. Throughout the night Brill alternates between the worlds until he abandons Brick to his American wilderness `with no chance to say a last word or think a last thought'. Brick then starts to confront the list of subjects he told us he was avoiding; his wife Sonia, the shocking story of Titus' death and his worries about his daughter. Then he and Katya have a long insomniac conversation on the same topics.

For me, the characters became more and more sympathetic as we gradually learn more of their back stories and see their connection to each other. Auster's themes of stories within stories, war and writing knit together well in this short novel.

The book covers just one wakeful night and ends with a plan for going out to breakfast - a hopeful end to a thoughtful book which challenges us to confront our thoughts about our weird world.

Alfred King

28th October 2008

Lazy
Auster never writes badly, but this is a lazy lazy book. The first half is an ambling, pointless collection of stories that go nowhere. It's like he's shoehorned bits of writing in from elsewhere and no editor has said "hang on, what's the point of this?" The conceit of the novel that here is a man creating a dream/story to keep him from thinking of terrible memories runs out of steam very quickly and Auster seems to just end it abruptly when it's clear it's a blind alley. The idea that he somehow creates an alternative reality, a world without the 9/11 attacks is nonsense. Towards the end of the book that are flashes of quite moving and affective prose, but that's not much to say for a very disappointing book.

Archy
ALTRINCHAM, Cheshire United Kingdom
27th September 2008

A collection of anecdotes
Marginally better than his last, but this colection of bits and pieces, and a semi-novel that he appears to have got bored with, just add to the impression that Paul Auster has really lost his way, or can't be bothered any more, which is a real shame.

The set up is interesting. The narrator is a 70 year old who is spinning stories to himself at night because he can't sleep. One of these stories concerns an alternative America where 9/11 never happened and there is a civil war instead. This scenario makes up the novel-within-the-novel, and we're instroduced to its characters, one of whom is given the task of killing the alternative world's creator - the narrator.

This might have been interesting, but it's really a device for Auster to play with SF ideas of alternate universes and histories. Dozens of hack SF writers have done this, and better. It's an irrelevance, there to pad out what is a very very slim story indeed.

Even this story, slim as it is, is padded out with irrelevancies, anecdotes from some of the characters, background data that would be fine if it were his synopsis or notes for a novel, but very annoying that it's sold as the novel itself.

Then we have the conclusion, the interminable dialogue (done in that horribly trendy no-speech-marks style) between the narrator and his grand daughter, all building up to the novel's horrific conclusion. Which demonstrates - what? The irrelevance of fiction itself? That would explain the pointless novel-within-the-novel. Or just that Paul Auster has now resorted to throwing a few ideas together and calling it a novel.

This might sound harsh, but Paul Auster has produced so many fine novels that have engrossed me for days and lingered in my mind long afterwards that it's very disappointing to read the skimpy fare of his last two books. I always buy him in hardback, but this might be the last time.

Sam Sinclair
Glasgow, Scotland
7th September 2008

Auster losing his direction...
The last few offerings from the once brilliant Paul Auster suggest an author who has (hopefully temporarily) lost his way. If we had read Man In The Dark by an unknown, then it would be filed away as mildly interesting but showing some real flashes of brilliance. That the author is Auster can`t fail to disappoint. We realise that Auster has a story to tell here and many important points to be made, but the lasting impression is nothing more than a somewhat shmaltzy sentimental filler. The reminiscing between grandfather and granddaughter that concludes the novel is excrutiatingly out of place in an Auster book and one can only hope that the author re-discovers his former superb standard in the coming years.
Auster knows he`s good....and the book is written in my opinion with the view that his fans will welcome and drool over anything that he cares to submit.
Not this one !

N. Megahey
Belfast, N Ireland
1st September 2008

Short, simple, but profoundly moving
Whether through its shortness of length or through the familiarity with typical Paul Auster subject matter, there seems to be a tendency in other reviews here so far to underestimate the true worth of the author's latest novel. Man in the Dark may indeed appear short and simple on the surface, but the importance of its subject matter and the emotional depth it covers is nonetheless remarkable.

Through August Brill, the man in the dark, Auster tries to make sense of the world through the medium of the writer spinning ideas in his head. Yes, that's nothing new with Auster and there's certainly a sense of post-modern reflection on the nature of writing and the duty of the writer, but as with Brooklyn Follies and his collection of True Tales Of American Life, Auster is interested in ordinary people and the impact of the exceptional or significant moments on their lives.

Those significant events affecting American people today are alluded to in the book's references to Iraq and the Twin Towers. It's not Auster's intention to confront such grand events, however significant they might seem, but to reduce them to the smaller scale in considering how people learn to deal with such experiences. That does not make Man In The Dark a lesser work. Through memories, shared experiences of joy and suffering, through the fictions they create and the movies they watch, his characters struggle to make sense of an absurd world ever more inclined to bring new unspeakable horrors. Auster masterfully brings these all together into a profoundly moving piece that is richer in meaning and worth than its apparent brevity suggests.