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4 3 2 1

by Paul Auster, Ronald Vlek (Translator), Benito Gómez Ibáñez (Translator), Luís Rodrigues dos Santos (Translator)

3.8 · Rating Details · 2,587 Ratings · 607 Reviews

Astonishing, a masterpiece, Paul Auster’s greatest, most satisfying, most vivid and heartbreaking novel -- a sweeping and surprising story of inheritance, family, love and life itself.

Nearly two weeks early, on March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, i ...more

Hardcover, Deckle Edge, 866 pages

Published January 31st 2017 by Henry Holt and Co.

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Jan 23, 2017 Paromjit rated it it was amazing

Shelves: netgalley, literary-fiction

This is a wonderful and intelligent in depth look at the 4 different lives of the jewish Ferguson born in March 1947 to Stanley and Rose. Set in New York and New Jersey, it is a novel full of details, it begins with giving us the disparate backgrounds and families of store owner Stanley and photographer Rose. It charts the relationship between Stanley and Rose and their heartbreaking attempts to have a child. Once Ferguson is born, we are given a non linear but simultaneous life trajectory struc This is a wonderful and intelligent in depth look at the 4 different lives of the jewish Ferguson born in March 1947 to Stanley and Rose. Set in New York and New Jersey, it is a novel full of details, it begins with giving us the disparate backgrounds and families of store owner Stanley and photographer Rose. It charts the relationship between Stanley and Rose and their heartbreaking attempts to have a child. Once Ferguson is born, we are given a non linear but simultaneous life trajectory structured in distinct episodes for each Ferguson.

It made me laugh when the first young Ferguson has every intention of marrying his mother! What Auster does is bring home how each different decision and event changes the life of Ferguson through an intense and tumultuous period of American social and political history of the 1960s up until the early 1970s. So we get the awareness of the fate of the Rosenbergs, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the protests in which Ferguson takes part.

I found it difficult to remember which Ferguson is which at times, partly my fault but partly because whilst Ferguson has different lives, he is essentially the same person. He is a writer in every version of his life, his politics are progressive, and Amy is the girl he gets involved with albeit with differing results. He dwells on the nature of money and whether it should necessarily dictate that the family should therefore move into a bigger house just because they could. Auster captures the raw energy, vitality and intensity with which the young live their lives and the central role of and obsession with sex. I loved the cultural references such as the books and movies that marked the period. Different events in the family mark each Ferguson, such as the death of his father in a arson attack on the store. One Ferguson experiences an early death as a result of a lightning storm.

This is a very long and ambitious novel which might not be to everyone's taste and there are some extremely long sentences in it. I loved it, although it is not perfect and there are parts which tended to ramble a little too much. The prose is beautiful and I found the narrative a gripping read most of the time. Near the end, Auster informs us why the novel was structured as it is. Elements of the novel have been informed by the autobiographical details of the author's life. Characters from his previous novels make an appearance in this book. Auster is connecting his life's work and life brilliantly in this novel. This is essentially the story of the life and times of Paul Auster. A highly recommended read. Many thanks to Faber and Faber for an ARC. ...more

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Feb 20, 2017 Elyse rated it it was amazing

1 2 3 4.......
.....Archibald Isaac Ferguson.....( 900 pages about this guy)
.....Archi....(nope, 900 pages about THIS guy)
.....Ferguson....(no, THIS guy)
.....Archi Ferguson.....(I lied... this story is about THIS guy)!!!!

4 3 2 1 .......BLAST OFF!!!
This novel comes with 'surgeon general warnings': Its risky business being 'under-the-influence' of "4 3 2 1". It's possible to get an unbearable
headache, have insomnia, muscles might ache, and a reader might begin to feel fatigue AFTER the first 22 h ...more

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Feb 22, 2017 Susanne Strong rated it liked it

3 stars.

I think that I'm in the minority here. I didn't love this novel as most everyone else seemed to. I like the idea of this but I think that the concept v. the execution fell short. I found this to be the most exhausting book I have ever read and was completely spent after I was done reading it. I had to force myself to finish the last few hundred pages just so that I could find out what happened. For me, the concept of this book is absolutely brilliant. 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster is an auspici 3 stars.

I think that I'm in the minority here. I didn't love this novel as most everyone else seemed to. I like the idea of this but I think that the concept v. the execution fell short. I found this to be the most exhausting book I have ever read and was completely spent after I was done reading it. I had to force myself to finish the last few hundred pages just so that I could find out what happened. For me, the concept of this book is absolutely brilliant. 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster is an auspicious undertaking. However the actual execution of the book itself- was not as remarkable. I felt that a lot was lost in the actual writing of it.

4 3 2 1 is the story of Archie Ferguson. However, it is not the story of just one Archie Ferguson. Imagine a boy named Archie living four parallel lives, this is that story.

I think the first third of the book is the strongest and that the author did an incredible job providing a backstory for Archie, his parents lives, their relationship and Archie’s beginning. I will say that I was really impressed with how Paul Auster set out each different version of Archie – each personality was very distinguishable, even though they were inherently the same person.

For me, however, after the first third of the book, my interest was lost. The incoherent rambling sentences of each version of this young man drove me insane. At first I thought Paul Auster was trying to convey that that was how a young teenager speaks, but as each version of Archie grew older, he continued to speak in the same manner rambling on about nothing and it made me crazy. I would think that certain versions of him, the writer; the journalist, would speak in shorter, more concise sentences and fully formed thoughts and that did not happen. I personally think the novel would have been better served if it had been cut by several hundred pages.

Why did I even bother finishing it you ask? Simply because I wanted to find out what happened to each different version of Archie. And even though much of the book made me crazy, I'm glad I did. ...more

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Apr 06, 2017 Violet wells rated it it was ok

If we live only a small part of our inner life externally, what happens to the rest? Unfortunately Auster doesn’t address this intriguing question in any kind of stimulating way though you’d think a novel about a character living four parallel lives would.
How much of fate comes from within and how much comes from without? Unfortunately Auster doesn’t address this intriguing question in any kind of stimulating way either though you’d think a novel about a character living four parallel lives woul If we live only a small part of our inner life externally, what happens to the rest? Unfortunately Auster doesn’t address this intriguing question in any kind of stimulating way though you’d think a novel about a character living four parallel lives would.
How much of fate comes from within and how much comes from without? Unfortunately Auster doesn’t address this intriguing question in any kind of stimulating way either though you’d think a novel about a character living four parallel lives would.

I’ve got a lot of time for Paul Auster but I’m afraid I found this a self-indulgent and ultimately pointless novel. I wasn’t a great fan of Life after Life but Atkinson’s novel on a similar theme is much more fluid and interesting structurally than this. It’s also immeasurably more outlandishly playful. Atkinson’s heroine becomes a downtrodden bullied wife in one version; assassinates Hitler in another. Auster’s hero, by contrast, goes to Princeton in one version; Colombia in another. Maybe that’s truer to life but it hardly makes for gripping dramatic tension. And yet Auster is quite happy to employ melodrama as a deciding factor in creating crossroad moments – a murdered father, a car crash resulting in the loss of thumb and first finger - except his melodrama leads to banal distinctions. Atkinson, like the film Sliding Doors, identified the crossroad moments when a fate might change course; Auster doesn’t – he uses accidents rather than choices to define the fate of his character. Things happen off-screen and differently from one life to another for no apparent reason: an uncle makes a bizarre decision, the father makes completely different life choices for no apparent reason with far reaching repercussions in one life which he doesn’t make in another. In this regard, Ferguson is like a puppet operated by his male family members.

