Entertain me, and I will return. Full stop

When i saw the Joy Division shirt i knew i was in the right place.

The zany music bed must be expunged.

I have only read the first section of 4321, but I remember enjoying it quite a lot. The young boy was extremely likable. When I started the second section, I did not immediately warm to it, though I can’t remember why. I will try again someday.

Thanks for making this video. I was also really saddened to hear of Paul Auster's death, and it's comforting to see someone else sharing his love for him, and being able to keep him alive in that way at least. You actually encapsulated an intuitive feeling I've had ever since I first read Auster but never knew how to put into words: that he's not really an all-the-way postmodernist, but has an important grounding in realism as well. I love him for this reason, as his ability to write interesting, believable characters and, for all the strangeness in his books, evoke 'real life' situations makes his books easier to get into and love for me. It follows from here that my favorite novel of his is probably Moon Palace, which is one of the best bildungsromans I've ever read. I'd definitely recommend it, as I would 4321. Although the latter was somewhat slow and hard to follow at times, I find that Auster just has a knack for writing about childhood and youth that I haven't really found in another author's work.

Try reading "the hip hop gospel" by krs one. Took me like 5 years

I haven’t read 4 3 2 1 yet. My favorite book is Oracle night.

I've only read New York trilogy (in a great translation of Yaroslava Strikha), which I obviously thought was quite accomplished and was a breeze to read. But I ultimately landed on a rather narrow interpretation of the book as being about a writer's process (the first novella is about finding a unique way to express yourself through language, the second one about creating characters, and the third about interplay between your artistic and your everyday selves, was my read IIRC), and that narrowness (disproportionally, I suppose, of my own making), as well as a feeling that the book lacked a certain joie de vivre to compensate for it, made my response to the book a little muted. Bought English-language edition of 4 3 2 1 a long time ago in some airport, and was excited by the reports of that book being uncharacteristically (or maybe not uncharacteristically, but surprisingly for me, who only knows Auster by New York trilogy) straight, non-mindfuck-y novel, but haven't got to it yet. God knows, there's so much shit fantasy to read in the meantime.

I haven't read any Paul Auster yet. I have him on my list, since he seems like the sort of writer that I would interest me.

The New York Trilogy was my awakening. While I view it now as a clear entry into postmodern fiction, I didn't know what postmodernism was when I read it, so it seemed like this beautiful anomaly that didn't exist within conventional genres. What you describe as the strangeness/ordinary balance within his work is what blew things wide open for me because I had previously viewed novels as having to make a choice between the two. The audacity to blend the two would being interesting in itself, but the mastery in which he did it is where he really shined. Preposterous metaphysical things made complete sense surrounded by the normalcy or even mundane found in his pure observational realism. The opening section of Book of Illusions where the suicidal protagonist laughs for the first time in 6 months watching a silent film is my favorite bit of writing in his entire oeuvre. The rest of the novel, unfortunately, doesn't remain at that level, but that bit alone is enough for me. Ever since then I've become fascinated with works of art, whatever the form, keeping people going. It's a beautiful topic that still feels underexplored to me. I've also been fascinated with his greater reputation in Europe. He always credited his simple prose as translating easier and truer than his contemporaries. Which really makes translation as a whole sort of melt my brain. As an English speaker (and reader), have I ever REALLY read Umberto Eco? I will never know the answer to this. And I think I bring this up every time you've discussed Auster on this channel over the years lol (I certainly did when you re-read The New York Trilogy). Auster was just a great writer. Will miss him being in the world. And don't even want to think about DeLillo leaving us too, but I am now!

Phd in sarcasm

Auster is one of my favourite writers, because, like you said, he combines and roots his kind of arealism (I think surrealism doesn't apply to his novels, pararealism describes Murakami but not Auster ) with psychological realism - but also because I like his refined and cultivated style of writing. My favourite novel is Sunset Park, one of his best for me the kafkaesque Music of Chance. The Winter Journal became very important for my own personal writing. 4-3-2-1 I didn't read, I'd rather reread the New York Trilogy.

