الأشباح – بول أوستر

هي ثاني الروايات في ثلاثية نيويورك وقد صدرت لأول مرة عام 1986 وهي كما هي الرواية الأولى لا تخرج عن إطار الرواية البوليسية.. إلا أنها مختلفة بحيث أنها من ذلك النوع الذي أظن بأنه لو قدر لفرانز كافكا أن يكتب الروايات البوليسية لكانت هذه التي بين أيدينا أحد انتاجاته.

إنها تتحدث عن المهمة التي أوكلها وايت لبلو وتتلخص ببساطة بأن يراقب بلاك ويرسل لوايت تقريراً عن ذلك. تبدو مهمة بسيطة للغاية.. إلا أنه لا يبدو أنه ثمة أي غاية ذات معنى ما واضح لبلو من هذه المهمة.. وكما حدث مع بطل الرواية الأولى أصبح بلو مهووساً بهذه المهمة التي استغرقت منه سنوات طويلة.. وخسر مدام بلو المستقبلية في خضم انشغاله التام بها.

لقد تم توظيف المكان جيداً، حيث أنه في زاوية ما في نيويورك حيث اعتاد بعض كتابها في الانعزال وكتابة القصص.. تماماً كما يبدو لبلو بأن بلاك يفعل. ثم تأتي تلك المحادثة بين بلو وبلاك لتوضح لنا كيف أن الكتابة فعل انعزالي.. وأنه ما من حياة خاصة للكتاب. إنهم أشباح لها هدف واحد؛ أن تكتب وليس من هدف آخر أو معنى من وجودها.

لن أتحدث أكثر عن أحداث الرواية كي لا أفسدها.. فهي فقيرة الأحداث وتعتمد بشكل رئيسي على الحديث الذاتي للبطل بلو.

هل أحببتها ؟ حسناً، إنها رواية خفيفة، لربما كنتُ لأعجب بها إن قرأتها في زمن سابق.

Ο Γουάιτ προσλαμβάνει τον Μπλου για να παρακολουθήσει τον Μπλακ. Ο Μπλακ είναι μαθητής του Μπράουν και έμπειρος ντετέκτιβ, όμως θα εμπλακεί σε μια ιστορία στην οποία θα αρχίσει σιγά σιγά να διαπιστώνει πως από κυνηγός μετατρέπεται σε θύμα μέσα σε μια πολύ περίεργη ιστορία...
Σε γενικές γραμμές αυτή είναι η ιστορία αυτού του διηγήματος στο οποίο ο Όστερ μας δίνει όλα τα στοιχεία για να λύσουμε έναν περίεργο αλλά γοητευτικό γρίφο. Όσο η υπόθεση εκτυλίσσεται τόσο ο αναγνώστης ταυτίζεται με τον Μπλου αλλά και αγωνιά για την λύση του μυστηρίου αλλά και την κατάληξη της ιστορία.
Απλή γραφή, έξυπνα στημένη υπόθεση και νουάρ ατμόσφαιρα. Χρειάζεται κάτι άλλο ένα βιβλίο για να τραβήξει την προσοχή μας;
4/5

Vet mindre om denna bok efter jag läste den än innan.

Auster is not an easy read, but he himself admits this comparing himself to Thoreau and Walden, he intimates that you have to read him slowly to get all of the nuances.

The story itself appears simple (and mimics some of 'City of Glass'), White hires Blue to watch Black and report each week what Black has done. (White has rented two apartments that front on each other from across a steet..Orange Steet.) What Blue and Black don't know is that they have been hired to watch each other.  Blue spends almost a year watching Black do nothing more than write a novel.  My guess is that Black is writing the novel to keep himself busy, in the same way that Blue makes up stories in his head but never puts them to pen.  In the end, Blue steals Blacks manuscript (after beating him up), reads it and leaves his apartment.

If the colors (say of light) are metaphors (duh!), white is the absense of substance, Black is the total of all colors of light and Blue is the shadow of Black.  Since Blue and Black are the complement to each other, one is the stronger and the other is the follower.  In the end the follower terminates the leader and leaves unfulfilled.

There are three strong hint as to what Auster is trying to get at in this story (IMHO).  First is that like Walden by Thoreau there is a lot more there than meets the eyes you just have to look for it.  Second is the story by Hawthorne of the man who spends years away from his family but is watching them from afar but late is welcomed back.  Third, the movie 'Out of the Past' with Robert Mitchum which is about a private detective.  If you take some time to look at all three, this book with be much easier to understand.

Contemplation is everything and nothing says the sparrow to the crow.

