The Invention of Solitude (Paperback)

Auster is conscious of how little knowledge he actually has of his father's early childhood years, how unenlightened he is with regard to his father's inner life, how few clues he has to his father's character and how little understanding of the underlying reasons for his father's immunity from the world at large. Through an amazing co-incidence involving his cousin, Auster learns of a terrible secret buried deep in his father's childhood past - the story was splashed across old newspaper reports of the time, sixty years before - of a shocking family tragedy that shattered his father's childhood world and could have seriously affected his mental outlook during his formative years, accounting for the solitariness and elusiveness that characterised the "invisible man" of Auster's childhood. Excellent, compelling writing! Dramatic revelations from a grim, distant past finally brought to light! Highly recommended!

In the second part, "The Book of Memory", there is a marked shift of perspective (away from the point of view of Auster, as son, writing about his feelings and memories of his father's life, after his death) to an autobiographical account of Auster's own experience, now himself as father, writing about his son. More abstract in content and style than "Portrait of an Invisible Man", "The Book of Memory" comprises autobiographical segments interspersed with commentaries on the nature of chance interspersed with ruminations on solitude and exploration of language. As a confirmed Auster-holic, my favourite Auster book to-date is "Moon Palace".

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"Portrait of an Invisible Man," the first piece of "The Invention of Solitude," is Auster's literary attempt to come to terms with his father's death through writing about his father's life. In doing so, he discovers how little he knows not only about his father's childhood and early married years, but about his father's mental life as well. Along the way Auster stumbles on the story of a family tragedy so full of coincidences that it begins to resemble his fiction.

The writing is never anything but splendid here. But is it seemly that we enjoy it as much as other writing by the same author that is clearly labeled fiction? I have no answer to that.

Auster's "Invisible Man," written in 1979, has its literary antecedent in Peter Handke's "A Sorrow Beyond Dreams," written in 1972 and translated into English in 1974. Handke's story of his mother's life, written immediately after her suicide, is, like Auster's piece, full of extraordinary writing, and equally devastating. The length and techniques of both works are similar, down to the ever-shorter sections toward the end and the numerous comments on the writing itself. Handke's book ends with the following: "Someday I shall write about all this in greater detail." On one of the last pages of Auster's piece we find this: "It occurs to me that I began writing this story a long time ago, long before my father died." Handke and Auster are writers; writing is what they do.

One tip: To preserve the mental taste of Auster's "Invisible Man," the reader should pause for a decent interval before taking on "The Book of Memory," the second piece in Auster's book (or skip it altogether). "The Book of Memory" is a more difficult work and quite possibly a bit more than many readers will want to tackle so soon after finishing "Invisible Man."

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If you read through the other reviews here, there are many who loved the whole book, so my reaction is probably in the minority, so don't be afraid to pick this up. And let me just say that I don't regret reading this book at all -- the Portrait of an Invisible Man is so damn good that it makes the entire work worthwhile.

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