[4.5]

Dopo un inizio un po’ lento ed emotivamente “vuoto”, quando i personaggi si sono delineati, il romanzo si è dipanato in una storia piacevolissima, che definirei “agrodolce”, fino all’ultima pagina.
Ho ritrovato, per fortuna, l’Auster di “4321” e non quello di “Trilogia di New York”, stile sopraffino e atmosfere avvolgenti.
L’unico rammarico è che il libro sia risultato troppo breve.

Paul Auster with "the Brooklyn follies" has made me laugh heartedly loudly and to the brink of tears!!!
Even Christa, my wife, has cast bewildering and inquiring looks at me, during my reading time with "the Brooklyn follies" because I spontaneously did break up laughing uncontrollably.
This novel is indeed well and fluidly written and deliciously funny...
The main characters are:
Nathan, a retired life insurance agent, in remission from lung cancer, and whose long marriage turned out into a hell. And whose only daughter becomes estranged from him, so he try to hide in Brooklyn!!
Then his nephew Tom a literary student, breaks his study up, and flee to Brooklyn too, to hide from life in general...
Both looser meet together and Paul Auster in his unique style unfolds a literary firework of funny adventures and life-affirming's colourful turns and ideas that will led us to unexpected and surprising destinations....
It was really a refreshing read, and I recommend "the Brooklyn follies" under the condition not to take it too seriously!!
Goodreads friends, life is short enough, so let us enjoy more, laugh more and not be to obsessed with our circumstances...
As always:
Have fun and be happy!!!
Dean:)

Μια γενναία βουτιά σε μια εποχή που έχει παρέλθει. Η ζωή πριν από τα social media, όταν ακόμη οι άνθρωποι γνώριζαν ανθρώπους στο δρόμο, στο μπαρ, στο εστιατόριο. Όταν ο άνθρωπος έψαχνε να βρει τον δικό του δρόμο στη ζωή μέσα από εκείνους της πραγματικής ζωής…και δη στο Μπρούκλιν της Νέας Υόρκης.
Ένα ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο με άμεσο λόγο, μικρές συγκινήσεις και χαρές, που σε κάνει να νοσταλγείς αλλά και να ελπίζεις μέσα από τις ζωές καθημερινών ανθρώπων που σου μοιάζουν είτε λίγο είτε πολύ.

Υ.Γ. Η γνωστή ιστορία, με τις διάφορες παραλλαγές, του Κάφκα και της κούκλας αναφέρεται για πρώτη φορά σε αυτό το βιβλίο.

Meh. I wanted something light and this fit the bill. I've been informed that this isn't standard Auster, so I'm curious as to his other work. It's pretty insubstantial, but that was the point. All in all, it was a lot of fun. I imagine that this is the kind of book I would read if I flew anywhere. Looking forward to seeing what his 'serious' work is like, but I doubt that the clunky prose is limited to just Follies. Still, a very funny shaggy dog story despite the unnecessary attempt at adding pathos in the last 200 words.

پایانش خوب و متفاوت بود .

The Brooklyn Follies, Paul Auster
The Brooklyn Follies is a 2005 novel by Paul Auster. 60-year-old Nathan Glass returns to Brooklyn after his wife has left him. He is recovering from lung cancer and is looking for "a quiet place to die". In Brooklyn he meets his nephew, Tom, whom he has not seen in several years. Tom has seemingly given up on life and has resigned himself to a string of meaningless jobs as he waits for his life to change. They develop a close friendship, entertaining each other in their misery, as they both try to avoid taking part in life.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: بیست و دوم ماه آگوست سال 2008 میلادی
عنوان: دیوانگی در بروکلین؛ پل آستر؛ مترجم: خجسته کیهان؛ تهران، افق، 1386، در 357 ص؛ شابک: 9789643692957؛ داستانهای نویسندگان امریکایی قرن 21
ناتان پیرمردی شصت ساله که همسرش از ایشان جدا شده، ارتباطی با سایرین و فامیل ندارد، سرطان گرفته و به دنبال مکانی آرام است تا سالهای آخر عمر خود را در آنجا سپری کند. دوستی به او بروکلین را معرفی میکند و ناتان راهی آنجا میشود. ... ا. شربیانی

4.5⭐️

n  

"ينبغي عدم الاستخفاف أبداً بقوة الكتب."

n

رواية أخرى يُبهرني فيها بول أوستر العبقري.

تحكي الرواية عن رجل متقاعد في الستين من عمره، ناثان غلاس، مر بتجربة زواج فاشلة وابنة لا تريد التواصل معه. وحين يتقاعد من عمله في شركة للتأمين، يظن بأن حياته ستنتهي خصوصاً وأنه كان يعاني من سرطان في الرئة. لكن ما يحدث لناثان غلاس أبعد ما يكون عن –الجلوس انتظاراً للموت-، فيقرر أن يكتب كتاباً عن الحماقات البشرية، ويمر بالكثير من الأحداث التي تغيّر مسير حياته وتضعه في مواقف عجيبة، ويتعرّف على أشخاص مثيرين للاهتمام، أشخاص من عائلته وآخرين غرباء تجمعهم به دروب الحياة.

