»Travels in the Scriptorium

Sophie Harrison's review of Paul Auster's most recent excursion into modernity touches on some of the salient points: the deliberate unfolding of a very physical plot (with some bumps; unless I misread, the protagonist, a cunningly-named Mr Blank, discovers a method of locomotion twice); the prominent reappearance of characters from Auster's previous books; and a willfully obscure approach to the oratio obliqua that frequently appears in his work. In this book, we have not the satisfaction of The Book of Illusions, not the implied, subtly beautiful closure of The New York Trilogy.

The mélange of characters suggests that Auster has uncovered a box of notes (index cards? A particular notebook? a few odd pages of typescript?) and slapped this book together. It is not quite satisfying, and too much comes through a sly tone in the narrator's voice, or in the sudden dialogue of the visiting characters. Travels ... feels both unfinished and uninspired.