Auster’s hero is perhaps the biggest problem. I was never convinced he was sufficiently intriguing as a character for a 200 pg novel, let alone an almost 900 pg one. The sixties should be fascinating but Ferguson is like some throwback to the 1950s. Though this novel is waterlogged with the minutiae of 60s news items and memorabilia there’s no mention of LSD, of rock music, of hippy culture. Ferguson loves baseball, basketball, Bach and beer. He’s not a child of his time. Therefore the decade begins to become irrelevant and it’s a bit baffling why so much energy is spent in trying to recreate it. I assumed at least one version would send him to Vietnam or prison to provide some real dramatic contrast. Nope. Instead the cliffhanger is whether Ferguson will become a novelist or a translator of poetry. Gripping stuff! At the heart of this novel is a colossal failure of imagination on Auster’s part – he can’t imagine himself as anything but a writer. That said, I agree with Auster and not with Atkinson – that if we had four cracks at life they wouldn’t be significantly different – but for that very reason this all becomes a very pointless and long winded exercise.

The other problem is you also get three or four lives in a computer game and after a while this began to become as predictable and repetitive as a computer game. Whatever happens isn’t sufficiently consequential to sustain interest. There’s not much at stake when you get four rolls of the dice. So what if he dies in one version? It’s actually a relief because it was hard work trying to remember the thin distinctions between one life and another. At least, we now had one less nuanced account of his love life and literary aspirations to retain in memory. (This novel would be a good test for evaluating how prone you might be to dementia.) And to be honest I didn’t understand why things turned out differently in the various versions. Because his father dies he becomes gay? That seemed to me a crass piece of reasoning. In one version his cousin Amy finds him irresistible; in another she’s sexually indifferent. I never had a clue why. My feeling was Auster didn’t either. That his main motivation for writing this was to lavishly indulge in nostalgia for his lost youth. Then why not just write a memoir? To add insult to injury he deploys an utterly lame post-modernist trick at the end, trying to cajole us into believing the whole thing has been the height of cleverness.

After this, Jane Smiley’s dreadful Some Luck and Murakami’s rambling dead end 1Q84 I’m now going to think very hard before reading any novel over 700 pages. ...more

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Jan 23, 2017 Andrew Smith rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley

I’ve read quite a bit of Auster’s work over the years, mainly his novels but also some of his non-fiction output too. I’ve imbibed quite a bit of biographical detail in this time from books such as Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure and The Red Notebook: True Stories and consequently I can see that a good deal of the content herein is based on the author’s own passions and experiences. A quick list would throw up his love of novels, poetry, films and baseball, his college education at I’ve read quite a bit of Auster’s work over the years, mainly his novels but also some of his non-fiction output too. I’ve imbibed quite a bit of biographical detail in this time from books such as Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure and The Red Notebook: True Stories and consequently I can see that a good deal of the content herein is based on the author’s own passions and experiences. A quick list would throw up his love of novels, poetry, films and baseball, his college education at Columbia and his time spent in Paris where he lived in a top floor maids room. But there are other elements too, such as a real life incident he’s talked about a good deal in which, at the age of fourteen, a young boy next to him was struck by lightening and killed.

So is this book just a big biographical tome? No, its much, much more than that. The novel tells the story of four parallel lives of Archibald ‘Archie’ Ferguson, born of Russian-Jewish descent in New Jersey in 1947. Given the same start point for each of the four lives it follows that the paths diverge as a result of random events which lead each each Archie to follow a different route. All the Archies are interested in films, sport, politics and above all books – in fact they all aspire to become writers. There are actually many similarities with regard to the lives lived, such as some of the people they meet and a number of events that impact all of their lives, but the relationships between characters is different and Archie’s involvement in the common events and their impact on him deviate significantly. The result is we have four different stories, each using the same timeline, broadly the same geography and many of the same characters.

Some of the routes Archie takes are down to blind luck - good or bad - but at other times it’s subtler: often the path is influenced by the brilliantly observed interactions with and behaviours of people who surround him. Each tale is told in alternating chapters, so we get to see four versions of a small section of his life before repeating the process. If this sounds like there could be repetition, then that’s because there is – of some key events. But remember that we see these events through different eyes, each with an altered involvement in the given occurrence. At some points it does feel like the chosen structure slows progress to a crawl, but any reservations I have about this are more than offset by the pure enjoyment I got from the author’s prose. This man can certainly write!

If, like me, you think you’ve missed out on many of the literary works that you you feel - or have been told - you should have read then there is a veritable crib sheet of titles here. In fact, one of the Furguson’s has a list of one hundred books he must read drafted for him. I’m not sure I’ll get to many (if any) of these but curiosity may drive me to seek out at least one or two. The fact is that Auster’s love of the written word leaps off the page. This is a book for lovers of books.

It a huge book, at nearly nine hundred pages, and therefore it’s a significant enterprise for any reader to take on. However, it’s written in a straightforward style and as long as readers can keep track of the four storylines (I kept notes) then I feel there’s nothing off-putting here. Ok, there are some very long sentences, with quite a few words I’d never come across before, but I really did feel that the narrative flow was well controlled. The inventiveness and imagination demonstrated by Auster will come as no surprise to seasoned readers of his books and there are some brilliant thoughts and insights on all sorts of issues, literary works and on life in general. And above all, I became so invested in the lives of Ferguson that I became truly emotional when each tale had run its course. A good read? No, it's more than that – a masterpiece as far as I’m concerned.

My thanks to Faber and Faber and NetGalley for providing an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. ...more

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Feb 07, 2017 Hannah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, arc

What a wonderful and thought provoking book. It is proving nearly impossible for me to write a coherent review of a book this large (both in page count and in scope), so I am going to concentrate on a few things that I kept thinking about since finishing it.

This is Archie Fergusen's story, told in four alternating timelines. Auster uses this premise for a thoughtful meditation on what makes us us and how little changes lead to different paths. I adored the way Auster lets this play out and shows What a wonderful and thought provoking book. It is proving nearly impossible for me to write a coherent review of a book this large (both in page count and in scope), so I am going to concentrate on a few things that I kept thinking about since finishing it.

This is Archie Fergusen's story, told in four alternating timelines. Auster uses this premise for a thoughtful meditation on what makes us us and how little changes lead to different paths. I adored the way Auster lets this play out and shows how different versions of people are possible, if key events turn out differently. While I think Fergusen is the weak point when it comes to characters (he can be a bit insufferable at times), I absolutely loved his wonderful mother. No matter what time line, no matter what happens, she is unwavering in her love and devotion to her son. Some of the other supporting characters are brilliant as well; his father while difficult is a great and fully fleshed out character, Amy Schneidermann is an enigma and female character that is allowed to be flawed and human, and Fergusen's grandfather was also wonderfully imagined. They are all allowed to make mistakes, to grow from those mistakes and to be complete people - even if they are not the focus of this grand work.