بول أوستر عبقري في السرد، فهو يجعلنا نندمج بأحداث الرواية من أول سطر فيها وحتى النهاية، نعيش مع شخصياته ونتفاعل معهم. وفي روايته هذه يصوّر لنا الحياة الأمريكية في مدينة نيويورك وتحديداً في بروكلين، وأوضاع الناس والمجتمع والأحوال السياسية للبلاد، وتنتهي القصة بحادثة انفجار برج التجارة العالمية عام 2001.

رواية رائعة تستحق القراءة بكل تأكيد.

...

Ecco uno di quei libri che all'inizio sembrano senza pretese e poi man mano che si procede nella lettura appaiono episodi, espedienti narrativi, scorci veramente interessanti. Il protagonista parlando di altri parla di sé, di quel libro che vorrebbe scrivere e che noi stiamo leggendo. Chissà, ognuno di noi ha le sue follie, una vicina che ci sembra la madre migliore, un alberghetto in fondo al cuore in cui vorremmo andare, una bambina da salvare. La felicità di essere vivi, di lasciare una traccia in chi ami. Più ci penso e più mi piace.

A Story Of American Urban Life

In an important scene in Paul Auster's novel, "The Brooklyn Follies", Tom Wood, a major character in the book and a student of literature, tells the story of Franz Kafka and a doll. During the last year of Kafka's life, he met a young girl in a park lamenting the loss of her doll. Kafka began writing letters to the girl, telling stories of the doll's life, leading to the doll's marriage. After three weeks of Kafka's stories, the girl no longer missed the doll. And Tom continues, "Kafka has given her something else instead, and by the time those three weeks are up, the letters have cured her of her unhappiness. She has the story, and when a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists."

Auster's novel describes how people can both come to terms with their own stories and live in reality as well. The book is set in Brooklyn in the year before September 11, 2001. The narrator of the story is Nathan Glass, a secular Jew 59 years old who has recently retired from his career of selling life insurance. Nathan's marriage of 33 years has just ended in divorce, and, Nathan hopes, his lung cancer is in remission. He moves to Brooklyn, where he lived for the first three years of his life, ostensibly to bring "a silent end to my sad and ridiculous life."

Nathan's 29 year-year old daughter,a PhD in biochemistry. from whom he has been estranged, advises him to develop some interests and to get a new life. Father and daughter quarrel and Nathan appears left to his own devices. But gradually he turns his life around. He conceives the project of writing a book "The Book of Human Folly" giving Nathan's own experiences with this universal subject. He has a reunion with his long-lost nephew Tom, mentioned above, who has given up on his PhD dissertation on Melville's long poem, "Clarel" and is driving a taxi in the city. He meets people in his Brooklyn neighborhood, including a young married waitress with whom he becomes infatuated and Harry Brightwood, with a checkered past and the owner of a used and rare book store. He somehow becomes the guardian of his nine-year old niece when she arrives at Tom's doorstep on morning. And ultimately Nathan enjoys a romantic and sexual relationship with a widow of about his own age, Joyce, of Italian and Catholic background, who is the mother of a beautiful women with whom Tom had become infatuated.

The book tells of how both Nathan and Tom work their way towards a better life and towards a type of secular redemption. The book reads with an easy and graceful flow and all the characters, both major and minor, are masterfully delineated. Nathan and Tom spend time discussing life and literature, including the discussion of Kafka, above, but focusing more on early American writers such as Poe, Thoreau, and Melville. While these discussions flow seamlessly into the story, the novel is much more concerned with the heart than with the mind. In the best scene in the novel, Tom, seemingly broken and romantically alone, receives an unforgettable evening visit while in Vermont from a woman named Honey Chowder. Honey leaves her job as a schoolteacher and comes to New York City in what results in a successful pursuit of Tom. In a similar manner, the elderly Nathan is reawakened by his attachment to Joyce and by his efforts at reconciliation with his daughter and by the connections he reestablishes with his family, if not with his ex-wife.

The scenes of Brooklyn, its diversity, streets, and people are vividly, if sentimentally, described. Tom and Nathan learn the lesson of allowing other people to choose and live their own lives while savoring the lives and opportunities that they have for themselves. Nathan changes his project from writing a story of human folly to writing the biographies of the people that he meets every day on the streets of Brooklyn --celebrating the people whose stories ordinarily remain untold. (I was reminded of O Henry.) And Tom has a promising life ahead with the endlessly endearing Honey.

The novel is easy to read with a good deal of heart and some wisdom. It shouldn't be over-intellectualized. But I was reminded of a recent difficult study by the philosopher Charles Taylor called "The Secular Age." Taylor describes, very simply, how some people look for the purpose of life in transcendence while others see the good life as involving exclusively the physical world in which we find ourselves. This novel takes place in this latter, secular plane, as both Nathan and Tom, work towards their own form of life and redemption by changing their attitude towards everydayness and towards their own opportunities rather than by seeking a refuge in or a return to a religious belief. The secular vision of the good life, I think, is a quiet underpinning for Auster's fine novel.

Robin Friedman

An old dude gives a nine year old girl her bath. A niece tells her uncle about her own personal experiences with... oral sex.

... Yuck!

That there is an urge to be risque makes the conservative, too-quick-to-be-astonished writer a humongous dud in this instance.

Only when tackling meta terrains is this esteemed writer of ANY practical use.