Paul Auster, Oracle Night
Sidney Orr is a writer in convalescence. A serious illness almost cost him his life, and he recuperates progressively, taking strolls in his neighborhood in Brooklyn. One day, he comes across a stationery store owned by a strange Chinese man named M. R. Chang. Sidney buys some supplies, among which a very appealing notebook with a blue cover, made in Portugal. Fascinated by the notebook, Sidney begins to write, which had not happened to him ever since his illness. The story that he begins is inspired by an anecdote from The Maltese Falcon, and the idea to develop it into a novel has been provided by John Trause, a very good friend of his and his wife Grace’s.
The story within the story is about a man, Nick Bowen, who decides to leave his wife and his whole life, after a gargoyle detaches itself from a wall, almost killing him. This near encounter with death propels him to flight to Kansas City, where he meets a taxi driver named Ed Victory, who detains the key to his new life. From his old existence, he has nothing except a manuscript from the grandmother of a woman he has just fallen in love with; Rosa Leightman. The manuscript, The Oracle Night, is about a man with a gift of prophecy…
Apparently a story within a story within a story, the novel is really about nine days in the life of the writer; Sidney Orr. It narrates his path to recovery, which will become a Kafkaian journey to self-discovery and awareness, a fateful journey in which the course of his existence will be altered, and which will ultimately reveal to him the ironies and fragility of life. Oracle Night shows how the boundaries between fiction and life can be paper thin, even porous, giving fiction the solidity of reality and reality the texture of dreams…
I had read one Paul Auster’s novel before (The New York Trilogy), more than ten years ago, and frankly, I don’t remember what I thought of it. I don’t know why I haven’t read another Auster’s novel since, but I will definitely read more now. It has been a long time since I haven’t read a novel that drew me in so quickly and so completely. What I remember from the New York Trilogy and which is true too in Oracle Night is that Paul Auster’s New York is magical, both oppressive and dreamlike, and that when I went there I did not experience the same New York. I suppose that Auster’s New York (to divert the words of a famous singer) is a state of mind…
Rating: 5/5
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