invisible' by paul auster

‘Invisible’ by Paul Auster

This is a review of ‘Invisible’ by Paul Auster in the form of a letter to the author. Warning: since I reveal much of the plot in the review, I suggest that you read this only if you have read the book or have no intention of reading it! And, if the latter, consider this: Auster is one of the most original and interesting authors writing today and I highly recommend this book, or any other of the dozen or so books he has written.

Paul Auster's books are compact gems, rich in detail, with prose that is transparent -- instantly immersing the reader inside a fascinating, deceptively complex universe only Paul Auster could create. Each well-crafted sentence contains something essential that, if left out, would subtly change the meaning of the whole. Not unlike another of his books, ‘The Book of

Illusions’, ‘Invisible’ is rich in details that could be true or fictional; details that unfold and then suddenly fold back on themselves, resulting in a tale that invites endless analysis and speculation. You want to know; why did he say it that way? How did his protagonist feel when that happened? What was the protagonist thinking when he wrote that? If you accept the story as true or partly true, its one story; if you believe it to be fiction, it's another; or maybe there are elements of truth and fiction, mirroring life's many contradictions.

Invisible is one of those rare books that invite endless discussion. In the end, it left me with questions I thought only Auster could answer. With that in mind – as well as a desire to take a slightly different approach to writing this review – I wrote the review as a letter to Auster. At first, I had no intention of sending it; I just thought that a review written as a letter would be more interesting. However, after I finished it (or nearly finishing it), I thought, why not send it? So I did. It wasn't hard to find Auster's address online. I already knew he had two apartments in Brooklyn; one for writing and the other where he and his wife live. But I couldn't bring myself to send it without a lot of self-conscious editing – it's amazing how writing to an accomplished author heightens one's anxiety. In the end, I realized I could never match Auster's fluid style without ending up with a stilted imitation of his prose. So, into the envelope and off it went!

That's how this review came about. If I get a reply from Paul Auster, I'll revise this posting and let you know what he said.

© Paul Schlieben -1- synaptia.blogspot.com

‘Invisible’ by Paul Auster

RE: Invisible

Dear Paul,

I like to dissect the books I read, if for no other reason than that I’m more likely to remember them. My wife, on the other hand, plows through four times as many books as I do (she acts as my filter), but she usually doesn’t remember details weeks later. This extra scrutiny is not a compulsive habit, in fact it hasn’t been a habit at all; it’s a skill I’m trying to cultivate. I’m almost 65 and retired. Perhaps I have too much time on my hands; but I like to think that, finally, I have enough time to indulge my curiosity; to get below the surface of things. A consequence of our educational system is to suppress curiosity – don’t embarrass your teacher by asking question he/she can’t answer – learn this to get a good grade, forget that. But my spotty education is a story for another day.

It often happens that I’m not sure how I feel about a book until I’ve studied it for a while. The best example is Edward P. Jones book, The Known World. I didn’t appreciate The Known World until I began discussing it with friends. The more I talked, the more I realized what a brilliant work it is. It was a revelation. In the course of an hour, I came to respect Jones for his ability to inhabit each of his characters so convincingly; even cruel, brutal characters that one might assume, as a black writer, he would have found impossible to represent sympathetically. Ever since, this book remains a symbol of the rewards that justify just digging.

There are many other books and films that have had a similar effect on me. Louis De Bernieres’ Correlli’s Mandolin is one of my favorites. As a fusion of history and richly drawn characters, it explores a panoply of emotions – love, fear, humor, valor, vanity, war, and so on – brilliantly. There’s one magic moment about 100 pages in – it’s been years since I read it and I was just trying to locate the passage and failed, but if you’ve read it, you’ll remember the scene – Captain Correlli is leading his troop of musician- soldiers up the beach and, just as they draw even with Pelagria, a young woman in particular interest to Correlli, the troupe spontaneously transforms itself into a hilarious assortment of clowns. In this one scene, De Bernieres performs a fascinating kind of magic. In that one instance, it captured my life-long admiration. Truthfully, I’ve given away dozen’s of copies in the past 15 years!