While the book is very long, it never felt indulgent in its wordiness - the story Auster wants to tell can only be told in this grand a scope, even the in-depth analyses of baseball games were necessary. This is a rare achievement in a genre where I often prefer tighter works to Dickensian ones.

It is really interesting to see what developments Auster sees as inevitable and which parts of Fergusen's life change depending on the time line. In all four versions, Fergusen is at the core a writer. The genre he writes or the way he ends up as a writer vary, but nevertheless he is always a man of words. While this is fixed, the people he meets and the relationships he forges with them are varied and change immensely depending on how his life turns out. Given how close the biographical cornerstones are to Auster's own biography this can be seen a profound insight into what he considers most important. Which is why, at the core, this beautiful work of art is above everything else a wonderfully believable and moving love letter to the Arts (be it literature, music, theatre, poetry, photography or fine arts) and their power. This is for me the great achievement of this book and the reason why it kept me engaged while reading and thinking about it when I had to put the book away.

____
I received an arc curtesy of NetGalley and Faber and Faber in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for that! ...more

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Jan 31, 2017 Sam rated it really liked it

Shelves: aty-challenge-2017, 2017-reads

I was conflicted about reviewing 4 3 2 1: on the one hand, Paul Auster shows incredible talent and engaging storytelling, fully immersing us into the broad strokes of the four different lives of Archibald Ferguson, and the intricate, fascinating details that form each version of Ferguson's life, touching on art, film, language, translation, Ivy league educations, baseball, basketball, the siren call of Paris, having money, not having money, the Woman (Amy Schneiderman), other women and men to lo I was conflicted about reviewing 4 3 2 1: on the one hand, Paul Auster shows incredible talent and engaging storytelling, fully immersing us into the broad strokes of the four different lives of Archibald Ferguson, and the intricate, fascinating details that form each version of Ferguson's life, touching on art, film, language, translation, Ivy league educations, baseball, basketball, the siren call of Paris, having money, not having money, the Woman (Amy Schneiderman), other women and men to love, and the varying versions of the Ferguson clan and especially his parents Stanley and Rose. When the novel is good, it is great: witty, funny, charming, hitting character and plot points macro and micro with ease and precision, and always invoking an accurate but also engaging sense of time and place as we watch Ferguson grow up in the 40s, 50s and 60s in New Jersey and New York (depending on the version) and struggle with his identity, the Vietnam War, Antisemitism, the Civil Rights Movement, racism, the Kennedy election and assassination, white flight, and the hope and disillusionment and fracturing of society during the 60s especially. All of Fergusons' family and friends are well drawn, though I most loved his mother Rose Adler (in every version of Ferguson) and his wisecracking, brilliant cousin Noah Marx (in version 4). There was much to admire, and much to love for the majority of the novel.

On the other hand, the book threw me for fits with its pacing. It took me a bit to work through the first 100 or so pages of set up, the backdrops of the Ferguson and Adler lineages detailed but not flowing or clicking for me. But then, sunk into little Ferguson's various childhoods, I was off and devouring each saga up through Ferguson's graduation and moving on (in many versions) to college. Then, around page 600, Ferguson 1 gets derailed in a major student protest at Columbia University in the late 1960s, and the momentum I'd had was lost. The book recovered, as we moved on to see what the other versions of Ferguson got into, but that chapter for Ferguson 1 was long, unwieldy, and worse yet uninteresting. And overall, I don't know that I love the writing of Paul Auster. The brilliance can't be denied, but he's also prone to writing extremely long, run-on sentences, that meander and turn to the point that I would occasionally lose the major focus of the thought. It sometimes read like stream of consciousness inserted into these epics of the Fergusons, which (view spoiler). I felt that there was definitely some extra, less meaningful content that could have been removed entirely to keep the pacing tighter, and in general appreciate an author who is a bit more choosy with word choice and sentence structure in literary fiction: some of the writing felt unintentional, versus say how I felt about the writing of Michael Chabon's Moonglow or Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, the hybrid of which could be 4 3 2 1.

I don't think this is a read for everyone, and indeed while it delighted me and I enjoyed reading it on the whole and was engaged with Auster's talent, it also irritated me, occasionally bored me and really forced me to work to finish major parts. But again, when it is good, it is great, and for that, I'd award it 4 stars. ...more

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Mar 27, 2017 BlackOxford rated it it was ok

Shelves: new-york-city, american-fiction

Glazed Over

I had a personal interest in this book. I was born just three weeks before it's protagonist, Archie Ferguson, and nine days after his author, Paul Auster. I grew up in a similar suburb of New York City, and in similar economic and educational circumstances. So, to the extent that Ferguson was shaped by the cultural context of the day, perhaps I could detect unrecognised influences in my own life. Or, even more exciting, given that 4 3 2 1 is about alternative universes, I could explor Glazed Over

I had a personal interest in this book. I was born just three weeks before it's protagonist, Archie Ferguson, and nine days after his author, Paul Auster. I grew up in a similar suburb of New York City, and in similar economic and educational circumstances. So, to the extent that Ferguson was shaped by the cultural context of the day, perhaps I could detect unrecognised influences in my own life. Or, even more exciting, given that 4 3 2 1 is about alternative universes, I could explore the paths not taken in my own life. Not the most noble of motives, but certainly not the worst.

But there are certain literary problems with the premise of alternative lives that I don't think Auster has worked through thoroughly, at least not for my purposes. By now most educated readers know of Chaos Theory, the idea that even the smallest changes in initial conditions can generate immense consequences. This, one supposes, applies as much to relationships as to particle interactions. Therefore, who we meet, indeed who our parents or friends or their parents or friends have ever met, obviously have untold ramifications for any individual life.

So, which relationships should the author choose to modify in alternative life-stories? Mother-father? Mother-aunt? Father-uncles? Among the in-laws? The possibilities are obviously endless, with no inherent rationality no matter which are selected. If there is any significance to the relationships Auster has chosen to use as narrative fulcra, they have escaped me. This annoys my aesthetic sensibilities; I have no way to relate to the method and therefore the characters are abstractions and unrelated to my life even though the frequent environmental references - Kennedy, Vietnam, New York City - are familiar.

The randomness of life also includes one's own genetic make-up, which may or may not be translated into any number of behaviours. Does watching a world-series game at age four create a seed of interest in playing baseball or merely following baseball? Does a loving auntie's fondness for literature create a capacity for literary taste or a distaste for oppressive direction in reading? Will a fascination for journalistic writing at a young age forestall development of athletic talent?

Clearly the possibilities are uncountable and complex, a problem which doesn't arise if the story is a unitary narrative. But how does an author create four such stories with any cohesion? The bumps and nudges Auster introduces in each of Ferguson's lives are like random variables in a gigantic mathematical equation. But the equation, if it exists, is hidden throughout the text. I admit to an inability to solve the mathematical problem. In any case I don't see myself anywhere in it.

