Man in the Dark
Paul Auster
Holt (August, 2008)

By Nicholas Nocketback

The Future of America is Darker than Curt Cobain’s

Auster is this generation’s literary living legend, a throwback to the popularity Fitzgerald and Hemingway held. Thus, a new novel for our summer reading (although I rarely see people reading in the summer—or in Fresno for that matter) is a monumental affair. Man in the Dark is due out August 19th, but your boy here got himself an advanced copy—please don’t ask how.
Auster’s 12th work of fiction is a succinct 192 page (much too short, I know) piece that expounds upon the dystopian world of today by juxtaposing an alternate world where September eleventh was just another day and America never occupied Iraq. But Auster is never one to write in such a linear form, our narrator is actually a 72 year old man named August Brill who was in a terrible car accident. Convalescing at his daughter’s home, Brill is trying to repress feelings about the tragedy by conjuring stories about an analogous world. Our protagonist is a retired book critic and it is quite interesting to see how Auster writes in this voice (one I’m sure any author would have a field day with). Nonetheless, Brill’s story gets more intense as the book progresses and we see an America not at war with some desert, oil rich country, but with itself—our second civil war. Auster switches between narratives and parallels the story with Brill’s personal life, one filled with murder, tragedy, and emotional pain any one of us would sweep to the far corners of our subconscious. After reading this one can’t help but be reminded of Auster’s 1988 achievement In the Country of Last Things, which I suggest sinking your collective literary teeth into right now.

In the Country of Last Things
Paul Auster
Penguin (1988)

In essence, this is a letter home from a woman named Anna Blume who was sent to find her lost brother who was reported missing after crossing the Atlantic to follow up on a story for his paper. The only evidence Anna has is a picture of him sent by another person who failed in the same quest. The setting is an American city in the not so distant future whose streets are populated by cliques, gangs, and drifters. This is an American city where daily survival takes precedence over materialism. In this country, people routinely choose euthanasia over trying to live another day in the current climate. In a city of absolutely no production or creation of goods, people are forced to make things out of old items, or at times, kill others to live. There are groups that scavenge off people that have committed suicide. There are even suicide clubs that charge an entrance fee. Nothing lasts in a city where everything is stolen away.
Although this is a city of great pain and entropy, dwellers of it must also cling to the only thing that lasts, hope. Those that aren’t killing themselves are hoping for something better, even if everything they have is the last of its kind.