And not only are books worth extra effort. How did the movie Nobody’s Fool – in some ways, better than Russo’s book – come to be my all-time favorite? Not Titanic, not Jurassic Park, certainly not It’s a Wonderful Life. I’ve replayed scenes and dialogue from Nobody’s Fool for years. It speaks to my heart in so many ways. Like Jessica Tandy’s poignant comment to Sully (Paul Newman), as she looks out her back window at a broken tree, expressing the conviction that, for her, like that tree, this will probably be her last winter (It was). Paul Newman’s portrayal of the emotional stunted, scarred, hapless, but not hopeless, Sully was, in my opinion, Newman’s best performance. My familiarity with the depressed Hudson River cities of Beacon and Newburgh, where the movie was filmed, might have been a factor, but it goes well beyond that. Each of the


‘Invisible’ by Paul Auster characters represents real people who inhabit my memory indelibly. It was familiar and, at the same time, revealing of something beautiful and new. Maybe it’s because I came close to becoming Sully myself. But that’s not why I’m writing you.

Nine or ten years ago, I remember listening to your voice on the radio, when you managed NPR’s National Story Project. You calm, perfectly modulated voice conveyed a keen appreciation for each of the stories submitted. When I read your books, I hear the same voice.

OK, now, help me make “Invisible” indelible. Here’s my frustrated effort to describe your book to a friend.

The story is constructed as a short memoir, a work in progress, entitled “1967”, written in three parts by the protagonist Adam Walker, a man now in his late 50s living in California and dying of leukemia. In chapter 1, Spring, Adam is a somewhat diffident, shy but exceptionally well-read English student at Columbia. At a party, Rudolf Born, 36, and his French girlfriend, Margo, 29 or 30, approach Adam. Adam asks if Born is a descendant of a 13th Century French soldier-poet, Bertran de Born, who is represented in Dante’s Inferno, carrying a “severed head like a lantern.” Eric Born claims no relation, but is amused and impressed with Adams erudition, or pretends to be. A few days later, Born seeks Adam out again and makes an extraordinary offer to fund a literary magazine of which Adam is to be editor and chief. Born invites Adam to have dinner with him and Margo at their apartment to discuss a business arrangement. That evening at dinner, Born’s volatile, abusive behavior might have discouraged a more mature, confident man, but Adam was seduced – subtly corrupted – by the prospects of editing a magazine and, not so subtly seduced by the prospect of seeing Margo again. That evening, Born is called away to France to take care of some “family” business. During his absence, Adam has a short but intense 5-day affair with Margo. When Born returns, Margo immediately returns to Paris. When Adam meets him again, Born confronts Adam about the affair (an affair he seems to have encouraged at their dinner before his departure); but puts that aside and suggests a walk down Riverside Drive to find a restaurant to have dinner and discuss plans for the magazine. On the way, on a poorly lit section of street adjacent Riverside Park, a young, nervous black man holding a gun tries to stick them up. Born pulls out a switchblade and stabs him. Born tells Adam to do nothing, just walk away. Instead, Walker runs for help. Meanwhile, Born drags his victim into the park, stabs him several more times, and then disappears. The body is found and reported in the news the next day. In a note, Born threatens Adam, telling him not to report what has transpired to the police. Walker agonizes about going to the police and by the time he does, days later, Born had escaped to Paris, beyond the reach of the law.

This act of violence is the central crime of the book, but this is not a crime story.

The second Chapter, Summer, focuses instead on Adam Walker’s relationship with his sister, Gwyn.

Adam, unusually close to his sister who is just a year or two older than he is, tells her the entire story. She has just graduated from college and takes a job in NY. That summer,


‘Invisible’ by Paul Auster they decide to share Adam’s recently vacated apartment. (This is where the retelling becomes tricky!) Remember, Adam is dying as he writes this memoir. He is blocked and having difficulty with this next chapter. He writes to a former college friend, Jim, now a successful author (possibly, Paul Auster himself), and sends him a copy of the first chapter. Adam is aware that soon Jim will be attending a conference in California and invites Jim to dinner at his house in the hope that Jim will be able to suggest a way forward. They agree to meet at Walker’s home in six weeks. In the meantime, Jim sends Adam a letter with some writerly suggestions, which seem to help, because in just four weeks Jim receives the next chapter, Summer, written in the second person singular instead of the first person singular; a voice that suggests that this could have happened to you or anyone else in my position.