Paul Auster's `Ghosts' (1983) reads like the square root of a hard-boiled detective noir novel, an off-the-wall, bizarre mystery where there is no crime and the whodunit is replaced by a meditation on the nature of identity. Here are the opening few line: "First of all there is Blue. Later there is White, and then there is Black, and before the beginning there is Brown. Brown broke him in, Brown taught him the ropes, and when Brown grew old, Blue took over." Blue is a detective and it is Blue we follow on every page of this sparse (less than 100 pages) novel set in 1947 New York City. Actually, this is the 2nd of the author's `The New York Trilogy', bookended by `City of Glass' and `The Locked Room'.

To gain an initial feel for the novel, please go to Youtube and watch a snippet of one of those 1940s black-and-white noir films, like The Naked City. You will see lots of hard-talking tough guys in gray suits and gray hats running around city streets socking one another in the jaw and plugging one another with bullets -- plenty of action to be sure. And that's exactly the point - a world chock-full of police, detectives, crooks and dames is a world of action.

But what happens when one of those 1940s detectives is put on a case where all action is stripped away, when the only thing the detective has to do is look out his apartment window and keep an eye on a man across the street in another apartment sitting at his desk reading or writing? This is exactly what happens in 'Ghosts'. So, rather than providing a more detailed synopsis of the story (actually, there is some action and interaction), I will cite several of Blue's musing along with my brief comments on Blue's relationship to literary and artistic creation:

"Until now, Blue has not had much chance for sitting still, and this new idleness has left him at something of a loss. For the first time in his life, he finds that he has been thrown back on himself, with nothing to grab hold of, nothing to distinguish one moment from the next. He has never given much through to the world inside him, and through he always knew it was there, it has remained an unknown quantity, unexplored and therefore dark, even to himself." ---------- So, for the first time in his life, Blue is given a taste of silence and solitude, the prime experience of someone who is a writer.

"More than just helping to pass the time, he discovers that making up stories can be a pleasure in itself." ---------- Removed from the world of action and building on his experience of silence and solitude, Blue is also given a hint of what it might mean to be a fiction writer, one who sits in isolation, exploring the inner world of imagination in order to create stories. And, on the topic of stories, the unnamed narrator conveys how Blue reflects on many stories, including the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, stories from the lives of Walk Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, and several stories Blue reads in his all-time favorite magazine: 'True Detective'. Auster's short novel is teaming with stories.

"For the first time in his experience of writing reports, he discovers that words do not necessarily work, that it is possible for them to obscure the things they are trying to say." ---------- Blue discerns it is possible that words cannot adequately articulate the depth and full range of human experience. And what is true of a detective's report is truer for works of great literature: there is a rich, vital, vibrant world of felling and imagination beyond the confines of words and language.

"Finally mustering the courage to act, Blue reaches into his bag of disguises and casts about for a new identity. After dismissing several possibilities, he settles on an old man who used to beg on the corner of his neighborhood when he was a bog - a local character by the name of Jimmy Rose - and decks himself out in the garb of tramphood . . ." ---------- During the course of the novel, Blue take on a number of different identities and with each new persona he experiences life with a kind of immediacy and intensity. Spending a measure of his creative life as a screenwriter and director, Paul Auster undoubtedly had many encounters with actors thriving on their roles, energized and invigorated as they performed for the camera. I suspect Auster enjoyed placing his detective main character in the role of actor at various points.

'Ghosts' can be read as a prompt to question how identity is molded by literature and the arts. How dependent are we on stories for an understanding of who we are? In what ways do the arts influence and expand our sense of self? Do we escape purposelessness and boredom by participating in the imaginative worlds of art and literature?

Just finished "City of Glass" and then found the New York Trilogy on a bookshelf at home and finished this 70 page story in one day.

My interpretation of the plot is that a "twisted" writer (White) hides his identity and hires a young private eye (Blue) to sit in an apartment across the street from his own apartment.  Blue is duped into thinking he is tailing someone named Black and obligingly sends off weekly reports to White on Black's activities.  It takes Blue and the reader a long time to figure out what is really going on.  Like Auster's previous novel, the detective becomes obsessive, then introspective, and finally deranged as the story goes on.  The main characters could be considered insane by the time we reach the rather abrupt ending.  Ugh!

I kept wanting to tap Blue on the shoulder through the first half of this story and tell him his work compulsion was going to get him in big trouble.  Then I realized as time dragged on unbelieveably in the story that Auster was determined to lead his characters towards their absurd and insane climatic behavior.

So go ahead and read these two stories if you are curious about how it feels to slip into derangement.

good

Shorter and less bleak than City of Glass. It visits the same themes of mirrored identities and breakdowns in communication, the perils of trying to work your way into other people's lives. Yet this was less draining than Part 1, perhaps because the characters are a bit more distant, more abstract. At times it can even be a bit humorous. I'm very curious to see what it all leads up to in The Locked Room.