I was shocked to hear you mention my favorite book by Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things. That was also the book that turned me on to Auster, and nobody here (NYC) seems to have heard of it. It's like Auster's version of The Road, except written at the beginning of his career rather than the end. And like you said, the strong, realistic characters make the fantastic elements of the story so much more relatable. I have a copy of 4-3-2-1 but I too have not gotten to it, it's been on my kindle for years but I'm always wary of starting thousand-page books. Maybe it's time!

RIP 🙏🏽🌷 I liked 4321 and The New York Trilogy. Sad to lose him.

I have the opening paragraph of City of Glass memorized by heart. And I believe it applies to interpretations of almost all his fiction. Especially the last line of the paragraph: "The question is the story itself and whether or not it means something is not for the story to tell."

His first book I read was Moon Palace and I was hooked for life. I haven't loved everything I read from him, but those I love are in my all-time fave books list. I haven't read 4321 yet either. I am a french expatriate in the US and I can confirm that I haven't met a single American yet who's ever heard of him 😂 It's crazy. I did make a few friends read him, and overall they thought he was weird. Oh well... at least the EU understands him 😂

The only book of his i read was city of glass by way of the comic. I found his prose lovely and rhe way he explored language as a concept to extremely fascinating. Personally i wish he had worked as a vomic writer on the side like Jerome Charyn. I think that different mode if expression would have allowed to crwate some interesting work

Thank you for this :) My favorite Auster novel ist „The invention of solitude“. I am unsure of how i would feel if i reread it. But when i read it after the New York Trilogy it changed me. The second part being more of a collection of associations and thoughts really spoke to me. I think my thoughts flow in a very similar way. Also it opened me to what art can be and do for me, which left me with a deeper appreciation for reading!

Goodbye Paul 🥲❤

ohh didnt know. So sad

I'm going through a bunch of Cthulhu mythos stuff and reading and rereading Smith. You're the first person who has picked up on the decadent nature-maybe Americans don't think about that as much, but his stories DRIP with old school decadence. Thanks!

I think I’d have to read it about 10 times to tell if I liked it haha

Sadly, my creamer is modern Dutch.

Any female authors?

Excellent analysis. I would say that Wodehouse (especially W&J) is definitely farce, but doesn’t quite rise (or sink, if you prefer) to the level of satire (if Swift is satire), because the bite in his stories is significantly tempered by the good-natured way he pokes fun at his characters. He *knows* these people; he’s one of them. He’s not swinging at them, as an outsider. Reading more Wodehouse is an excellent idea. With Wooster and Jeeves, start at the beginning.

I've only read the book once, I plan to delve into the house once more at some point, but I've come to believe that Pelefina is a mentally ill woman who imagined a chunk of this (not necessarily ALL of this) and also had a large amount of religious beliefs, and through the combination of mental illness and religion, manifested her delusions into reality. She then hung herself and had become one with Yggdrasil, forming her, post-death into a personification of both Odin (hanging herself upon Yggdrasil to learn the runes) and Jormungandr (encircling the entire narrative, and by this all being both imaginative AND true, this makes her an ouroboros figure), and while hanging on the World Ash had gone on a journey to see every perspective, every form of reading. The end of the book is the new start. I also believe that the House is a god that only understands mortal emotion in a very alien way. It attached itself to the Navidson family, killed, hurt, and tortured them, not out of hate or a game or any kind of evil reason, but to do what Navidson and Karen set out to do and failed to do on their own, to finally heal this family. Note that the house vanishes and sets them free when Karen did the unthinkable and conquered her most deep fear, when she embraced her lover in a an alien dimension made of eternal darkness and unimaginable freeze, and in the eye of the storm and chaos and heartache and desperate...they embraced. Navidson uttering a word even in front of death. Though the family was scarred, they had been set on the path for a happily ever after, remember the price of un-love. Of un-homeliness. Only when each world is visited, each way of reading, each perspective, each order, only when all is seen, created, and visited by Odin and Jormungandr, by a "extraordinary woman" does the story finally end, mirroring the final poem. The house, the gods, the multiverse, even love itself was misinterpreted until now. The order was wrong at the beginning, it is not "What miracle is this? This giant tree. It stands ten thousand feet high but doesn't reach the ground. Still it stands. Its roots must hold the sky. O." No. instead it is the opposite, the more sensible, "O its roots must hold the sky. Still it stands. But doesn't reach the ground. It stands ten thousand feet high, this giant tree. What miracle is this?" Just a thought though, again I am yet to re-read.

oh, god the water. you must be down south.