In this chapter, Adam describes his incestuous relationship with Gwyn that occurred four years earlier while they were in high school and their parents were away – an event they mutually agreed would be a once-only experiment. But after Gwyn moved in with Adam that summer, once again, they became incestuous lovers, until Adam departs for Paris for his junior year abroad. I’m leaving out the effect that the death of their younger brother years earlier, and the subsequent debilitating mental state of their mother, and to a lesser extent, their father, had on Adam and Gwyn; and other factors that might rationalize their relationship, but I have to leave out something!

Rather than write him and respond to this new chapter, Jim decides to wait since he will be seeing Adam in just a few weeks. But Adam dies just days before Jim arrives at his California home. His stepdaughter, having consulted Adam’s appointment calendar, meets Jim there and hands him a sealed envelope containing a cryptic version of the third Chapter. Adam lacked the energy to complete it. He left instructions for his stepdaughter to erase the manuscript from his computer, which she does. (Echoes of Book of Illusions?) Jim has the only copies of Adam’s memoir.

Chapter three, Fall, Adam’s final chapter recounting the events of 1967, describes the weeks he spent in Paris. He searches out and resumes an affair with Margot and, shortly afterwards, Born happens upon Adam at a café and invites him to dinner with his finance’, Helene, and her 18-year old daughter, Cecile. … [Enough regurgitation!]

How to peal away the narrative to expose the characters? How do I de-contextualize this story to get at its essence? What is that essential truth you, Paul, set out to teach us (or discover yourself) about these disparate lives? Contrasting guilt born by a man of conscience vs. true evil, void of conscience?

It’s impossible for me to peel away anything without introducing distortions. Your prose is compressed full of essential detail and, if I strip any of it away in its retelling, I know I’m leaving out important details. I could just say, Hey, great book, read it. But, I want to discover (or know) as much as you did about your characters, by the time you finished your story.

So, I’ll just focus on a few things. On the one hand, Adam faults himself for not quickly notifying the police about Born’s murder of the would-be mugger. By the time he does,


‘Invisible’ by Paul Auster Born is back in France. The ambiguity of the attack – what might be considered by some a justifiable knifing of a mugger holding a gun – poses a moral dilemma for Adam, but not for Born. If Born had been apprehended, he probably would have been acquitted. But Adam knows the mugger’s brutal death was avoidable. They could have simply handed over their wallets, or, as it turned out, since Born was quite capable of defending himself, he could have disarmed the mugger and called the police. The event exposed Born to be a brutal man, accustomed to violence – even relishing it. That Born dragged the would-be mugger into the park and stabbed him twelve times with the intent of disguising the nature of his death, exposed Born’s vicious nature to Adam. Born was without remorse, motivated only be a desire to avoid being inconvenienced. But it haunted Adam, and he was determined to find a way to punish Born, even, as it turned out, if it was only to prevent his marriage to a woman in Paris.

The crime and subsequent events of 1967 had a profound affect on Adam. And part of that experience was his incestuous relationship with Gwyn. At the time neither felt remorse or guilt – there was no victim; their behavior harmed nobody – but, facing death himself, these memories – murder and incest – plagued him enough to become the only events of his entire life he felt compelled to write about. The taboo against incest, perhaps the most forbidden victimless crime, was such that while Adam and Gwyn professed innocence at the time, 40 years later, as he approached his own death, it demanded that it be confessed, even if only to a former classmate; now a well-known author who might be sympathetic and know what to make of it all. The underlying irony of this story is that, on the one hand, as a silent witness to a violent act, and for breaking a social taboo against incest, Adam suffered lifelong remorse, while another man who has led a complicitous, manipulative existence and could be branded truly evil – a man who had murdered more than once – is completely void of remorse. The story boarders on the allegorical, if we consider the ways in which nation states behave today. But that may be a bit of a stretch.

Adam had no intention of meeting Born in Paris, but Born sought Adam out and approached him at a café. After excoriating Adam about going to the police, nevertheless, inexplicably invites him to dinner with his fiancé, Helene, and her young daughter, Cecile. To what end? What manipulative scheme is Born hatching? Certainly, he has no intention of resurrecting their publishing deal. That was out of the question. Is he somehow attracted to Adam? Does he see Adam as a potential protégé to be lured into a darker existence? At first Adam declines, but then he hatches a plan of his own to expose Born to his fiancé, so Adam accepts Born’s dinner invitation to get close to Helene and Cecile. Eventually, he carries out his plan, telling Helene of Born’s violent crime and, even though her eyes tell Adam she believes him, Helene becomes infuriated and throws him out. (Did another devastating truth of which Adam was unaware reveal itself to Helene?) This was followed the next day by an angry snub by Cecile, with whom Adam had started to have a plutonic (his view) love affair (her’s). She spits in his face.

