Four ways to write a novel
Paula Green is joyfully absorbed by Paul Auster’s clever, complicated new novel.
Paul Auster’s new novel, 4321,isa wondrous read. From the first page, I thought I was entering an epic Dickens-like story that was prepared to travel slowly, and brick by brick, street by street, character by character, build a sumptuous, juddery world. Yet by the second section, I realised that Auster was characteristically playing with the craft of storytelling.
The novel is primarily set in New York City in the 1960s. It features Ferguson, his parents, and extended family and friends. What makes the book different, addictively different, is that Auster delivers four versions of Ferguson, four narrative threads that count down to four different endings.
Ferguson lives in the same body with the same parents and friends, with a drive to both love and write, but the houses, scenarios, and outcomes are different. The prospect of keeping track of four distinctive yet overlapping Fergusons felt slightly terrifying at the start, yet the connections and disconnections are absorbing. It is as though each version makes the other so much more poignant in the light of what happens, what might have happened, and what will happen.
The highly detailed backdrop makes a difference because every Ferguson version envelops you in the ‘‘churning’’ world of the late 1960s: the student revolts, the anti-Vietnam protests, the Kennedy assassinations, the Cold War, the nuclear threat, the racial intolerance, the black activism. Politics matter. The characters are not outside this global explosion of viewpoints; they are right in the thick of making choices, of protesting, not protesting, of challenging hierarchies.
The political context is reason enough to read the novel, flaring and thought-provoking in these times, but Auster delivers much more. Ferguson is always a reader and a movie fan. I devoured the book on first reading; now I want to dawdle over Ferguson’s commentaries on his literary and cinematic discoveries, along with those of his diverse mentors. I plan to make a re-reading and viewing list.
As much as there is a roving intellect at work, there is heart. The family scenarios shift. It made me weep to see the mother and father evolve through pain, loss and celebration, to see Ferguson’s different sexual attachments splinter and kindle. Circumstances change, but there is an utterly necessary commitment to love and to mourn, to learn and to question.
Finally, this is a glorious rendition of how writing comes into being; of what goads a writer – whether journalist, reviewer or novelist – to write out of his or her skin.
This astonishing, breathtaking book represents the kind of fictional sweep that makes life sing within a tumultuous world. It feels like Auster put his heart and soul into this novel, and every drop of experience. Read it.