Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #532733 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-17
• Released on: 2006-10-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780312426231
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Nathan Glass, a retired life insurance salesman estranged from his family and facing an iffy cancer prognosis, is "looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn." What he finds, though, in this ebullient novel by Brooklyn bard Auster (Oracle Night), is a vital, big-hearted borough brimming with great characters. These include Nathan's nephew, Tom, a grad student turned spiritually questing cab driver; Tom's serenely silent nine-year-old niece, who shows up on Tom's doorstep without her unstable mom; and a flamboyant book dealer hatching a scheme to sell a fraudulent manuscript of The Scarlet Letter. As Nathan recovers his soul through immersion in their lives, Auster meditates on the theme of sanctuary in American literature, from Hawthorne to Poe to Thoreau, infusing the novel's picaresque with touches of romanticism, Southern gothic and utopian yearning. But the book's presiding spirit is Brooklyn's first bard, Walt Whitman, as Auster embraces the borough's multitudes—neighborhood characters, drag queens, intellectuals manqué, greasy-spoon waitresses, urbane bourgeoisie—while singing odes to moonrise over the Brooklyn Bridge. Auster's graceful, offhand storytelling carries readers along, with enough shadow to keep the tale this side of schmaltz. The result is an affectionate portrait of the city as the ultimate refuge of the human spirit. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
After a "sad and ridiculous life" in the suburbs, Nathan Glass retires, gets divorced, and moves to Brooklyn to die. To pass the time, he decides to write an account of mishaps and mistakes, beginning with his own—"The Book of Human Folly." "The tone would be light and farcical throughout," he says, "and my only purpose was to keep myself entertained." Auster seems to have had a similar intent. A chance encounter with a long-lost nephew leads Nathan into an unlikely second act, involving a longer-lost niece, her runaway daughter, and a host of lively Brooklyn caricatures—a gay used-bookstore owner, a tough widow, an H.I.V.-positive drag queen—all in the midst of unlikely second acts themselves. Nathan narrates increasingly absurd events with persistent cheer, a tone mirrored by the blinkered optimism and liberal conviction of pre-9/11 Park Slope; it's a combination that soon seems less hopeful than hollow, and profoundly disengaged.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

From The Washington Post
I don't know if they still do it, but bookstores in college towns used to keep the novels of Paul Auster behind the cash register, out of customers' reach. Apparently they were among the most frequently shoplifted books, along with those by Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, whose Beat romances extolling life outside the bounds of polite society will surely be inspiring acts of literary larceny a hundred years from now.

Hard-up, light-fingered undergrads were probably drawn to Auster's earlier novels -- works like Moon Palace, The Music of Chance and those making up his New York Trilogy -- because they contained all kinds of brooding, fate-tossed characters whose existential angst aggrandized their own. They may also have found irresistible Auster's plots, many of which hinged on fantastic coincidences that irrevocably altered his characters' lives. When you're 19 and living away from your parents for the first time, it's exciting to think that some chance encounter might usher you toward your destiny.

But any young scholar thinking about claiming the five-finger discount on The Brooklyn Follies, Auster's newest, might want to wait and see if other, more licit, discounts will eventually apply. After all, selection by Oprah Winfrey for her book club usually results in a significantly reduced price at the major chain bookstores.

What's that? Paul Auster jockeying for a spot on the midcult must-read list? Wait a second -- he writes intricately structured, darkly ironic novels of ideas, doesn't he? Don't worry. He still can; just witness Oracle Night, his 2003 meditation on literature's puzzling relationship to consciousness. Still, for whatever reason, Auster has decided that the time has come to try something much more conventional: a big-hearted, life-affirming, tenderly comic yarn. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But really, how will this piece of candy be greeted by those who have grown accustomed to the darker, stronger stuff?

With gratitude and encouragement, one hopes. In many ways, The Brooklyn Follies is a welcome sign that Auster, whose fictional universe can too often seem mechanistic and overdetermined, is finally relaxing a little. Nathan Glass, the story's 59-year-old narrator, is the rare Austerian figure who could be described as easygoing. Though his life has hardly been trouble-free -- his ex-wife hates him, his only daughter resents him, and he's just undergone treatment for lung cancer -- he's remarkably unhaunted and greets life's obstacles with good humor and equanimity. Though he tells us in his first sentence that he has moved from the suburbs back to Brooklyn, where he was born, "looking for a quiet place to die," it's not long before we realize the whole Thanatos thing is just part of his shtick. Nathan is really looking for a good place to start over.

