Quiet and tempered - my first Auster, and I loved the style.
I enjoyed Sidney's daily life, his writing, his screenplays. I enjoyed the small fantastical elements, but still rooted in reality (the magic of the blue notebook that was never explained). Vulnerable, true to life, and both sad and hopeful.

4.5 stars - knocked down only a bit because the ending was abrupt.

More thoughts under spoiler tag:

-Bowen is still in a dark fall out shelter in Kansas City!
-I was intrigued by The Time Machine retelling
-What was Mr. Chang? Intrigued and disgusted by this character.
-So... Sid's fictional account of Grace and Trause - was it true? explains a few odd interactions...

En lätt kaotisk blandning av berättaren (en författare) och berättarens fiktiva författare. Böcker i böcker om vartannat, där verkligheten och skrivandet förutsäger varandra! + Mkt mysigt med gammalt new york

Poveste in poveste in poveste, asa te poarta Auster, fara sa poti lasa cartea din mana, te lasa mut de uimire, cata imaginatie are si ce bine povesteste, nu ma mai satur de el !

Frazele curg, nimic fortat in exprimare, te tarasc ca intr-un vartej unde simti admiratie, bucurie, adrenalina, in plus, sunt atatea aspecte care te pun pe ganduri.

الترجمة العربية لرواية أوراكل نايت للكاتب الأمريكي بول اوستر. استمعت لها صوتيا على منصة ستوريتل. سبق وأن قرأت الرواية باللغة الإنجليزية ولم أفهمها نظرا لتعقيد أحداثها، حيث تتضمن أكثر من قصة متداخلة ببعضها البعض، لكنني فهمتها الآن أخيرا. كاتب الرواية ذكي لكن القاريء يحتاج لصبر وتأني. الترجمة راقية لعماد عبد الله والإلقاء الصوتي جميل كذلك لسمعان فرزلي.

Auster here takes story-telling and uses that as a means to ponder reality and every labyrinthine way this translates through perception. He takes the maze and straightens it out so that every turn, every fork, every dead end corridor or way in or out is set parallel. Then what is left is something like the strata of rock, each layer signifying different eras in soil but here the unknowable passage we take from our point of view, fractured, subjective and incomplete. Auster takes that sample in stone and removes it from its original position, cuts out a slab, showing each layer stark in its particular colour and bleeding into every other, and polishes it until it reflects a clear light. Then he lays it down flat so that there is no point of orientation, we can't make out the bottom from the top, but we can glide over its slippery surface taking great care and occasionally glance down at some weird reflection.

The way in of the story within a story within a story within a going on for infinity is almost the least relevant aspect when experiencing this novel. Sure, it is the point of entry, the conceit, but that is not what is delivered whilst reading this. This is not a puzzle waiting to be solved, or a challenge, or somewhere to find solidity. I feel I float through the best of what he does and it is difficult to get a handle on what is being reached for. In The New York Trilogy Auster writes:

"It was something like the word 'it' in the phrase 'it is raining' or 'it is night'. What that 'it' referred to Quinn had never known."

And that is where I find this novel: walking hand in hand with the 'it'. For all the urban mysticism, the disambiguation folding back on itself, the necessary clarity of prose, the deft straddling of psychological nuance and the conveyance of time and perception relative to existence, I'm none the wiser. Perhaps that is precisely 'it'.

I have added a blue notebook to my Christmas wishlist.

პოლ ოსტერს ერთი რაღაც უდავოდ კარგად გამოსდის: წიგნის ბოლოს ისეთ გულისგამხეთქავ ამბებს შემოგაჩეჩებს, რომ სულ მიგავიწყდება წინა გვერდების მოწყენილობები.
უბრალოდ, უკვე ამ ავტორის მეორე წიგნს ვკითხულობ და ასე მგონია, თავისი ნაწარმოებების სიუჟეტებს ერთ ქარგაზე ქსოვს: მთავარი პერსონაჟი დიდი ტრაგედიის გამოვლის შემდეგ თავიდან ცდილობს ცხოვრებას ჩაებღაუჭოს, თავიდან აღიქვას რეალობა და ძველ თუ ახალ ადამიანებთან ერთად სცადოს მისუსტებული ნაბიჯების გადადგმა, მაგრამ შემთხვევითობა ისევ მოულოდნელ განსაცდელს უმზადებს, თითქოს წინა არ კმაროდეს. თან ისე, რომ მეორე ხარისხოვანი პერსონაჟები წყვეტენ ამბის დასასრულს და ხსნიან სიუჟეტის კვანძს.