And, of course, life-paths bifurcate constantly. So, influential events and choices compound deviations. How can an author maintain control over the cascading possibilities in a way that still has some sort of narrative sense? How does the reader, for that matter, keep track of the partially congruent lives and the not-quite-the-same protagonists as they float through an interweaved existence?

4 3 2 1 is a long book structured episodically. By the time of the protagonist's adolescence, it is unlikely anyone who isn't a member of Mensa would be able to remember which teenager descends from which toddler, whose father was the thrusting entrepreneur and whose the local shopkeeper, which girlfriend called Amy is in love (or not) with which version of Ferguson, and whose aunt lives in California and whose in Brooklyn. I failed the associative test, having to retreat to my bed with a migraine. An inadequate as well as unsympathetic reader therefore.

The continuities among the four lives are more interesting: Suburban, Jewish, Intellectual, Liberal. These are the axes around with everything else in 4 3 2 1 mutates and rotates. They are the sort of Kantian categories which shape the universe from which alternatives are selected. These, of course, are as arbitrary as the scenarios that Auster creates within them. But perhaps they are the only things that really matter.

In other words, it may be the continuities not the variations that constitute Auster's point. That, for example, the possibilities available within the universe bounded by these categories are not infinite. Or if they are, they are at least countable. And in a sense, they converge in a kind of fatalistic unity. This would constitute a rather sophisticated literary game. To say more risks giving the game away.

I have real questions whether this game is worth playing though. Or, at least, that I have the talent to play it. I ended up like one of Auster's characters, with "the glazed-over look of a man unable to see anything but the thoughts inside his own head." Just where I started, I suppose. ...more

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Apr 03, 2017 Katie rated it liked it

4321 narrates four versions of one young man’s life, how it might have differed given small altered circumstances.

This wore me down. Instead of becoming more engaged I was exasperated by it at about pg 700. I kept thinking I could have read three novels in the time it took me to wade through this. Essentially it struck me as four different drafts of the same half-finished novel. I kept waiting for the Eureka moment when the four narratives would suddenly shed light on each other and blaze into ...more

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Feb 07, 2017 Neil rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-reads

For the first approximately 500 pages of this (very long) book, I was in reading heaven. It’s not a secret (it’s in the blurb) that it tells the story of four lives that are the same life (a bit, I guess like the movie Sliding Doors or the book Life After Life). It tells these stories by cycling round them in instalments and a large part of the pleasure of reading, apart from the brilliance of the writing, is the fun of comparing the developing stories to see where they diverge and where they ov For the first approximately 500 pages of this (very long) book, I was in reading heaven. It’s not a secret (it’s in the blurb) that it tells the story of four lives that are the same life (a bit, I guess like the movie Sliding Doors or the book Life After Life). It tells these stories by cycling round them in instalments and a large part of the pleasure of reading, apart from the brilliance of the writing, is the fun of comparing the developing stories to see where they diverge and where they overlap.

I really loved the writing. For example: "…the city remained a fundamental part of her life, dear, dirty, devouring New York, the capital of human faces, the horizontal Babel of human tongues." Or: "…and the only literary man known as Archibald anywhere in the world was Ferguson’s least favorite American poet, Archibald MacLeish, who won every prize and was considered to be a national treasure but was in fact a boring, no-talent dud." (Don’t beat about the bush, Paul, tell us what you really think!). And one more: "The best thing about being fifteen is that you don’t have to be fifteen for more than a year."

So, for a long time (it takes a long time to read 500 pages), I was very happy and sailing a course towards a comfortable 5 star rating.

But then things started to change. At about 500 pages in, I remember having a conversation with my wife about the book and telling her about an ending I was dreading might be coming. No spoilers here, but that is exactly the ending we get. However, when we got to it, I found I didn’t actually mind that much. I was thinking I would hate it ending like that, but it was actually OK, mainly because of way it was written. The real problem for me was the 300 or so pages between heaven and the end where the book seems to become far too obsessed with student politics and the painful process of writing a book. For me, these pages dragged a bit: if they had been 100 pages, it would have been fine, but it was three times that and took some getting through.

The book feels very autobiographical, although Auster has said it isn’t: "It's really not me at all, even though the interest of the Fergusons seemed to overlap with mine. I think of this book as sharing my geography and sharing my chronology, but it's really not at all my story. These Fergusons are so much more precocious than I was. They seem able to do things at astonishingly young ages that I was not capable of doing, for example." I have to say, I’m not convinced he is being entirely truthful.

I’ve seen criticisms of this book that complain about the time period it is set in and that suggest that if you are going to write four life stories then why not make them more different from one another. In my view, those criticisms are missing the point. I think Auster wants to review the times he has grown up in and some the conclusions he draws and especially the very, very end of the book are actually very relevant to today. In the same interview as I’ve quoted above, Auster says: "So here was history continuing to happen as I was writing a book about 50 years ago, and the parallels were eerie, I have to say. And so many of the things that were dividing us 50 years ago are dividing us again today. What we didn't learn in the '60s was that while we thought the left was in the ascendance, it was actually the right. And now, again, the right is again taking over the country in ways that eight years ago, when Obama came into office, we wouldn't have imagined could happen." Also, I think one of the things Auster is perhaps trying to say is that some things have to happen and, if your life is destined to take you to certain points, you will get to those points in one form or another regardless of the route you take. The book is far more interesting because the life stories are similar but different and I think making them radically different would hugely spoil the book.

It’s a significant investment of time to read this book. For American readers, the effort required may be less because they may not have the repeated need I had to check on the facts that are reported in the book. I kept stopping to check which people and events were fictional and which were actual people and events. But, overall, despite the problem I had with the middle section, I would say the time and effort are well rewarded.

It’s 3.5 stars from me, but rounded up because I so enjoyed reading the first 500 pages. ...more

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Jan 28, 2017 Arah-Lynda marked it as abandoned

I have a feeling that this novel is going to be a fabulous success.

It is about a Jewish family living in New Jersey or more specifically about their son Ferguson. The reader is given insight into four different versions of Ferguson's life. Each decision made by his parents or himself results in a different outcome, hence a different life path or portrayal of Ferguson's life.

