Paul Auster, who grew up in Newark, Maplewood and South Orange, writes about these towns in the 1950s and 60s in this very long and wonderful novel.courtesy Paul Auster
“4 3 2 1”
By Paul Auster
(Henry Holt and Company, 866 pp, $32.50)
All too rarely, I read a work that astounds me. Certainly, many great books and writers come my way, but I sparingly use words like genius or masterpiece.
For too often those superlatives are bandied about and lose their power. Is everyone at the Mac counter really a genius? Is every Broadway performance worthy of an ovation?
“4 3 2 1” is.
It is that rarest of books – a masterpiece by a genius. I am embarrassed to be this effusive, yet the book merits it. Paul Auster, of Newark, East Orange and Maplewood, crafted his first novel in seven years and it is nothing short of true literature. It is why we read.
Granted, many editors will want to add periods in the following sentence, which actually goes on for a while more, but here’s a sample:
“That was one of the curious things about being in the last year of high school, the fact that you spent most of your time thinking about next year, knowing that a part of you was already gone even as you remained where you were, as if you were living in two places at once, the drab present and the uncertain future, boiling down your existence into a set of numbers that included your grade point average and SAT scores, approaching the teachers you liked best and asking them to write letters of recommendation for you, composing the absurd, impossible essay about yourself in which you hoped to impress a panel of anonymous strangers of your worthiness to attend their institution, then putting on a jacket and tie and traveling to that institution to be interviewed by someone whose report would weigh heavily on whether they accepted you or not.”
This novel took Auster seven years to write and it examines the same person, Archie, whose life is examined in four different variations.
This is the sort of book that readers will press upon friends, though given its size recipients may shrink from accepting it. “4 3 2 1” is a major commitment at 866 pages. I lugged it around for weeks, reading every moment I could. And as entranced as I remain, my one criticism is reserved for the very last few pages where it became more meta, bordering on solipsistic. Still, that does not detract from a brilliant approach to the eternally fascinating question of “what if.”
Auster’s protagonist is Archibald Isaac Ferguson, born March 3, 1947 in Newark to Rose and Stanley Adler. Archie is always Archie, the same age, living in the same times with the same mom. Auster takes on us four separate journeys, with Archie, diving deep inside his life when some aspect changed.
What if his father, a taciturn man with deadbeat brothers, died in a fire when he was young? When his mother remarries, what if the man is an erudite newspaper music critic? In another version, what if the man is an illustrator? What if his father lives?
Archie lives in Newark, Maplewood, Millburn and Montclair, coming of age in the 1950s and 60s. His Manhattan, where he also lives, is one of long-gone rep houses and dive bars. He also lives in a garret in Paris, writing and reading under the aegis of a fabulous friend.
Auster’s recounting of the burning of Newark and the Columbia University student protests are vividly accurate. In one variation, Archie gets a full scholarship to Princeton; in another he attends Columbia.
Our hero, no matter which version, is always, genetically, Archie, smart and thoughtful. His mother is always beautiful, good and independent. He is a writer, given to long bouts at a desk. Yet he understands the need for physical outlets. Sports matter more to him in his youth when he’s a good basketball player, and a star baseball player — until his best friend at camp dies during a game and he swears off baseball. In another version, Archie’s in a terrible car crash and loses his thumb and part of his index finger, ending his baseball career.
As a deeply intellectual being – he makes his way through complex literature at a young age and works as a translator of French poems into English – he shares some of his writing. A short story about the secret lives of shoes is delightful, albeit the work of a burgeoning artist. As Archie blooms from childhood into young adulthood, he discovers sex, usually with women, sometimes with men, depending on which Archie we’re reading about.
If this sounds confusing, admittedly it can be, but go with it. Allow yourself to live in Archie’s various worlds, and luxuriate in reading a master.
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