Young Adam is no match for Born. Behind his cover as a professor, Born is really a government agent, spy, torturer and well-connected political operative who quickly arranges for Adam’s mock-arrest and expulsion from France.


‘Invisible’ by Paul Auster This is the end of Adams story, or all that he was able to complete before he died. Jim puts the manuscript aside and returns to NY to finish another project. Months later, Jim and his wife have an opportunity to visit Paris. While there, Jim tries to contact Born, Helene, Margo and Cecile. Only Cecile, now in her late fifties, is alive, working as a literary scholar for a government cultural agency. Jim meets with Cecile, culminating (I hate that I have to leave some much out!) in the final chapter; Cecile’s diary entries – too painful for her to verbalize – that describe her visit a few years earlier to Born, then in his 70s and living on a remote Caribbean island, in a drafty castle-like home atop a mountain accessible only by foot. Except for three black servants, he lives alone. During her visit, bizarrely, Born invites her to stay, marry him and help him write his memoir. Mischievously, he tells her how he had arranged for Adam’s expulsion from Paris years earlier and, later on, obliquely, as if suggesting a plot for a novel, confesses his murder of Cecile’s own father, who in the early 60s had discover that he, Born, was a double agent and had threatened to expose him. Upon hearing this, Cecile departs immediately, taking only what she could fit in her purse. Born sits with his back to her, ignoring her departure. Then, a curious detail – perhaps metaphorical; of what, I’m not sure – as Cecile descends the mountain, she hears what at first sounds like cicadas, growing louder has she descends. Upon reaching the base of the mountain, she discovers that what she’s been hearing is the sound of dozens of black men and women in a field pounding on stones with hammers and chisels. They were not prisoners, not chained, “they were making money.”

Help me understand this detail. What did you intend for me to infer? I was going to begin this letter with that question – maybe I should have – but thought that if I worked through the story on my own, it would come to me. I understand the illusion to the Provencal poet, Bertran de Born and how it presaged Rudolf Born’s nefarious character. I think I understand the title, Invisible. If we accept that all of the names and places have been changed (if they had been real) at Gwyn’s request “to protect the innocent”; and, further, accept the possibility that Jim is Paul Auster, and that a college friend really did send him this manuscript (or might have); and that the events described might have really happened ... Then, ironically, the characters are rendered “invisible” as their identities have been made opaque. This is another book of illusions. And let’s not forget Margo; is she duplicitous? Does she remain with Born after they’ve returned to Paris? Does Born learn that Adam is in Paris from her? When Born leaves for London, is it to be with Margo? Is Margo sleeping with Adam motivated by affection or self-loathing, or something else?

Returning to the possibility that this is in some way allegorical, then are the invisible beings the dead mugger, Williams, and all those black men and woman hammering on rocks, “…making money”? Does Born’s unremorseful indifference and Cecile’s descent of the mountain portend an uprising of an invisible class? Are these stand-ins for the masses ignored by the forces represented by Adam and Born? And, if this is allegorical, who or what do Adam and Born represent? And who or what are Margo or Gwyn? In this respect, did the scope of the novel change as you wrote it?


‘Invisible’ by Paul Auster There you have it: Born, clever, truly evil, spiritually void, occupying an airy mountain top rather than the hell of Dante’s Inferno; the world turned on its head, the meek, biding their time? “Making money”? For whom? To what end?

Hmm … I think I’m reading too much into this. Maybe the answers will come to me in my sleep. One last thought: by introducing the possibility that the events really did happen, that there really was an Adam Walker and Rudolf Born and so on, does the story becomes more credible and real, and thus more compelling?

I’m amazed that you were able accomplish so much here. Each detail, each sentence is essential, as if spoken in perfect pitch. Indelible. Thanks.

Yours truly,

Paul Schlieben


invisible' by paul auster

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