"Mai sottovalutare il potere dei libri"


Libro dritto, con tantissima storia, senza grosse trovate stilistiche, senza salti nel tempo o tra piani narrativi. Il viaggio non è male, panoramico per due terzi e poi via con l'accelerata finale. Peccato per i tanti passaggi a vuoto, i vorrei ma non posso, che da Auster fanno strano visto che lui può benissimo. Manca perfino il suo classico ora so che ho capito tutto e invece Zec non avevo capito niente.

È il suo quinto libro che leggo, è il più semplice e anche se il risultato finale è buono, io dico troppo scorrevole, troppo facile.

È come quando fai serata in disco perché compie gli anni Coso e pensi sarà una super serata invece alla fine ti diverti sì, ma neanche troppo, e ti ricordi che le disco non ti piacciono neanche e poi -arrivano le ultime 40 pagine- le casse pompano di più, le luci abbaglianto, strobo, gambe molli, fuoco e fiamme, Coso ti guarda ghignando e ti abbraccia, mi sa che ti aveva messo qualcosa nel cocktail -centoventi pagine fa- lo guardi bene e Coso è Paul Auster, Zec non avevi capito niente, ora sì che si viaggia, l'ultima ora è sempre la migliore, hai caldo alla testa, la vista annebbiata, luci e sudore, fuochi d'artificio finali, la disco chiude, volti la pagina, fuori c'è il sole, merda, proprio ora che sei preso benissimo, chi cazzo ha voglia di tornare a casa?

بول أوستر قدر، في الرواية دي، يصنع من مجموعة أحداث خالية من التشويق ولا تمثل أى أهمية في الحياة إلى رواية عظيمة تقرأها من أولها لآخرها باستمتاع شديد.
رجل عجوز بلا إنجازات يكتشف نفسه ويجد لذة الحياة في نهاية العمر ويعيد إحياء شاب ترك فرصة النجاح والأحلام وراءه.

مجله معتبر نیویورکر درباره این رمان نوشت: "دیوانگی در بروکلین" دری است به روی دنیایی بهتر، مکانی که بیش از یک فضای داستانی ارزش دارد، جایی برای رجوع و رسیدن به یک آغاز برای ادامه زندگی. اما جایی برای زندگی کردن در رویاها. استر از دنیایی حرف می‌زند که پیشتر هرگز به این شکل فلسفی پیش روی مخاطبانش تصویر نکرده بود. او با نگاهی پر از امید که در رمانهای پیشینش هرگز این قدر پر رنگ نبود می‌نویسد: "مهم نیست زندگی‌تان تا چه اندازه حقیر و کودکانه است، مهم این است که بدانید هر آنچه برایتان اتفاق م��‌افتد برای دیگری هم رخ می‌دهد."

“Mai sottovalutare il potere dei libri.”

Ecco dispiegarsi in puro stile Auster la storia di Nathan Glass che torna a Brooklyn perché cerca “un posto tranquillo per morire”.
Anche se ora sta bene gli è stato diagnosticato un tumore, e poi ha sulle spalle il peso di un matrimonio fallito, di un lavoro da assicuratore, e un rapporto difficile con la figlia Rachel. Lo conforta una passione ancora ardente per la letteratura e, in genere, per i libri.

A sessant’anni, dunque, Nathan decide di traslocare e, ormai libero da incombenze lavorative, decide di aspettare la fine dei suoi giorni terreni cominciando un’opera narrativa originale che intitola ‘Il libro della follia umana’, entro cui raccogliere episodi strampalati, curiosi o assurdi della sua vita e, al limite, anche delle altre.

Da qui inizia l’avventura tutta newyorkese del nostro narratore e protagonista.

Dall’incontro con il talentuoso ma ormai svaccato nipote Tom all’amore platonico per l’avvenente e spumeggiante cameriera Marina, alla conoscenza della tortuosa e un po’ torbida storia del libraio Harry presso il quale Tom ha trovato un, a suo dire, soddisfacente lavoro. Elementi da cui si inanella la catena di eventi qui narrata, eventi sopra i quali, come sempre in Auster, il caso domina sovrano.

Così comincia la nuova vita di Nathan Glass, intensa e avventurosa anche per chi ne gode la brillante lettura. Seguirla è un puro godimento che non ci abbandonerà mai, fino a lasciarci, già sufficientemente turbati, alle soglie dell’evento più sconvolgente della storia americana contemporanea.

‘La scrittura è una menzogna quasi vera’ dice Paul Auster. E tutto quello che ci racconta riesce a farcelo vivere come esperienza, a farcelo vedere e sentire nei minimi dettagli. Qui è la Park Slope di Brooklyn che diventa una ‘menzogna quasi vera’ e quando ci andiamo fisicamente non sappiamo se è lei che è cambiata per assomigliare a come Paul Auster la descrive o se è lui ad averla descritta così bene. E cosí ci aspettiamo da un momento all’altro di imbatterci in una Nancy Mazzucchelli oppure entriamo in una libreria per sperare di farci fregare dal vecchio, buffo Harry Brightman. E come lui non possiamo che sperare che possa esistere da qualche parte un Hotel Esistenza dove vivere dentro ai nostri sogni.

Is Paul Auster worth your time?

This is my second Auster, the first was “Travels in the Scriptorium”Both works I have “read” as audiobooks while taking interminable journeys around the country. The journeys themselves were less taxing than the books.
The reason I checked both is because of -and I’m not ashamed to admit it- the publicity this guy gets!