That is the bare bones of the nature of this novel. It is a huge tome of a book, weighing in at almost 900 pages. I confe ...more

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Jul 11, 2017 helen the bookowl rated it liked it · review of another edition

3.5/5 stars.
On many levels, this is a really great story which plays with plot and destinies and gives you some insightful anecdotes on life and growing up. The only problem I had with it, though, was quite a big one: "4321" is too long and too dragging and you can't help but lose interest towards the end.
I'm a big fan of Paul Auster's, and while this wasn't my favourite book of his, I still think that it highly deserves the praise and anticipation that has been built up over the past 7 years. ...more

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Feb 17, 2017 Stephen P rated it it was amazing

Shelves: interiority, auster

Auster has arrived at the witch’s brew point of honing himself down into the essence of Austerian writing. A celluloid grappling with the life of the mind as something in and of itself asserting high value, the inspiring commitment to creativity (writing), the battle for identity then to garner the courage to live and express it, and the occurrence of chance; Dante’s forked path, but in this book it is three pronged. The immersion of how the smallest of events can lead our lives in different tra Auster has arrived at the witch’s brew point of honing himself down into the essence of Austerian writing. A celluloid grappling with the life of the mind as something in and of itself asserting high value, the inspiring commitment to creativity (writing), the battle for identity then to garner the courage to live and express it, and the occurrence of chance; Dante’s forked path, but in this book it is three pronged. The immersion of how the smallest of events can lead our lives in different trajectories. Each of us can look back and see how if we didn’t go here one night we would not have met so and so and…and…and… But, and I am making this up as I go along, those chance encounters are shaped by the slow tick of our identities emerging as well as shaping them?

So, 4321 is a distillation of Auster’s ongoing existential battle refusing a final answer but anxious to gather arms and confront the marching conflict(s).

Oh no. Something else. I don’t even have to be reading him and my mind swirls. Yes, this book is about writing, the process. Each word inked leads to the next, line to paragraph, to pages, ideas emerging unexpected. Their chance occurrence leading to the work’s insistence on traveling its own path.

A lengthy book that I enjoyed to the end and was disappointed it stopped. Yet, I don’t know if I can recommend it. Auster opened the sap-glued hinges of the gate of literature for me. On vacation I found no book in my suitcase. I picked out The New York Trilogy at a nearby bookstore on a whim based on its cover. Back at our hotel room I opened it up and threw it against the wall. Just the kind of crap I couldn’t stand. A waste of time. I remember peeking into DFW’s, Infinite Jest, a month before after hearing how great it was and thinking I would never want to read such a thing and wondered how and why others enjoyed it. My wife asleep, there I was in our small hotel room with nothing to read. I don’t know if it has ever been recorded, a person able to go to sleep without reading first but I am not one. I sat on a chair and fretted watching the various ways my fingers could twine. Then pacing up and down, back and forth, until the tread of my bare feet were worn into the brown carpet. Finally, I went to where the book laid splayed and un-threw it, tossing it toward the chair. I sat and looked at it on the carpet by an engraved heel mark, watching it out of the corner of one eye. It was going to be a long night anyway so I lifted it off the carpet and opened it. As bad as I thought. Maybe worse. What happened to the linear world? I searched the room for a plot. How about powering myself through it or trying Gideon’s Bible in the bedside table drawer. It proved laborious until I was diverted by this loud click sound. I checked that it didn’t wake my wife up. Returning to the book it was different, completely different. Turning it upside down, dangling it at different positions, the words remained the same. I checked the cover, identical. The door remained locked and latched. Sitting and looking at the page again I…apprehended it differently. Bewildered I continued my appreciation of this new apprehension. I woke my wife to tell her. She asked if I could apprehend in another room in the hotel. Letting her sleep I went back to the chair and wide eyed reveled in this new world which has only widened and deepened in time with my ongoing conversation with GR.

As I am on a daily basis throwing out eternal thanks to Auster for being my guide, how can I judge his work objectively? Maybe somewhat since there has been books of his I didn’t like, even parts of the The New York Trilogy on rereading, due to growth spurts induced and maintained by the wiles of GR and my brilliant Friends.

Here it is, 5/5. Take it any way you want.
...more

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Feb 10, 2017 Lucy Banks rated it it was amazing

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

A breathtaking, weighty epic of delicious 'What Ifs'...

I'm a big fan of Paul Auster, so was expecting massive things from this book... and I'm delighted to report, I was not disappointed.

It's a weighty tome (all 860 pages of it) and not the easiest of reads, but is so incredibly satisfying, not to mention thoroughly addictive once you get started, that it deserves nothing less than a full five star rating.

What's it ...more

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Mar 10, 2017 Diana rated it liked it

3-1/2 stars

I love the idea of this book. One man split into four men living separate lives based on personal decisions as well as consequences of his surroundings. Four Archies. Four lives. Each Archie is so very different yet so very the same. To what degree do our surroundings impact our lives? How much of our decision-making affects where we end up in life?

For me, the concept of this book gets five stars; however I learned that Auster's writing style apparently isn't for me. When reading a b ...more

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Jan 01, 2017 Lisa rated it it was amazing

I received this huge, 866 page Advance Reading Copy a few weeks ago but decided to save it for my end of the year vacation (stay-cation). And I'm so glad I did because once I started it, I wanted, needed, to stay immersed in it.

The novel is the coming of age story of Archie Ferguson and starts off with 4 different versions of his life. Set mostly in New York and New Jersey, It is also about the political and cultural and social climate of the 1950s and 1960s.

I had 4 or 3 or 2 or 1 running stor ...more

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Feb 16, 2017 Thomas rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: e-books, paul-auster, favourites, read-in-2017

Βαθμολογία: ∞

Υπάρχουν ογκώδη βιβλία γεμάτα δράση με πέντε, δέκα, είκοσι πρωταγωνιστές απαραίτητοι για να γεμίσουν τόσες εκατοντάδες σελίδες, και υπάρχει το 4 3 2 1 όπου περιστρέφεται εξ ολοκλήρου γύρω από έναν μοναδικό χαρακτήρα, του οποίου η ζωή σπάει σε τέσσερα διαφορετικά κομμάτια που το καθένα ακολουθεί τη δική του πορεία, και ενώ δεν πρόκειται για pageturner εσύ βρίσκεις τον εαυτό σου να κρέμεται από κάθε λέξη αυτού του μεγάλου λογοτέχνη, παρακολουθείς τον μικρό Archie να πεθαίνει και να ζε Βαθμολογία: ∞

Υπάρχουν ογκώδη βιβλία γεμάτα δράση με πέντε, δέκα, είκοσι πρωταγωνιστές απαραίτητοι για να γεμίσουν τόσες εκατοντάδες σελίδες, και υπάρχει το 4 3 2 1 όπου περιστρέφεται εξ ολοκλήρου γύρω από έναν μοναδικό χαρακτήρα, του οποίου η ζωή σπάει σε τέσσερα διαφορετικά κομμάτια που το καθένα ακολουθεί τη δική του πορεία, και ενώ δεν πρόκειται για pageturner εσύ βρίσκεις τον εαυτό σου να κρέμεται από κάθε λέξη αυτού του μεγάλου λογοτέχνη, παρακολουθείς τον μικρό Archie να πεθαίνει και να ζει, να γίνεται παιδί, έφηβος, φοιτητής, να αναζητεί την ταυτότητά του, αυτόν τον αθλητή, δημοσιογράφο, συγγραφέα, που ερωτεύεται και απογοητεύεται σε μια Αμερική όπου βιώνει μια σειρά ιστορικών γεγονότων όπως τη δολοφονία του Κένεντι, τις φυλετικές ταραχές, τις διαμαρτυρίες κατά του πολέμου του Βιετνάμ, το μπλακάουτ της Νέας Υόρκης, και συναντάς όλα τα γνωστά επαναλαμβανόμενα μοτίβα του Auster, τον θάνατο, την απώλεια, την πτώχευση, τον πρωταγωνιστή συγγραφέα που μεταναστεύει στο Παρίσι, το παράδοξο, την ιστορία μέσα στην ιστορία και φυσικά αυτές τις πλούσιες μακροσκελείς προτάσεις που πηγαίνεις με αγωνία από κόμμα σε κόμμα ξέροντας ότι στο τέλος θα πει κάτι συγκλονιστικό που θα κάνει την καρδιά σου να σφιχτεί κι εσύ δε θες να φτάσεις στην τελεία, δε θες να φτάσεις γενικότερα στο τέλος, αφού έχεις καταλάβει προ πολλού ότι πρόκειται για το βιβλίο της χρονιάς, ένα αριστούργημα. ...more

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Mar 14, 2017 Leo Robertson rated it it was ok · review of another edition

When writers get to Paul Auster's age, I guess it's common for them to want to take on their masters. Here, I imagine this is Auster doing Tolstoy. But is Tolstoy's lens the most relevant for our time?

