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THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS

Review by Zoltán Pék

Professor Zimmer is a dead man. After loosing his better part (wife and two sons), self-pity, loneliness and drinking are devouring what is left, leading toward the inevitable end. One night he accidentally watches a documentary about silent comedians, and one of them, Hector Mann makes him laugh. To keep himself alive, he jumps at the second chance and starts obsessively studying the work of the mysterious figure who, in 1929, at the beginning of a promising career, one day just disappeared and has not been seen for over fifty years.

Everyone who is a little familiar with Auster can spot the distinct characteristics of his style: solitude, chance, and disappearance. After the odd world of Timbuktu, here we have a novel, which is, if you like, Auster to the bone, with his old ideas and tricks accompanied with some new elements, and as for what all this adds up let us see further.

For Zimmer this is just a project, and having written a book about Mann's films, he is ready to put it behind, when he gets a letter, inviting him to New Mexico where Hector Mann is allegedly alive. And imbedded in Zimmer's story thus unfolds Mann's older story, whose promising career was shattered when his fiancée accidentally shots his former lover. Mann, to protect his fiancée, buries the body, and escapes. After that, he dedicates his life to atonement, under false identity takes self-tormenting and humiliating jobs, including an employment by his former lover's father. This is crime and punishment in a twisted form, since Hector takes the blame for his fiancée, and thus plunges into the loop of self-humiliation, and learns that he has many identities and many lives, but the question is whether one can escape from himself.

Zimmer gets to know Hector's story from Alma, daughter of one of Mann's colleges, who comes to take Zimmer with her back to New Mexico. She is living there on the ranch and is the chronicler: she is writing Mann's memoirs for seven years now, and after reading Zimmer's book about himself, Mann is agreed to invite Zimmer to the ranch and show him his movies, thus to have one legitimate witness to his secret art, his movies-which in one day after his death will be burned by his wife.

The meeting between Zimmer and Alma is an act of fate: two lonely and distrustful people who are soul mates and who are not like others: Zimmer's bears his stigmata inside because of his family, while Alma's on the outside, on her face, the left side of which has a big birthmark. They fly together to New Mexico, and Zimmer plunges headlong into a dream-world where nothing as it seems, and where seeing is not believing, anyway. This is the world of living dead, of people who bury themselves alive to escape from the world, and this is their book, The Book of the Dead.

In his tenth novel one can find every tool that Auster has used before: first person writer-narrator whose life is shaped by fatal coincidences and chances; Chateaubriand's memoirs as a subtext, since The Book of Illusions is a "memoir", just as Alma's book about Hector--these textual mirrors remind us of Leviathan. Yet, there is more in this: a careful reader detects lots of allusions to the Austerian World; e.g. Zimmer himself comes straight from Moon Palace; his family dies in an airplane crash just like Quinn's in New York Trilogy, not to mention the numerous identities of Quinn's and Mann's; and Zimmer almost hits a dog, etc. It is, basically, a recapitulation of Auster's art, an inventory or a "real" memoir.

As for change of tone, there is a drastic shift between the nameless, jovial narrator of Timbuktu and the disillusioned Zimmer of The Book of Illusions; after In the Country of Last Things this probably is Auster's second gloomiest book. And if Timbuktu was about the speculation of an afterlife, then here is the memoir of a man who is already there. The book focuses on death, or rather, the living dead: how one can be "dead" in his life, and how he can live, though he is dead. Zimmer at the end confides us that this book is published after his death; he translates Chateaubriand's book (which was written for 35 years, but in the voice of a dead man), and this book lies in Mann's study, thus suggestive of his intentions with his biography; Alma brings back Zimmer from emotional death; Hector is recalled to life when writes Zimmer. With elegance and skilfulness, Auster connects haphazard events and fates, as life does, and he has done so far, but this time even more subtle way: the different time-layers and character-lives entwine, repeat and mirror each other, creating a shimmering surface.

One thing though cannot be accidental: the movie that is not just a topic, but a tool as well; there are two movies "projected" in the text, which one may find disconcerting at first. Zimmer narrates in past tense, yet the two films we "watch" are in present, and since they are quite lengthy, they give another twist and level to the already zigzagging narration. To follow Auster's usual book-in-the-book technique is already rather demanding, but there at least the medium is one and the same; here somehow the textuality and visuality are hybridized, and the result is something airy--maybe the illusion itself. Another new trait in Auster's fiction, however, is definitely positive: thanks for script writing, his dialogues and two-character scenes are much stronger and powerful, they are among the best parts of the book.

It is, altogether, a wise book, artful and elegant, the novel of a mature author, with enthralling plot, memorable characters and, more importantly, a strong emotional charge. Some of the scenes will inevitably move the reader, and the philosophic questions raised will give a lot to ponder about. You must not miss it.