The perfect mindfuck

Fanshawe es un tipo excepcional, un genio pero raro. Escribe unas obras extraordinarias y desaparece dejando a su mujer y su bebé. Le encarga a su mujer que busque a su mejor amigo (un editor) y que le muestre los manuscritos. Su amigo publica los libros, son bien acogidos por la crítica, se enamora de la mujer de Fanshawe y se muda a vivir con ella. Pero quién es Fanshawe? la novela se vuelve un policial cuando el amigo intenta desenredar la vida de éste, cuándo empieza a buscarlo: es un típico caso de identidad, locura, extravagancia, introspección. Fanshawe parece siempre estar allí.

Con La habitación cerrada (1987) Paul Auster cierra su famosa trilogía de Nueva York. De los tres libros, éste es quizá el más importante, puesto que enlaza de alguna manera las tres historias previas y haciendo referencias ante todo al protagonista de Ciudad de cristal. Impresiona cómo este proyecto consolida una manera particular de narrar el género negro, al cual dota de muchas referencias intertextuales. Auster parece contarnos cómo las vidas simples pueden ser impactadas por la aparición de algo extraordinario, aunque también común. En este caso, un crítico joven, frustrado en sus aspiraciones literarias, recibe el llamado de la esposa de un amigo de la infancia, de nombre Fanshawe, a quien no ha visto en años. La mujer le confiesa que Fanshawe ha desaparecido y que sólo dejó atrás una tarea para su amigo: leer su obra póstuma. El crítico se entrega a dicha tarea y descubre a un autor original que, con el progreso de la historia, impacta en la literatura estadounidense, convirtiéndose además en un imán para teorías alocadas y en cultos hacia ese misterioso hombre que, algunos afirma, podría tratarse de un invento de ese mismo crítico. Para disipar esas dudas, nuestro narrador escribe este libro, donde intenta biografiar al otro. Creo que ese tropo, muy influido por Borges, se aborda de manera muy original: "Toda vida es inexplicable, me repetía. Por muchos hechos que se cuenten, por muchos datos que se muestren, lo esencial se resiste a ser contado". Como el DR. Frankenstein en su persecusión del monstruo que ha creado, el narrador de esta historia se obsesiona con la figura de Fanshawe y emprende una búsqueda en distintos países, afianzado en varios papeles y pistas que se encuentran en sus libros. Dicha búsqueda dura años. Por supuesto, detrás de esta trama observamos también una historia amorosa de gran peculiaridad, puesto que el narrador se apodera, de alguna forma, de la vida, del pasado y de la familia de Fanshawe.

Un gran cierre para una de las mejores obras de la literatura contemporánea. En paz descanse Paul Auster. Gracias por la felicidad.

Del uno al diez: N u e v e.

Üçlemenin son kitabı, sürükleyici ve sonunu merak ettiren akıcılıkta. Diğer iki kitabın bir nevi açıklanmasını barındırıyor. Kurgusu güçlü, üç kitabı yakın zamanda okumak hikaye bütünlüğü için daha sağlıklı olur diye düşünüyorum

Like the rest of the trilogy, a little too cute - those looking for deep connections are, I think, mistaken. But Auster threads together pieces of Melville and Poe in his final detective tale - the most elaborate of the three - with a fatalistic mood and a building sense of drama. Like the biblical Jonah, the narrator attempts to run away from Fanshawe, his competitor, his wife's absent husband, his alter ego. Is Fanshawe actually within him? No answers are proffered. This is enjoyable, but as high concept lit, it doesn't quite sit together. Auster's aesthetic and tone are borrowed, but his final product is quite satisfying. Maybe that makes him literary fiction's answer to Andy Warhol?

It ties together everything enumerated upon in City of Glass and Ghosts very nicely, this is really the piece which gives the New York trilogy what overall coherence it has. While the story in locked room lacks the palpable sense of menace in the first two parts, it has the most developed characterization and the sharpest dialogue of the three. I also really enjoyed the way Auster weaves these little details of the past two stories into this final one. Despite its short length, it manages to be a very poignant rumination on the perils of obsessing over the works and lives of others, especially if those others are writers.

The final book in My journey of reading "The New York Trilogy", was harder to read and to love than the other two, but by the end of it, I realised that the whole trilogy would have remained meaningless if I hadn't read this last one. With the signature postmodern style of Paul Auster, it is mainly a story of self-discovery and identity-realisation again, which in the common absurd way Auster narrates his stories, takes the reader into a journey in which the main character seeks the meaning of his own life, through seeking an old friend who is missing.

The third volume in Auster's New York Trilogy, like the two that preceded it, explores the same thematic ground--self and other, authorship and audience, truth and fiction--with the same fusion of pot-boiler crime novel and philosophical essay.

The plot in this one involves a prodigiously talented writer and his boyhood friend, a critic. The writer disappears and a narrative tango ensues--not just involving characters and plot points within THE LOCKED ROOM, but with reference and motifs from the previous volumes. Towards the end of the book, the narrator references those books by name and his intentions writing them: (p. 149) "These three stories are finally the same story, but each one represents a different stage in my awareness of what it is about… the story is not in the words; it's in the struggle."

Rather that create a grand concluding statement, then, THE LOCKED room twists, like the spiral of a conch shell, towards what Calvino calls "the ocean of the unsayable." One highlight along the way is Chapter 5, in which Auster--still a younger novelist (he was 39; the Trilogy was his first major fictional work)--writes passionately about making up stories vs. telling true ones. He tells several "strange but true" tales, such as the one in which Russian writer Bakhtin, in hiding during WWII, used his manuscript to roll tobacco, rather than go without smoking. One cannot help imagine a grad-student version of Auster discovering and collecting these stories until he might use them in a novel one day.

In some later books Auster's apparent enthusiasm would wane, and his storytelling become repetitive. Here, however, despite the existential angst of some of his characters, the struggles to discover an authentic voice, to tell and end a story, are a pleasurable pain and an ultimately life-affirming invitation.

*

WHY I READ THIS BOOK: Through a series of chance happenings, I was moved to re-read the series of books. See the review for CITY OF GLASS for details.

Οι οστερικοι ηρωες, εξοριστοι μεσα στο ιδιο τους το σωμα, με τις υπαρξιακες τους ανησυχιες να κρυβονται πισω απο τις λεξεις κ τη δεξιοτεχνικη γραφη του Οστερ. Μια διαδρομη στα δαιδαλωδη μονοπατια του ανθρωπινου υποσυνειδητου. Αν θελεις να καταδυθεις.

Primer libro suyo que leo y me ha encantado

My least favourite of the three. Too slow for me. It could have been so much better but fell flat.

2.5