The prose is soulless, almost automatic in a sense. It has no focus, it does very little. It's the kind of novel I imagine computers writing, when they're able: there's nothing technically wrong with it, but it doesn't really seem to have a point. I'll give you an example: this is me planning a par When writers get to Paul Auster's age, I guess it's common for them to want to take on their masters. Here, I imagine this is Auster doing Tolstoy. But is Tolstoy's lens the most relevant for our time?

The prose is soulless, almost automatic in a sense. It has no focus, it does very little. It's the kind of novel I imagine computers writing, when they're able: there's nothing technically wrong with it, but it doesn't really seem to have a point. I'll give you an example: this is me planning a paragraph in the same style:

And so on the thirteenth of December, 1988, Leo Robertson came into the world, a screaming blue-eyed boy held up by a kindly-looking middle-aged nurse in [Wikipedia hospitals in Glasgow.] Outside the window, the [Google weather on that date.] Of course, [Google important historical events on or around this date.] Arriving home, Charlie and Teresa showed Leo's older brother and sister, Croy and Chloe, that Leo had brought them gifts, such was their strategy to ingratiate the young boy to his siblings, [Google toys and sweets popular in Glasgow in 1988.]
Charlie thought of his father's father, who had worked in the shipyards across the Clyde, just [Google Maps distance from family home to the Clyde], where Grandpa Charlie spent his days putting rivets in the sheet metal of [look up the types of ships that were there at the time.] He'd taken Chloe and Croy to [Where was that museum where you could put the rivets in sheet metal in like a little booth thing, and you grabbed these clamp tool things through rubber gloves in the exhibit's booth? Look up the names of the tools.]
On the TV that afternoon was [Important sports thing. If I'm Paul Auster, I really like sports, so, lots of sports.]

So I'm not saying it's not hard work to make a book like this, even with the assistance of technology, as the above proves, but I do question how pleasurable or purposeful the experience of reading it is supposed to be, when the story has no apparent central focus and tries to earn most of its points through rambling fact-checking and fleshing out of a family, a village, a city of characters that serves no evident purpose beyond its attempt to impress. And there's no dialogue, no action, no place where all the stuff is supposed to happen: it's written a bit like a historical record.

There are a few phrases I'll read in a blurb that generally make me put a book back down: "hysterical", "belly laughs", "funny", "laugh-out-loud", "lyrical", "quirky" and "follows three generations of a family." The reasons being that: other media do "funny" better than novels, "lyrical" means the author's trying to prove their MFA means something (to people who aren't you), and "follows three generations of a family" means "has no idea what this book is about, but wow did it take a long time to write."

But what can I say? I got this in the airport when I was drunk because I thought the cover was pretty. And I was right about that.

Also I just remembered that I was born in London ahaha. ...more

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Feb 01, 2017 Book Riot Community added it

Shelves: new-books-liberty-s-recs

When I found out about this book, I squealed so much. Not only were we getting a new Auster novel, but it’s 880 pages of a new Auster novel! It’s a ambitious, sweeping story of love, family and fate, about four diverging paths for four versions of Archibald Isaac Ferguson. The stories of his lives are each wonderfully plotted. What are your other selves doing? This book is a tremendous achievement! (However, if you’ve never read Auster, I don’t suggest starting here. Try the backlist bump first. ...more

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Apr 06, 2017 Ammara Abid rated it it was ok

3 2 or 2 3
Pardon me but I'm torn between 2-3 stars. Everyone else love this novel and in my case it's pretty opposite I love the idea of the book but I didn't love it.

Honestly I was expecting some tremendous stuff after all it's '4321' but it is laborious & monotonous.

4 3 2 1
The reason for grabbing the book, it's title.
Things I like: discussion about books & writers.

The rest it didn't touch me I was just reading, reading and reading endlessly. That's all, I don't know what else to sa ...more

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May 10, 2017 the gift rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, aa-unitedstateslit, literature, auster-paul, pomo, althistory, xlong-over-400, historicity, xxlong-over-800, zz2017

first review: (lecture) there is a useful mathematical technique known as 'chaos theory'- though this is a misnomer, for it is a way to characterize 'apparent chaos', to describe 'non-linear dynamics', living systems where the slightest change in original conditions can lead to radically different outcomes. weather is the iconic example, the butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon causally connected to a tornado in Kansas... living systems work this way, and because infinite precision is requ first review: (lecture) there is a useful mathematical technique known as 'chaos theory'- though this is a misnomer, for it is a way to characterize 'apparent chaos', to describe 'non-linear dynamics', living systems where the slightest change in original conditions can lead to radically different outcomes. weather is the iconic example, the butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon causally connected to a tornado in Kansas... living systems work this way, and because infinite precision is required now and ever and no variables are infinitely knowable, we can never predict the weather exactly...

of course, there is a given range of probabilities, a 'butterfly' shape on any graph centred on zero time, where mathematical probabilities define the range of outcomes, and this is known as a 'strange attractor', in the sense a linear system is a spiral of conditions circling down to zero, but a non-linear system is shaped in loops around it. the strange attractor is, in weather again, not what we call 'weather' but what we call 'climate'. such that we may not predict exact weather but we can be certain that in Kansas whether tornado or not, in July it will not be -40... the cumulative effect of all the original conditions, all the strange attractors, combine to give this probability the force of certainty, though such calculations require massive computer time....

how this applies to 4321 by Paul Auster: the original conditions are all the same, constant things happen, sometimes minor, sometimes dramatic, as the character grows up in the '60s, and these all have an effect on his somewhat passive observations. Auster has a fascination with coincidence, the road not taken, the forks of this action or that action, and here he has a long book, much autobiographical postmodern, with four iterations of one character. this is about four or more times longer than most of any of his previous works. more detail, individual in the panoramic, all sorts of events that convulsed that turbulent decade. there is no doubt here the author's perspective, some fascination in lives lived, so...

