Paul Auster, Travels in the Scriptorium
The main character of this story is an old man in a very functional room, with only a bed, a chair, a desk with piles of manuscripts and photographs and a telephone. He doesn’t know who he is, he doesn’t even know if he is locked or not, and he is too busy with the few memories he has to check. Maybe he is also afraid to find out… People come and visit him: Anna, who feeds him and helps him wash and dress himself, James P. Flood, ex-policeman, Sophie, who takes turn with Anna in taking care of him, or again Samuel Farr, his doctor, who gives him pills that might or might not be the cause of his memory loss. These people seem to have a grudge against him, but as hard as he tries, he doesn’t remember them. Pictures from them in their earlier years, in different situations, light brief recognition in his mind. The situation of Mr. Blank (locked for a reason unknown to him), reminded me of The Trial, by Kafka.
For Auster’s constant reader, these riddles are not too hard to solve. These characters: Anna Blume, Samuel Farr, Sophie Fanshawe, Peter Stillman, David Zimmer or Daniel Quinn, are all characters from previous Paul Auster’s novels. They reproach their creator, Mr. Blank (without it being said that he is indeed their creator, that he is a writer, or that themselves are characters), with sending them on perilous missions. As Flood says "you’re cruel… cruel and indifferent to the pain of others. You play with people’s lives and take no responsibility for what you’ve done."
While in his room, Mr. Blank is reading a manuscript, left on his desk. This story within the story takes place in a world with an alternate history, a man named Graf is a prisoner, in an outpost at the border of civilization, before the Alien territories, which are territories occupied by tribes of Primitives. Graf is expected to write a report concerning his previous mission in the Alien Territories, but for what purpose? The story is attributed to a John Trause (!), and left unfinished. Mr Blank, "furious that he has been compelled to read a story that has no ending, an unfinished work that has barely even begun, a mere bloody fragment", provides the ending of the story himself, a story with a political message that won’t escape the reader.
Travels in the Scriptorium is a short metafiction. Reading the reviews on amazon.com, I realized many people didn’t like it ("furious that [they] ha[ve] been compelled to read a story that has no ending, etc.), and also because they don’t like to be reminded that they are reading a fiction. But ,as I have read in an interview, Auster wants to "break the wall between fiction and reality", and he manages it pretty well. However, I wouldn’t recommend this book to someone reading Auster for the first time, since he refers to characters and situations from his previous novels. One doesn’t need to know all his novels to enjoy Travels, but having read some of them helps (I haven’t read them all but it turns out I have read these from which the characters are drawn). In fact, I doubt this was intentional, but as a reader, I could identify with Mr. Blank looking at the pictures: while each picture seemed familiar, I had to do a real effort of memory (or even, reread my previous reviews), to place each character within the rightful novel. I really enjoyed Travels and liked the final twist, the reason why Mr. Blank is locked in a room and visited by his "ghosts"; the ending reminded me of a novel I read recently: The Cavern of Ideas, by Jose Carlos Somoza, which also blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality. Travels in the Scriptorium is, to paraphrase Auster’s own words, a testimony to the power of fiction in the real world and his novels are always a great pleasure to read…
Rating: 4,5/5
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