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THE MUSIC OF CHANCE

Review by Sara Serrao

Paul Auster is able to dive into the deepest and darkest sides of human mind and The Music of Chance is probably the best example of this ability. The meaning of the story lives and rolles under the surface of the events. It all appears absurd - nothing has to do with what you usually call an "ordinary life".

Nashe the fireman has the opportunity of becoming Nashe the free man: a great amount of money gives him the start to change his life completely. Auster the writer faces Auster the man: as he already did previously in his works he puts his character in front of his dead father's memory. Everything starts from his father's decision of giving his money to his son as a heritage after his own death. Nashe lives a simple life: his wife left him with his only daughter and he's happy with his work and colleagues. But when he comes to know that he's a rich man he immediately has the impulse of leaving everything behind himself. He doesn't understand what he's really looking for but he decides to sell all his properties and start a trip through the United States. He buys a Saab and takes his daughter to his sister, where she can live a proper life.

Music will be his only friend during his nights and days up and down the States. The will to drive finally becomes his only target and he can't stand resting in the same place for one day. He's haunted. He has a relationship with an old friend of his to whom he promises love but suddenly the old voice of freedom calls him back to his Saab. He innerly suffers for people he loves and leaves but the road has a power on him he can't control. And the road itself will take him to a definite turn in his future.

One day he decides not to run the Highway in order to enjoy the landscape around him and there he meets Pozzi, a young man who had a terrible night and earns his living by playing cards. The Music playing as a soundtrack of his new life leads him to become Pozzi's friend - by chance -. But what is Chance? Nashe could have gone right on his road to reach an unknown place, but he decides to stop and help the poor boy. Then he goes further: he lets him tell him his story, he gives him new clothes to wear, he shares a room in the hotel with him. Pozzi had some problems with his father too: will Nashe become his substitute? Is it the feeling for his daughter that pushes him to act as he does? Pozzi needs a great sum of money to play cards against a couple of rich men. Once again Nashe decides to give the last money he ownes to the boy and becomes his fellow. Why should he prefer to run the risk of losing all his money instead of going on with a totally free life? Solitude? Is it because he already knows he won't be able to survive when he runs out of money? Both Nashe and Pozzi will reach the odd couple's house to play the game that should make them rich. Is it always by Chance that the sum of money needed to play is exactly the same owned by Nashe? The two men living in the same big house have very unusual passtimes: one of them is building the plastic model of a "perfect city" where everything works according to his ideas; the other collects common objects in a room which looks like a museum. Pozzi is playing cards and Nashe returns to the room where the "perfect city" lies on a table. He stares at it with more attention and he can see that the two men are included in the plastic model. He doesn't know why but he decides to pick them up and place them in his pocket. Will it be really like that? Will he be the master of those two puppets? Pozzi and Nashe lose the game but what is worst they have to give them a greater sum of money. What they finally decide will mean the end of an era: they agree to take the Saab until Pozzi and Nashe will have finished building a huge wall in the wide field surrounding the house. From this moment on events will run quickly: the two friends should stay there and work for a period of time but nothing will be as agreed. They will be given anything they want but they can't go out as free man do. They're supposed to remain till the wall is completed. The odd couple will vanish; the gardener will control their work wearing a gun; Nashe will help Pozzi to escape but the boy will be beaten to death and no one knows what has been of him.

The day of Nashe's freedom finally comes: he doesn't know how many days he stayed there and when the gardener tells him he can go out and have a beer with him and his son Nashe feels uncomfortable. He falls asleep and when he wakes up his eyes are filled with street lights and snow fallen down. They park the Saab and enter the pub: it could have been a fine night but something begins to go wrong in Nashe's mind. He's disgusted by both men. Nashe's last wish is to drive his car back to the house and both gardener and son give him the permission. He can feel the shiver of being at the wheel again. He switch on his Music. And with classical notes playing in the night he finally faces death. Two lights running towards him lead his story to the End.

What is it all about? At a first glance it could be the story of a common man gone insane. Solitude can lead to madness but Nashe suffered no mental illness. Maybe he had seen too much of the world and its Walls... He was a honest man who believed in love: he had passionately loved his wife, he had loved his daughter so deeply to understand he had to leave her to make a happy woman of her. What was he looking for? Was it just lust for freedom? And what is freedom? Suddenly he comes to know something new. Life can change with the speed of a thunder and nothing will ever be the same again. Music plays the notes of his emotions - music is the most evanescent of all arts. It comes to life and dies in the same moment, like the flowing of time against which Nashe tries to fight. He meets Pozzi by chance and that Chance will send him to an unknown world. Could life be more cruel? Or was he cruel with himself? Is Auster telling us that Chance means to choose? Nashe would have run out of money anyway - but would have he chosen death in the end? What is sure is that he was the witness of the worst sides of man: lust for power, cruelty, materialism, violence against intelligence, the will of domination on other men. It all could have been an hallucination but unfortunately it was pure reality. Something like that can't happen commonly but what Auster lets us see exists indeed. Nashe's death is the end of a man who wanted to forget all the shame he had known. He had lost his dignity - he had lost his wife and daughter and friend. What else? He had lost his money too and everything had happened to him during the last months was due to money only. Had he not had that sum of money, he would have lost neither love nor dignity. Could a man's life depend on $ ? He chose death because it was too painful for him to live without the possibility of calling himself a right man. Nashe trusted his own beliefs till the end - Chance led his tender heart to act as he did - Music sang his passion for life.

Auster's hero dies on his beloved Saab on the notes of his favourite music ... with two little men of wood in his pocket ...

No perfect city in no perfect world.