things happen but it is difficult to call them 'causes' because they generate so few 'effects'. this is a case where the strange attractor is nearly a linear spiral, and completely dominates the contingent. the strange attractor is something like the original condition of being: intellectual reader, sometimes athletic, white tall and handsome, psychologically untroubled, Jewish but not fervent, fortunate in most of the adults around him, never desperately poor, never much criminal, open to new experiences. basically some good places to start. then the things that happen are mostly of a sort: family prospers/family dissolves, father dies/father makes a lot of money/father becomes a clerk. mother becomes/fails to become a photographer of note. cousin passionately loves him/is completely indifferent. becomes straight/becomes gay. writes great book success/works as journalist/publishes in small press... yes a lot of things happen, as they all go from the same start...

and then some of the lives are sort of dreams enacted: go to Paris with a girlfriend in one life, live in Paris with mother's friend in another, live in Paris with lover in another, witness if not join in police riots at Columbia in NYC, have admired friend at Princeton, another friend who makes the Majors in baseball, meet these occasional other Auster characters, great love affair or great sex affair here and there and straight and gay...

but how can a book about four lives be so... lifeless? and really only covers the '60s? his era of excitement? this could be a melancholy tract on all the things Auster wished he had done or seen or lived. four lives not as psychological realism in a postmodern way, but in trenchant recall. but then Auster had written about his early life already, see https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1.... maybe he is bored with that. and then, of all the things that happen, people die, people leave, people protest, people are all of the same place and sort, that is, liberal, educated, north eastern if not New York Americans of that era, that exciting time i missed by a few decades. but despite the events in his 'lifeworld', the big changes no more than the little changes, he does not change much. he becomes a writer, a translator, an intellectual, a man who stumbles through his lovelife(s)... and the way the narrative(s) unfold, we get entirely focused on his life, his thoughts, long sentences that are easy to read, yes: but to what purpose...?

i like some of Auster's other work, even often with the subtext about the uselessness of art to communicate the ineffable, surprising, aspects of living. and at one point i wanted to give this a three, when a certain sequence actually gave me an emotional moment. but then i decided i did not enjoy getting there, that at this point i had read hundreds of pages and at this point would read hundreds more. and this made me think about the 'climate' of my own life. yes i have read a lot of books too, never had the good fortune of anyone telling me what to read- though much read has been science fiction, fantasy, crime, literature, much of these in translations, none of which sound like all his literary reading, and of course a lot of philosophy, a lot of art, some film, some architecture... so maybe i get his allusions, however i might disagree with his judgment...

would i have read (at 18) Moby Dick if it had not been an old hardback in the entry hall? or 1984 (at 15) if it had not been an old hardback downstairs? or... and what difference in my life according to my basic strange attractor? if a certain young woman had not died would i have read anything like the number of books? probably not. if i had married the young woman i lived with, how would i have taken her death these many years later? not well. if certain major traumas in my life other than others dying, traumas which major effects i know every day when i stop to think of them, what minor changes have led to major differences? maybe it is somewhat comforting to believe 'everything happens for a reason', maybe we all want all events in our lives to make a difference, and at the same time remain recognizably the same person...? do i need a book of 866 pages to come up with all these thoughts? not in this life... ...more

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Apr 27, 2017 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing

On beginning to read 4 3 2 1 I was surprised that the story went at first as if it had been written by Theodore Dreiser so it made me wonder where was all the expected postmodernistic quirkiness. But to my great delight I was capable to find the trick soon enough.
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both…”
These first lines of The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost are literally the key to the book… Paul Auster simultaneously travels four forking roads so the novel is a s ...more

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Nov 22, 2016 Peter rated it it was amazing

I received a free copy of this book through the Goodreads Giveaway program.

An 860 page novel that leaves you wanting it to be longer because it is so beautifully written, engaging, robust, and thoughtful. Unfortunately, many people will be dissuaded from reading this exceptional work because of its size. However, the novel is quite accessible and fast-reading. (Although there are many long, seemingly rambling or run-on sentences and paragraphs, there is a natural flow and orderliness to the pros I received a free copy of this book through the Goodreads Giveaway program.

An 860 page novel that leaves you wanting it to be longer because it is so beautifully written, engaging, robust, and thoughtful. Unfortunately, many people will be dissuaded from reading this exceptional work because of its size. However, the novel is quite accessible and fast-reading. (Although there are many long, seemingly rambling or run-on sentences and paragraphs, there is a natural flow and orderliness to the prose so that you relish the flowing language of a master story-teller and enjoy gulping down the flow. Think of a talented raconteur friend at a bar telling you a good story instead of the complexity of late works of Henry James.) The prose is almost conversational and the reader becomes caught up in the enthusiasm of the lead character. Funny, touching, vibrant, and provocative all describe the book.

Auster tells the story of a bright Jewish boy growing up in New Jersey in the late forties through the 1960s. However, there are four versions of this boy, each has the same starting point and parents. However, the lives of each of the four diverge because of different circumstances. In alternating chapters, each stage of the development of this young life is retold four different ways. Each tale follows a linear narrative and each life shares a love of literature, movies. The contrasting lives as well as the commonalities they share provide insight into each life. Not surprisingly, there is a fifth life lurking in the background, that of Paul Auster himself (he was born in New Jersey exactly one month before his lead character) and the pseudo memoir aspects of the novel are used in many ways. Each of the four tales is the story of the development of a writer set against the backdrop of post-WWII America. By the end of the book, the basis for the narrative structure is made clear.

There are some post-modernist devices and meta-fictional techniques; but, they are never a distraction and are employed as part of a very narrative structure. Auster's alter ego often refers to the writers he loves (Tolstoy, Dickens, Roth among many) and Auster is so capable that the reader is reminded of these authors as well. Indeed, when Auster uses the adjective "effulgent" to describe a work in the novel, the reader cannot help but use the same word to describe Auster's work.

Although there have been a number of well-written recent novels which employ the concept of key points in a life leading to a branching off of that life into separate lives, each on a different trajectory, because of either a decision made or an external intervening event (for example, Kate Atkinson's Life After Life and Lionel Shriver's Post-Birthday World), Auster's effort may be the most ambitious and successful.

...more

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Dec 01, 2016 Shannon rated it liked it

excellent first 600 pages. incandescent prose, the best writing of Auster's very uneven career, and that's not an insult, the prose was as musical and full of revelation as Roth could achieve at the height of his powers. Every page or two I reread a paragraph or sentence in awe, wondering how this book and Moon Palace could have been written by the same guy, considering Auster wasn't a kid when he wrote the latter, a remarkable evolution. And wondering where it was all going to lead to ultimatel ...more

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Feb 12, 2017 Jill rated it really liked it

"Four versions of an ordinary life." This is the first line of the Kirkus starred review, and I think it is a perfect introduction to the book. 3.5 stars.

I really enjoyed sections of this book, especially Ferguson as the struggling writer & passionate translator of French poetry. His family is quite complicated & entertaining, and the writing is beautiful and poetic at times, for example:

"and how miserable Ferguson felt as he and Amy sat down for their last supper of all time, noting ho ...more

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Feb 09, 2017 Cayla rated it really liked it

Probably closer to 3.5, but I bumped it up because of the stellar writing. Like others, the ending kind of fell apart for me, and the book could have been shorter by a few hundred pages :). Nevertheless, the premise is intriguing to follow even if I wasn't completely on board the whole time with Ferguson's decisions. I also enjoyed the history we were able to walk through through Ferguson's eyes. This book is definitely for people who enjoy dense literary novels.