When he encounters his nephew, Tom, working behind the counter at a local bookstore, the two reconnect instantly and become inseparable. Like his Uncle Nat, Tom is floundering: The former academic star has jettisoned his aspirations as a teacher and literary critic and is living alone in a tiny apartment, waiting for meaning to return to his life. And then it does, literally walking into his front door in the form of his 9-year-old niece, Lucy: the daughter of a troubled sister who has disappeared. But if Tom and Nathan think that Lucy's arrival will help clear up the mystery of what happened to her mother, they're mistaken. Though she's clearly intelligent, and more than a little cagey, the child is absolutely silent on that matter and all others.

In the meantime, Tom has become smitten with a neighborhood beauty -- married with kids -- whom he barely knows. A trip to New England introduces two more troubled souls: a morose innkeeper, perpetually mourning for his late wife, and his middle-aged daughter, fearful of a spinster's future. The manner in which everyone's miseries converge and nullify one another is what defines The Brooklyn Follies, ultimately, as a comedy. Suffice it to say that by the end, the partner-less are happily partnered, the long-lost are returned, and love finally flourishes where dread once thrived. All just in time for Sept. 11, 2001 -- the day Nathan ends his account. Dread has just been forestalled, of course, not vanquished.

"Never underestimate the power of books," Nathan reminds us. Taken out of context, it's a banal proverb. But juxtaposed with another passage from The Brooklyn Follies, it cuts straight to the theme at the heart of so much of Auster's work: that the stories we tell one another are more than mere entertainments. In one of Tom's many literary discussions with his uncle, he relays the anecdote of Kafka and the doll. Near the end of his life, living in Berlin with his lover, Kafka went for a walk in the park and saw a little girl crying. He asked her what the matter was, and she told him that she had lost her doll. Without missing a beat, Kafka assured the little girl that the doll wasn't lost, only traveling; Kafka knew this for a fact, he said, because the doll had written him a letter describing her journeys, which he promised to bring the girl the next day. Every day for three weeks, he brought the girl a new letter that he had spent much of the previous night composing, until she could no longer remember why she had been sad in the first place. "She has the story," Tom tells Nathan, "and when a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear."

Reviewed by Jeff Turrentine
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

The Mundane becomes the Miraculous
Nathan is a retired life insurance salesman who has lung cancer that has gone into remission. Recently divorced, the assets split amicably, he decides to go back to his roots and live the rest of his life in Brooklyn. He rents a flat in his old neighbourhood and slowly settles into what seems to be a quiet retirement. Nathan has also started to write a book of sorts, "The Book of Human Folly", an account of every blunder, embarrassment, idiocy and inane act he has committed and experienced throughout his long life. These tales of life's absurdities are also about other people, revealing the pure folly of the human condition. The narrative for the most part centres on Nathan's nephew, Tom, a failed academic who has given up on life, where they coincidentally meet in Brooklyn, and grow to be good friends. This short summary may appear boring, a book about normal people living mundane lives, but that's what makes this novel so good, the mundane becomes the miraculous, the ordinary the extraordinary.

Paul Auster is arguably one of the greatest living American writers working today. Reading his novel's is a captivating journey into the extraordinary, a glimpse at possibilities, an opportunity to view the world from a different perspective, and in some cases, one changes and sees life differently, a sometimes for the better.

I'll never forget my first Auster novel, "A New York Trilogy" becoming totally submerged in a world so alien, so odd and so fascinating, that it was astounding to discover an author with such talent and erudition. This writer had something special happening, thus I read everything I could get my hands on: "Moon Palace", "The Music of Chance", "Leviathan" and "Mr.Vertigo", which happens to be one of the most original tales to come out in the last twenty-five years. "The Brooklyn Follies" had me enthralled from the first chapter, wanting to know more about these characters, their talents, loves and mishaps, coming to the conclusion, that we are by and large a strange species, and at bottom, it is our need for companionship, love if you will, that gets us into trouble but also keeps us struggling, at times making life worth living, and sometimes a living hell.

Nathan is at worst a cynic, although a man who really wants to do the right thing, help his apathetic nephew, reconnect with his only daughter, innocently flirt with the married waitress at his lunchtime haunt, (which has dire consequences) and write about the human condition. Nathan is everyman, a good soul and has grown not to take life too seriously, which he has discovered comes with age.

This is a compelling novel about ordinary people with dreams and aspirations, disappointments and triumphs, embarrassments and success - a depiction of the modern human condition with all its craziness, stupidity and humour.

An excellent novel.

All Lives In Some Ways Are Folly
In this book, Auster gives us a slight variation on his usual style. This book is more jovial, more amusing and less intellectual than most of his prior work, but with no less impact. Perhaps the jovial authorial style is relative to the fact that Auster is trying to point out that our lives are fun, sadness and Folly.