I like stories about writers doing writerly things because even though I know the writer is a character, you get to see the author writing the character who's a writer and is writing, and so gain an insight into that particular author's writing process. You know what I mean. "Oracle Night" is about a writer just like "City of Glass" is about a writer and like that book, "Oracle Night" is a pretty darn good yarn.

The story switches from the story of the main character as he recovers from his near-fatal accident and tells us about his world, and the book that he's writing which is an extrapolation of an incident that took place in Dashiel Hammett's novel "The Maltese Falcon". Both stories are compelling but about halfway through the book, the narrator and main character Sidney Orr, decides to drop the novel he's writing as he's hit a wall in the plot (just like in real life) and his life becomes the focus of the rest of the book. Some people didn't like the way Orr's novel broke off and was never picked up again but I think the way he ends it is symbolic of the way the rest of the story plays out and is a good choice by Auster.

We get a more in depth look at Orr's world, about his wife Grace, about his friend the famous writer John Trause who's dying, and about other characters Orr meets, Chang the stationary shop owner and Trause's junkie son Jacob. Orr makes up stories for them, giving Chang a brutal past of book burning and beatings as he imagines Chang being a part of Mao's China and playing a role in the "cultural revolution" of China. His wife doesn't tell him about some time she spent in Portugal with her lifelong family friend John Trause and when she disappears for a day he makes up a back story for her and torments himself with imagined lovers and secrets he will never know. Basically Auster is writing about a writer but in a very convincing way, showing that when a writer isn't writing he's still writing with his mind stories that he will forget soon but can't stop imagining because of his literary inclinations.

There isn't really a plot, the story tends to meander like the writings of Orr in his blue notebook (in "City of Glass" Quinn wrote in a red notebook, what is it with Auster and these coloured notebooks?) but it's never dull and I was always interested in what Orr was doing whether he was writing his novel which doesn't work out or simply walking the streets of Brooklyn writing stories in the air and forgetting them the minute he goes back home. It's a clever, interesting tale of love, the love of writing, the love of friendship, the love between man and wife, and you see the love Auster has of writing too throughout this book, the writing never feeling forced but natural like a speaking voice. One of his better ones for sure, recommended reading!

Oracle Night is a fictional story by Paul Auster about an author, Sid who has been involved in an accident of some type, the detail of which is never made fully clear but we learn it's been severe enough for him to have been unable to write for some time, both because of his time in hospital and his subsequent slow recovery at home. This changes on one of his recuperative walks around the block when he ventures into a stationery store and by chance purchases a blue notebook, which Sid feels magnetically attracted to.

On returning home Sid locks himself away in his study and immediately writes for hours on end, immersing himself in the story he creates of a New York based editor who, like himself has been in an accident that makes him reevaluate what he really wants in life, the result being that he walks away from a comfortable marriage and buys a one way plane ticket to a random location in America.

With him is a copy of an unpublished book (Oracle Night), which he is compelled to read on the flight, having fallen in love with the person delivering it, a young female who is related to the author. He becomes slightly obsessed with the message contained within this book which is of a war veteran who looses his sight but gains the ability to predict the future bringing both blessings and curses.

In among all this, Auster's original author Sid, suspects his wife is hiding a secret which is a theme that is very gently coaxed to conclusion towards the end of the book, in both an unsurprising and underwhelming way.

The first couple of chapters of this book are genuinely interesting and beguiling. Sid's wife ask where he has been all afternoon, he replies he'd bought a notebook and started writing again and that he'd been so absorbed that he'd been in his study all afternoon. His wife replies that she'd poked her head round the study door but he hadn't been there. Cue Twilight Zone music.

It was this air of mystery and gentle suspense that drove me on with this book, and the further along you get the more you expect this mystery and other strange quirks to be drawn together in one big 'reveal'. Unfortunately, that's not what happens. Instead, the multi strand stories Auster sets up, including the New York editor all just slowly die like an untended log fire, leaving you wondering what the point was of setting up such an involving and complicated story line.

Somewhere in here is a clever idea, but Auster hasn't done it any justice because it feels as if even he has lost sight of where he was going with it. Perhaps this is a little unfair, maybe he actively wanted his readers to feel that the book was unresolved, thereby drawing their own conclusions on the various strands developed - for myself I found that lack of conclusion and certainly the lack of explanation for the books earlier mysteries quite frustrating.

