hogglestock

There must be two Paul Austers. There is the older Paul Auster who wrote The Brooklyn Follies, Man in the Dark, and Sunset Park–all of which I enjoyed. And then there is the younger Paul Auster who wrote with City of Glass (the first book in his New York Trilogy) which, at least in the first 30 pages, seemed to be some kind of absurdist crime story. Since I didn’t read beyond the first 30 pages of the trilogy there might be something I would like that I missed by quitting too soon. And I think I will pick it back up some day and read the whole thing–it isn’t very long. But the trilogy confirms why I didn’t pick up Auster for so many years. It comes off as one of those clever books written by a manly man guy’s guy that just don’t appeal to me. The Brooklyn Follies on the other hand–the first Auster I read–was a totally accessible and highly enjoyable relationship novel about an irascible older man wanting to just retire and eventually die in peace only to have his plans thwarted by the events and people around him. While Man in the Dark has absurdist qualities, I found it quite poignant and enjoyed it as well.

Published in 2010, Sunset Park definitely falls on the “accessible relationship book” end of the Paul Auster spectrum. The book centers around Miles Heller a 28-year old who has been trying to run from his family and his past for eight years. Because of the circumstances surrounding the death of his step-brother Miles drops out of college and moves around the country going from menial job to menial job never telling his family where he is or even letting them know that he is still alive. When the book opens Miles is working in Florida for a company that cleans out houses that have gone into foreclosure, setting the economic recession background of the story. Florida is one of the states that has been hardest hit by the housing meltdown and is synonymous in my mind with cheap, ticky tacky housing developments for people who care about the sun more than about any other factors that make up quality of life. New Yorker Miles, like me, isn’t so enamoured:

…there is no question that he has had his fill of the Florida sun–which, after much study, he now believes does the soul more harm than good. It is a Machiavellian sun in his opinion, a hypocritical sun, and the light it generates does not illuminate things but obscures them–blinding you with its blasts of vaporous humidity, destabilizing you with its miragelike reflections and shimmering waves of nothingness. It is all glitter and dazzle, but it offers no substance, no tranquillity, no respite.

Although Auster was 63 when he wrote this book I think he does an excellent job tapping into the mind of a 20-something–or at least what I remember of those days from my 42-year old perch. In many ways Miles, having run away from his life at age 20 is still kind of stuck there. But there is something wonderful and free about his transient life and his menial jobs. Would I want to go back to that kind of student-like subsistence? No. But Auster did evoke a rush of romantic nostalgia in me as I thought back to those days when I had so little to lose in the way of material comfort that I could remain unbeholden to any particular job or living situation. When my personal responsibilities had a very short time horizon and the future seem endlessly open. However, the lure of youthful potential is not enough to make me want to uproot my life for the sake of freedom.  And of course, adult jobs provide adult resources that in turn make many things possible unthinkable to 20-year old me.

Auster manages to include more than a few erotic adventures without making them seem like the wistful thinking of a wistful 63-year old author. One of my big problems with Sophie’s Choice was that the sex scenes seemed like gratuitous masturbatory fodder for author Styron. Auster’s adventures have a kind of pan-sexual quality to them that make them feel as relevant to the story as they titillating.

Miles is reunited with his family but the outcome is anything but pat. Auster leaves the reader with more than a few questions unanswered and with a worry that things might not work out for Miles.
  

 
Meh.
   

Miss Ranskill Comes Home is a book that could have gone a lot of different directions. Miss Ranskill is lost at sea on a pleasure cruise in 1939. She winds up on a deserted island being cared for by a working class carpenter who is also stranded on the island. The book begins four years into Miss Ranskill’s ordeal and we find her digging a grave for the recently departed carpenter. Not long after this opening scene she is rescued by a British convoy headed back to England. While convalescing on a destroyer Miss Ranskill learns that England has been at war for four years but nothing she learns on board prepares her for what she will encounter when she gets back to England. She comes back to a country deep into the deprivations of war. She is confused by rationing, almost mistaken for a spy, and unable to find her place in the new world order.

I kind of wanted this novel to be gut-wrenchingly sad. There were certainly moments when it could have been but I found them soon and often interrupted with moments of levity. I didn’t mind the levity and found the book overall to be enjoyable and heart-warming. But there was a part of me that wanted it to be the serious tragedy it could have been. Four years living with a man and they not only never, ahem, got busy, but they didn’t even call each other by their christian names. The confusion when she first returns to England could have ended up with Miss Ranskill in prison as a spy or in an asylum. Her money, inherited by her sister who thought her long dead could have been gone. I should say that not all in this novel was humorous. The book does indeed touch on some of the tragedy of the story and the special perspective Miss Ranskill has on life and class and what’s important.

There was one section of the book when I thought I was going to be unhappy with my reading experience. When she first gets back to England and ends up at the front door of her school friend’s house in ill fitting clothes and no shoes and yet her friend doesn’t slow down enough to find out what happened to her. And worse, Miss Ranskill doesn’t say “Hey! I have been stranded on an island for four years and I am in crisis!” I know that it is stupid of me to ask for such plot-killing clarity. But that kind of confusion reminds me of all those bad, mad-cap sitcoms of my childhood where all the kerfuffle could have been avoided if only someone had spoken up before things got out of hand. Thankfully that kind of craziness didn’t go much beyond that early scene in Miss Ranskill.

Definitely an enjoyable Persephone with a unique plot.

This collection of three novellas by David Leavitt was the perfect book to follow my re-read of the bleak and rather depressing, but brilliant As For Me and My House.

The title Arkansas doesn’t have much to do with any of them but rather refers to an Oscar Wilde quip quoted at the start of the book. But the book is chock a block with references to E.M. Forster. I don’t think they would get in the way for those unfamiliar with Forster’s work but they are fun to spot for those of us who are.

The first, and by far the best novella in the collection, The Term Paper Artist is a hilarious send up of Leavitt’s own problems with plagiarism. For those who are familiar with Leavitt’s better known works (like The Lost Language of Cranes) you are probably aware that Stephen Spender accused Leavitt of plagiarizing parts of Spender’s memoir in his novel While England Slept. The hero of the novella (written in the first person) is Leavitt himself. He has moved in with his father in LA temporarily to escape from all the hoopla over the plagiarism case. Not quite able to focus on his next novel he ends up wasting a lot of time purportedly doing research in the UCLA library. I think my favorite laugh out loud moment is when he goes to the literature section, finds his books on the shelves, and autographs them. Leavitt eventually ends up writing term papers for good looking, straight, male undergraduates in exchange for sex. The novella is not without its steamy sex scenes but it is ultimately more humorous and even sweet than it is sexy.

The second novella, The Wooden Anniversary, takes place in Tuscany and has a kind of Will and Grace quality to it. You know, those episodes of W&G where their relationship was creepily co-dependent with gay Will unable to have healthy relationships with gay men because of his dependence on Grace. I hated those parts of W&G because the underlying message seemed to be that gay men can only expect fulfillment by aping the constructs of straight relationships–and with a straight woman no less. In the case of this novella, the straight girl who never gets over being in love with her gay best friend.  Not unenjoyable to read, but nothing to write home about.

The third novella, Saturn Street, is a late 80s AIDS story is not without poignancy, and better than The Wooden Anniversary, but ultimately forgettable.

Overall, this collection was an enjoyable quick read, but the first novella is the only one really worth seeking out.