Our protagonist is a 59 year old retired insurance salesman who decides after a bout with cancer to get divorced and to move back to Brooklyn, the home of his youth. During his first several months as a returning resident of Brooklyn, Nathan engages in writing a book called "Human Follies." In fact, it is much of his own folly he tries to prepare to put in his book. And yet, through the process of living in Brooklyn and meeting people he knew and did not know, Auster elucidates their lives as seen by Nathan and Nathan interprets for us how the events are both folly and serious.

While the story is based on a family in crisis, it is also based on Brooklyn, morality, politics, sex and love; it is also based on the follies of the human mind. Auster shows that folly is a part of all people's lives, and that so is the business of living. The characters in this book are involved with many messy life mistakes, but the book is also about redemption. Those who have thrown their lives to the winds of Folly, can at some point, reclaim their lives and go on. Perhaps the goal is to be happy, no matter what one's life and Follies represent. If one is happy, then what more can one really and truly ask of life?

The book is recommended for all readers who are observers of life and its various vicissitudes. It is intense in its observations, but easy to read and absorb. Once again, Auster has created a true masterpiece of modern literature. All readers who are looking for a clue to the life of fun and folly should read this book. It has serious and significant enlightenments on the ways in which people meet the challenges of life, some surviving, and some not surviving. Truly a great read, it is highly recommended.

Thoroughly Enjoyable, If Not Classic, Auster
The year 2005 seems to have been an unusually "out of genre" year among established fiction writers. Cormac McCarthy abandoned his cowboy roots for a serial killer (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN), Amy Tan ran to Myanmar for her "ghost-written" SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING, Kazuo Ishiguro dabbled at the edges of science fiction (NEVER LET ME GO), and even the great Garcia Marquez left the realms of magical realism to write his own Lolita tale in MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES. Early 2006 brings THE BROOKLYN FOLLIES, Paul Auster's departure from his usual haunts.

Nathan Glass (no apparent relation to the Salinger Glasses), divorced, alone, and having battled his cancer into remission, chooses Brooklyn over Florida as the place he will live out his remaining years. "I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn,..." Nathan reports in one of the more memorable opening lines of recent years. As it turns out, Brooklyn is anything but quiet for him, and rather than dying, he finds his own fountain of youth there.

Nathan retires to Brooklyn expecting to do little more than scribble out amusing anecdotes for his never-to-be-published Book of Human Folly, but events conspire quickly against his plans. First, he stumbles upon his cousin Tom, a former Ph.D. candidate now working in the neighborhood used and rare bookstore of Harry Brightman. Tom's own niece, nine-year-old Lucy, appears next, parentless, intentionally mute, and hailing from what she refers to as Carolina, Carolina. A trip to Vermont ensues in an effort to deliver Lucy to Tom's reluctant stepsister, Pamela, but that plan is interrupted by a sudden death back in Brooklyn. Finally, and with the help of an insurance investigator, Nathan searches out Lucy's mother, the wayward Aurora who has married an increasingly radicalized evangelical Christian. Along the way, Harry Brightman is revealed to have once been Harry Dunkel (Dunkel means "dark," Auster tells us), a man with a shady past in forged paintings and new shady plans to make a financial killing in forged manuscripts, Tom meets the Beautiful Perfect Mother (B.P.M.), Nathan meets the mother of the Beautiful Perfect Mother, Nathan's daughter Rachel returns to his family fold, Nathan formulates a new utopian life plan with the unlikely-named Stanley Chowder, and Tom finds wedded bliss in an unlikely place.

Nathan's own "Brooklyn Follies" far outpace his "Book of Human Folly" as Auster plays games of chance and circumstance with his characters. Everyone's best laid plans are diverted by random coincidences and the unintended consequences of their own decisions, exemplified to an unnecessary extreme when Nathan learns that his car's mechanical failure in Vermont may actually have saved his, Tom's and Lucy's lives because the brakes were about to fail. Yet at the same time Auster is playing dice with his characters, he is delivering his own riffs on city life, family relationships, divorce, literature, Christian fundamentalism, Bush II's first non-election, Republican Party policies, homosexuality and AIDS.

THE BROOKLYN FOLLIES represents a departure from the usual Auster work, presenting a sort of Brooklyn picaresque that reads more like something from Richard Brautigan or T.Coraghessan Boyle. Readers expecting another CITY OF GLASS or MOON PALACE will be disappointed, but those who read FOLLIES for the pure pleasure of reading Paul Auster will surely be rewarded by an entertaining story with offbeat but charmingly memorable characters.