Om een of andere kostte het me tot zijn dood tot ik weer eens iets van Auster las, zelfs al was ik vijf jaar geleden een groot fan van zijn New York Trilogy

Toont maar weer dat ik toen gewoon als een brave fanboy had moeten doorlezen in plaats van te wachten tot ik een literaire ramptoerist kon zijn, want dat hele postmoderne verhalen-in-verhalen-in-verhalen bleek wederom helemaal mijn ding. Dat concept voor een romcom-verfilming van The Time Machine zou ik oprecht wel uitgewerkt willen zien, hoezeer de hoofdpersoon ook mag klagen dat het een simplistisch sell-out plotje is. Vraag me af Auster-adept Rob van Essen zich lichtelijk door die verhaallijn heeft laten inspireren voor die ene verhaallijn uit Ik Kom Hier Nog Op Terug.

This is one of the great odes to writer’s block.

For starters, I’m not sure anyone does ‘unsettling’ better than Paul Auster. Every step in this striking novel seems to raise some element of possible danger, but we never get to the end of the danger it implies. What does it mean that our protagonist, Sidney Orr, buys a notebook at a stationery store that’s suddenly opened up in his neighborhood? Why is it so strange that the notebook is from Portugal and that his older, established writing friend uses the identical one? Ironic spoiler alert: we never learn why. It just is, as are the shop owner’s strange and aggressive overtures of friendship, Sid’s wife’s unexplained silences, and Sid’s own slow recovery from a never fully defined illness.

There’s something fundamentally unsatisfactory that the novel eventually leaves us with so many unanswered questions, but I think that’s part of its point: the creative mind senses possibility in every situation – in every passing detail – and it feels called on to pursue that possibility.

No one can write everything, though. In fact, of course, we have to be highly selective about what we do write. So, in the face of those many possible impulses, we sometimes freeze up. We may feel the obligation to imagine new stories, but – unable to decide on just one – we get no further than sensing the infinite possibilities all around.

Sid does begin a novel as soon as he opens the blank notebook. Inspired by a vignette from The Maltese Falcon, he pursues what happens to a man who reinvents his life after nearly being killed in a pedestrian accident. It’s a fairly compelling story; our protagonist is a literary agent who is carrying someone else’s unpublished novel and who eventually comes upon a friend who – in response to the horrors of Dachau – has determined to collect phone books from around the world to prove that now-dead people were once alive.

[SPOILER:] Sid never finishes his book, though. At first he cannot figure out how to get his protagonist out of a room into which he’s locked himself and that no one else knows exists. Then, toward the end, he comes to question the line between fiction and reality. He begins to worry that the stories he writes will shape the experience of the world, and he determines to start over.

In stopping where he does, though, he ends not just the main story he’s writing but also the story that character is reading. And that’s to say nothing of the nearly infinite stories of the people listed in the phone books.

The effect is a great fear of what it means to write, what it means to imagine in the first place. Think too hard, the novel seems to say, and you could unsettle everything. You might just turn your world upside down.

[SECOND SPOILER:] The novel itself ends abruptly as well. Having rejected the idea of a writer as “oracle,” he and his wife experience a violence he could not have predicted. It’s a story that grows out of the characters and tensions that he has observed throughout, but it’s an angle he never guessed.

I can’t quite forgive the lack of a more satisfying ending to the novel as a whole or to the many stories within it that, born in the possibility of the unsettled, we never get to see through to the end.

Having “finished,” though, I get the larger sense of what I think Auster is doing. When you’re a writer – and he is an excellent one – you feel a burden to tell stories that will compel others. When that burden becomes overwhelming, when you fear that what you write will somehow remake the world, you want to draw back.

Auster has managed simultaneously to draw back – to keep from writing a novel in full – and still to write this book. It’s compelling, and it’s deliberately unfinished. It’s a tease, a reflection on the nature of fiction, but part of its necessary craft is that it begins a story that it never…

it just makes no sense

3,5 ⭐️


There were just a little too many loose ends for my taste. A few storylines I would’ve loved to read more about, but were never explored any further. But nonetheless I got sucked in every storyline and every unfinished story in this book. It was nice enough and I would love to read more of Auster’s books.

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Quotes:

Lungs gasping for air, my skin perpetually awash in sweat, I drifted along like a spectator in someone else’s dream, watching the world as it chugged through its paces and marveling at how I had once been like the people around me: always rushing, always on the way from here to there, always late, always scrambling to pack in nine more things before the sun went down.

———

I had my face in my hands and was sobbing my guts out. I don’t know how long I carried on like that, but even as the tears poured out of me, I was happy, happier to be alive than I had ever been before. It was a happiness beyond consolation, beyond misery, beyond all the ugliness and beauty of the world.