An old man sits in a room, with a single door and window, a bed, a desk and a chair. Each day he awakes with no memory, unsure of whether or not he is locked into the room. Attached to the few objects around him are one-word, hand-written labels, and on the desk is a series of vaguely familiar black-and-white photographs and four piles of paper. Then a middle-aged woman called Anna enters and talks of pills and treatment, but also of love and promises. Who is this Mr Blank, and what is his fate? What does Anna represent ...
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An old man sits in a room, with a single door and window, a bed, a desk and a chair. Each day he awakes with no memory, unsure of whether or not he is locked into the room. Attached to the few objects around him are one-word, hand-written labels, and on the desk is a series of vaguely familiar black-and-white photographs and four piles of paper. Then a middle-aged woman called Anna enters and talks of pills and treatment, but also of love and promises. Who is this Mr Blank, and what is his fate? What does Anna represent from his past - and will he have enough time to ever make sense of the clues that arise? After the huge success of The Brooklyn Follies, his new novel sees Auster return to the metaphysical territory familiar from his enormously influential The New York Trilogy. A dark puzzle, and a game that implicates both reader and writer alike, Travels in the Scriptorium is a mind-altering exploration of language, responsibility and the passage of time. 'Travels in the Scriptorium returns to . . . the nihilistic gaiety of Beckett (in particular Krapp) or the sub-dermal violence of Pinter.' New Statesman
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Add this copy of Travels in the Scriptorium: a Novel to cart. $0.99, good condition, Sold by Dream Books Co. rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Denver, CO, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by Picador.
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I am a huge fan of Paul Auster - indeed, he's one of my all-time favorite authors. And this novel (so short it's almost a novella) starts out with all the surreal promise many of his books fulfill - an unnamed old man wakes up in a room, with no memory of how he's gotten there and only small clues around the room to help guide him through his day.
That day gets odder but in many ways more mundane (long passages about the man we begin to call Mr. Blank wondering where the closet door is, etc.) and eventually we do get a payoff - slightly - on who he is and why he is there. But it's a pretty mild payoff.
What makes me lean towards not recommending this book is that, if anything, I'm the target audience for this book. It's not just an Auster work, he references characters from many of his prior books - only by name and without context, so it wouldn't be noticeable by someone who isn't a fan. (Or, in many cases for me, for someone who hasn't read those specific works in a long time.) It's very "inside baseball" and clever by about half.
Paul Auster has loads of great novels, and two of his more recent efforts, The Brooklyn Follies and Oracle Night are both superior to this. I'd pass, and cross my fingers that he'll return to form with his next work.