“The Brooklyn Follies”, written in the first person narrative form, is about an ex-insurance salesman, Nathan Wood, well into his 60s, who survives cancer and returns back to his native Brooklyn (Auster’s perpetual home). Does this return symbolize or mean anything? No. Do we get to feel Brooklyn? No.
Serendipity brings him in contact with his nephew; a would-have-been brilliant author / critic, had it not been for... Well we don’t really know. Tom Glass, Nathan Wood’s nephew (and yes, Nathan/Auster does mention this brilliant pun), foregoes his writing ambition for the “safe” job of a cab-driver.

Gradually, characters inhabit the story, effacing any potential interest it might spur, besides it being a family-reunion fiction.
It feels tedious, and possibly boring, to give an account of what happens along, but I can safely say that, in comparison with third-degree storytellers, no other writer I know of uses this “magical wand” so frequently, and liberally, to make things happen and work like Auster does: Love develops, people are reunited, oppressed freed, money distributed to those in-need, people cured... So much, that at the end of the story, I am impatiently waiting for: “And they lived happily ever after”

In all fairness, real life is real life; monotonous, uneventful, duplicate acquaintances tending towards normality... and it is about this ever-flow with its stubborn perturbations, here and there, that Auster writes. But he could have done it with style, with some depth, with something original, something different, than the everyday banter we engage in.
Throughout the book, a couple of stories are told about Poe, Melville, and Kafka, though they feel to me as”Did you know?”blurbs.

To the post’s question, my answer is No! This will definitely be my last Auster; there are other contemporary writers out there, some certainly in Brooklyn, who better deserve our time and support.

Wonderfully life-affirming

در جهان نویسندگی هیچ قاعده ای وجود ندارد، اگر زندگی نویسندگان و شاعران را مطالعه کنیم با هرج و مرج مطلق مواجه میشویم با شمار نامحدودی از استثنائات.و افزود به این خاطر که نوشتن نوعی بیماری است، پدیده ای که می‌توان زکام یا تورم روح نامید؛ بنابراین، هر کس می تواند در هر زمانی به آن مبتلا شود.از جوان و پیر گرفته تا قوی و ضعیف، مست و هوشیار و عاقل و دیوانه.


|از متن کتاب|

می‌دونم که قرار بود خوب بشه، متاسفانه ولی از اواسطش دیگه نتونستم بخونم.
شروعش تو همون خط اول خواننده رو شدید جذب می‌کنه ولی متاسفانه نمیتونه دیگه اون مدلی نگهت داره.
شاید اگه تا آخر می‌خوندم می‌ارزید ولی داشت اذیت میکرد.

Has this guy ever written anything bad?
This novel was fanTAStic. It's about an older guy who's dying of cancer and he basically moves back to Brooklyn to die. But then he runs into his nephew and they become great friends and...so many great characters. There's little Lucy and everything she says (when she's speaking) is hilariously weird. There's the B.P.M. who turns into an actual character in the book. There's Harry (gay) who is interesting. The Chowders, Aurora, just lots of neat characters. He even throws in some lesbians at the end.

And oh, this book is FILLED with great sentences. Anyway, the book isn't sad at all. Sad things happen, but they didn't make me cry...and i'm an easy mark for that kind of thing so that's why i say it's not sad.

The ending was kind of abrupt and i thought that maybe the author was in a hurry to end it. But also, i think it works because so much happened in the book that to completely resolve everything normally would have stretched it into a giant tome. And no one likes that kind of thing, Ayn Rand.

There is no such thing as a happy family life… All the characters in the story are, in different ways, victims of an unhappy family life… However, despite all the initial unhappiness, The Brooklyn Follies is a happy book.
The protagonist who is also a narrator of the tale relocates himself in Brooklyn and to occupy his spare time he develops a hobby…

Humble as the project was, I decided to give it a grandiose, somewhat pompous title – in order to delude myself into thinking that I was engaged in important work. I called it The Book of Human Folly, and in it I was planning to set down in the simplest, clearest language possible an account of every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I had committed during my long and checkered career as a man.

Soon, accidentally, he meets his nephew working in the second hand bookshop and gets acquainted with its owner – an idiosyncratic gay crook…

“There’s an imp inside me, and if I don’t let him out to make some mischief now and then, the world just gets too damned dull. I hate feeling grumpy and bored. I’m an enthusiast, and the more dangerous my life becomes, the happier I am. Some people gamble at cards. Other people climb mountains or jump out of airplanes. I like tricking people. I like seeing how much I can get away with. Even as a kid, one of my dreams was to publish an encyclopedia in which all the information was false. Wrong dates for every historical event, wrong locations for every river, biographies of people who never existed.”

When, quite unexpectedly, the narrator’s nine-year-old great-niece appears at his door the events begin to accelerate… Bad luck and mishaps… Infelicity and misfortune…

What a motley bunch of messed-up, floundering souls. What stunning examples of human imperfection. A father whose daughter wants nothing to do with him anymore. A brother who hasn’t seen or heard from his sister in three years. And a little girl who’s run away from home and refuses to speak.

But in the end the proverbial rule ‘all’s well that ends well’ triumphs, in a way.

Почело је одлично - Нејтан Глас, на прагу старости, начет озбиљном болешћу, жели да се скраси и пронађе "место за умирање", за то одабирајући Бруклин.
Не баш весело, али Остер о свему томе пише изузетно занимљиво. Полако се открива Нејтанова околина, породична ситуација, прошлост и судбине са њим повезаних ликова. Осим тога, са Нејтаном шетамо и бруклинским и њујоршким улицама, а мени су ти урбани "фланери" увек високо на листи. Но, на средини и при крају има неколико момената на које сам баш преврнуо очима, али не бих спојловао, тако да ми се свеукупни утисак мало снизио.
У сваком случају, Пол Остер је изузетан аутор и све препоруке за истраживање његовог опуса.