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Sep 08, 2016 Doris rated it it was amazing

Snagged an advance copy of this at work. Its a good read.... be ready to draw a family tree (or 4) to keep track of everybody, as well as a timeline (or 4) to follow all the twists and turns.

I wish I had more time with Ichabod Fergusson and the beginning. :)

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Apr 14, 2017 antónio alves rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Paul Auster mergulhou na complexidade do romance pós-moderno e escreveu uma obra literária de excelência!

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May 18, 2017 Alex rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: north-american-literature

Uuuffff. finally !!!!
What started as a very cool and interesting idea (500 pages more or less) turned into a very boring adventure (the last 700 pages). In the last 4-5 pages there is again some glimpse of that Ferguson i loved in the beginning.
I was so 5 stars at first, i recommended the book, i give 2 stars because it played with my mind. i could not leave it not read, so I read diagonally to the end.
The story became at some point pointless. There is the interesting idea of the whole concept ...more

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Jan 28, 2017 Steffi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Da die parallel entwickelten Lebensentwürfe des jungen Ferguson die Lektüre erschweren, habe ich mich gleich für Ferguson 4 entschieden, bei dem sich früh eine Schriftsteller-Karriere abzeichnet. Abgestoßen von seinen sehr wohlhabenden Eltern (die sich allerdings von diesem Leben ebenfalls frustriert früh scheiden lassen), wendet er sich den Intellektuellen in der Familie zu. Insbesondere sein angeheirateter Onkel Don (ebenfalls Schriftsteller) und dessen Sohn Noah (fast gleichaltrig mit Ferguso Da die parallel entwickelten Lebensentwürfe des jungen Ferguson die Lektüre erschweren, habe ich mich gleich für Ferguson 4 entschieden, bei dem sich früh eine Schriftsteller-Karriere abzeichnet. Abgestoßen von seinen sehr wohlhabenden Eltern (die sich allerdings von diesem Leben ebenfalls frustriert früh scheiden lassen), wendet er sich den Intellektuellen in der Familie zu. Insbesondere sein angeheirateter Onkel Don (ebenfalls Schriftsteller) und dessen Sohn Noah (fast gleichaltrig mit Ferguson), der als clever und zynisch beschrieben wird, haben großen Einfluß auf ihn. Gerade diese beiden Personen haben mich für den Roman eingenommen. Umgeben von unangepassten Künstlern erlebt Ferguson die New Yorker Bohéme der 60er Jahre, hat Beziehungen, erste Erfolge und beschließt am Ende das vorliegende Buch zu schreiben.

Ferguson 2 dagegen kann man nur 2 Kapitel lang begleiten. Angefixt von seiner Cousine und deren Mann interessiert er sich für die Rosenbergs und Nixon und entwickelt linke Überzeugungen. Auch er hat literarische Ambitionen, gibt er doch bereits als 11-Jähriger eine Ein-Mann-Zeitung heraus. Mit 13 Jahren stirbt er unerwartet in einem Gewitter und auch wenn ich mich in diesem Mammutwerk auf den kurzen Ferguson-Lebenslauf gefreut habe, hätte mich diese von Politik besonders geprägte Version noch länger interessiert.

Ferguson 3 verliert früh seinen Vater bei einem Brand, an dem auch noch einer der Brüder Mitschuld trägt. Ferguson und seine Mutter fliehen daher aus New Jersey und Ferguson erlebt New York hier bereits als Schüler. Wobei weniger die freiheitliche, inspirierende Atmosphäre, die wir aus den Schilderungen um Ferguson 4 kennen, zu finden ist. Das New York der 50er Jahren erscheint dem Jungen und insbesondere seiner Mutter als heruntergekommen und gefährlich. Auch dieser Ferguson hat sich der Literatur verschrieben, doch verschlägt es ihn später nach Paris.

Ferguson 1 habe ich ausgelassen (Daniel Pennac erlaubt so etwas in seinen zehn Rechten des Lesers, postuliert in Wie ein Roman), weil 1250 Seiten einfach ne Menge Heu sind und ich fürchte, dass dieser Ferguson der Biederste von allen ist. Vermutlich sollte man diese Kapitel gerade deshalb lesen, weil sie am stärksten die Künstlerexistenz von Ferguson 4 kontrastieren.

Mir hat das Buch sehr gut gefallen, aber ich hätte es niemals so lesen können, wie Auster es konstruiert hat. Bereits bei den ersten Episoden merkte ich, dass ich beim Springen zwischen den Varianten völlig durcheinander komme. Wenn man die Kapitel je nach Version liest, ist das alles wunderbar geschrieben. Fast ein bisschen zu glatt, schließlich ist Auster auch für erzählerische Experimente bekannt, man denke nur an die The New York Trilogy. Das einzig Innovative ist in der Tat das Springen zwischen den Lebensentwürfen, aber das habe ich beim Lesen ja einfach negiert. Hartgesottene Auster-Fans dürften also vielleicht enttäuscht sein.

Faszinierend sind die Schilderungen der 50er und 60er Jahre (hier auch hin und wieder gerade im Kontrast zwischen den verschiedenen Entwürfen): Die Enge der 50er Jahre und der Aufbruch in den 60ern, aber vor allem das Entsetzen angesichts der Kriege in Korea und Vietnam, die Ermordung Kennedys, die Rassenunruhen... das zeichnet nicht nur ein treffendes Bild dieser Jahrzehnte, sondern lässt oft zudem an heutige Konflikte und Ängste denken. Auch der Kontrast zwischen den biederen Kleinstädten New Jerseys und dem pulsierenden New York wird jeweils sehr gut herausgearbeitet und erinnerte mich teils an andere Bücher wie Zeiten des Aufruhrs.

Fazit: Ein absolut lesbares und lesenswertes Buch, allerdings zu dick und unnötig konstruiert. ...more

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About Paul Auster

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Report from the Interior, Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Invisible, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. He has been awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature, the Prix Médicis Étranger, the Independent Spirit Award, and the Premio Napoli. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Ac ...more

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“Normal. What did normal mean, Ferguson asked himself , and why wasn't it normal for him to feel the way he did about wanting to kiss and make love to other boys, the sex of one-sex was just as normal and natural as the sex of two-sex sex, maybe even more normal and more natural because a cock was something boys understood better than girls, and therefore it was easier to know what the other person wanted without having to guess, without having to play the courtship and seduction games that could make the sex of two-sex sex confounding, and why did a person have to choose between one or the other, why block out one-half of the humanity in the name of normal or natural when the truth was that everyone was Both, and people and society and the laws and religions of people in different societies were just too afraid to admit it.” — 1 likes

“an exercise in the art of paying attention, and paying attention, Ferguson discovered, was the first step in learning how to be alive.” — 0 likes

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