Thoughtful commentary and interpretation, thank you. 😊

Why did you say you are “ a bit of a genre Nazi” In my opinion that is a No Go. Please remember what the Nazis did to this world.

Im almost done reading the novel. I really am loving it.

Is that a Junghans watch? 👀

Not a book for academics/eng lit students

Interesting review. Personally, I was somewhat frustrated with Prophet Song, in part because I found it politically non-committal. Although you state that it is about Ireland becoming a right-wing authoritarian regime, I dont think the "right-wing" part is made textually explicit. Although the tyranical party has a nationalist image, nationalism in Ireland is quite a broad-church (unlike some other contries, perhaps because of our history as a British colony) and nationalist rhetoric is used by both left and right in Ireland. Emblematic of the easy traffic between the left-wing and the nationalist idiom in Ireland might be that our most famous socialist; James Connolly, founder of the Irish Labour Party and important labour organiser; is best known as a nationalist martyr. I felt the novel expressed a fairly generic middle-class anxiety about the break down of the liberal political order, without firmly situating that possible crisis in any of the existing tensions in present day Ireland. The dystopian fiction presented is focused on the imposition by a politically nonspecific regime on a private home and its bourgeois family, while eschewing any possible political commentary beyond a sort of relentless greiving about the possibility that some day even middle class Europeans may be discommoded by politics gone awry.

Great review

Another great review! I love your analysis and commentary. I enjoyed GoR much more this time than in high school. The overt commentary on the plight of workers v owners, immigrants v natives, haves v have nots was very powerful.

I highly recommend both “Kafka on the Shore” or “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” for Murakami in a similar vein to “Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”

Thanks for the video. I've just started the border trilogy. I thought All the Pretty Horses was excellent. I've read Blood Meridian, The Road and No Country. I understand that ATPH's has a more conventional story line but I certainly didn't think that the book was any less because of that. A lot of the insights about fate and where our lives go really went quite deep and his prose is just an absolute treat to read. It just flows off the page.

Off topic: Season 2, Episode 4 of "The Big Door Prize" on Apple TV+ has a character that is 100% based on you. The guy looks exactly like you, and he's reading "Ulysses" for the seventh time. Sadly, the show isn't very well written, but you have now been immortalized on TV.

Had this on my tbr for ages after loving BLRW (still haven’t read the sequel either). Will get to this soon

Have you tried Black Leopard Red Wolf? I tried several times and couldn't get past the first few pages

Hey Mattia - I love this review! Very well put. I just posted a video essay about this book on my channel about Propoganda, Hollywood & Ideology (among other things). Would mean a lot if you could check it out; I couldn't find your contact info but my email is on my channel :)

Everybody is racist

he was born in 1890 and lived to 1937. you cant blame him since that was a very common view point of the time

Gawd, I kinda hated this book, such a horrifying evocation of ghetto culture. The buried alive scene was tough to get through.

I need to read this. Sounds right up my alley. Thank you!

I just finished the Candy House and it was just as, if not more incredible than the first!

I had this book on my shelf for about five years before I finally finished it. I had started it a couple times, but put it down because the language was a bit taxing, even for a native english speaker. I agree with what you said about the book teaching you to read it as you go -- once I got into it, I was really into it and got used to the language quickly. Like you said it's a difficult read at first but very rewarding, and surprisingly funny at times.

I do not concur that this was brilliant. I found it pretentious and hard to connect with.

Great vid! Thanks so much for the insights!

I am a person of color and I absolve Lovecraft of his sins Free my nigga