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When I picked up Paul Auster's THE BROOKLYN FOLLIES, I was prepared to be thoroughly befuddled within the first 50 pages or so.
Several years ago a friend convinced me to read Auster's existential detective series from the mid-'80s collectively known as THE NEW YORK TRILOGY. While the trilogy was compelling, it was also confusing, often seeming like a lengthy in-joke to which the reader (or more precisely, this reader) wasn't privy.
Twenty years after penning THE NEW YORK TRILOGY (and with nine additional novels to his credit), Auster has delivered a remarkably straightforward, fast-reading narrative that any reader (again, to be clear, this reader) can follow. He still enjoys playing with characters' names, he's still interested in questions of coincidence, and he still likes to dabble in unconventional forms. But the world of THE BROOKLYN FOLLIES is explicitly our world rather than the philosophical construct of his earlier work.
Nathan Glass, a divorced, retired insurance salesman convinced he is going to die, returns to Brooklyn 56 years after he and his parents moved away when Glass was three. He narrates the story of his reunion with his nephew, Tom Wood, and the adventures that ensue.
Though the strands of the plot are eventually woven together fairly tightly, there are too many threads to give a satisfactory plot synopsis. At the book's heart, however, is the tension between Glass's cynicism about the world --- revealed in his musings on the pratfalls and foibles of mankind --- and his fierce loyalty to those closest to him. The cynic looking for a quiet place to die instead finds himself coming to the aid of several supporting characters, including his mysteriously silent runaway great-niece, a flamboyant bookseller with a gift for deceiving himself as well as others, and his lovelorn nephew.
Throughout the novel, Brooklyn serves as a sort of ideal community for Auster. Danger and sadness seem to loom outside the confines of the borough and occasionally breach the community, but the neighborhood offers solace to nearly all of the book's characters.
The adventures of Glass and his compatriots --- which include quests for love, redemption and justice --- are occasionally predictable, but often offer surprises. One senses that Auster crafted both kinds of scenarios to reflect a world in which things occasionally turn out just the way we expect, but often don't.
That theme is present in the micro world of Glass's personal experiences as well as in the macro world of the real-life events against which the novel is set. The story begins in the months leading up to the Bush/Gore election of 2000 and evokes the uncertainty of that contest and its aftermath. And as the story hurtles forward, another date starts to loom on the horizon. To provide details of Auster's handling of that tragic day would be to strip the moment of its power and beauty. It is, perhaps, enough to say that THE BROOKLYN FOLLIES provides a clear-eyed perspective on the randomness --- both good and ill --- that seems to make up our lives.
--- Reviewed by Rob Cline (rob__cline@hotmail.com)
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