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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
memento (volde) morti, ich denke meine Seele ist auch gesplittet
Some of my best reading experiences have been because I'm simply aiming to clear off my utterly ridiculous backlist of to-read books. Such is the case for Paul Auster's 4 3 2 1. This book has served as an opener on my electronically managed library wishlist for years — so long has it existed at the top of the list (because of its numerically emblazoned title and my library's list-sorting is resolutely alphabetical), that only recently did I realize I was so accustomed to its presence I had come to overlook it entirely. And so, I placed it on hold to have it transported through the pathways of my library's system from the main branch where it lives to my closer, smaller branch.
I remembered nothing about why I even had it on my list to begin with or how it came to be there. No idea what struck me about the summary or recommendation at the time it was added. But it was barely a toddler of a book, having been published at the end of January 2017 — and existing within my realm less than a year later . . . coming to my attention in some way around September of its release year. So, into this giant book — didn't realize it was quite the doorstopper until I picked it up — I dove, unaware of even the basic premise. And weeks later, I have finally emerged — and find myself missing Archibald Isaac Ferguson already. All four of him.
As blind as I went into this, it is not a completely necessary thing to do. The basic premise is an exploration of a young man whose identity is split into three other identical young men. Not really a Sliding Doors structure, where one little thing causes these different timelines to branch off with their own events. No, it's more like these are completely separate Archies — like a multiverse. Almost like acknowledging that there are only four instances where circumstances converge to allow for Archie's birth. Multiverse meets capital-L, capital-F Literary Fiction.
The lead up to Archie's father's father arriving in the United States, a Russian Jew whose last name disappears and is bumblingly given a new name of Ichabod Ferguson at Ellis Island, and Archie's parents meeting is the opening to the book. From there, Auster branches out with each variant of Archie (Auster has Archie refer to himself as Ferguson throughout, but all the people in his life call him Archie) bunched up next to the others in chapters that are broken down by parts. For instance, Chapter 1 is broken down to be Chapters 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4. Each Archie maintains the slot assigned as the novel moves forward, so that Archie-1 always exists as X.1 for each subsequent chapter. Like versions of software, making it easy (if it becomes necessary) to refer back to a previous version before the current update.
So the four Archibalds belong to the same parents, exist in the same bodies, and share the same genetic makeup. But each Archibald exists in a different timeline and after moving from the New York apartment where he's born, each Archie lives in a different New Jersey suburb, going to a different set of schools, and existing in his own set of circumstances.
Auster writes all the timelines concurrently, so that all four segments of the first chapter roughly cover Ferguson's life over the same lapse of time. And as one division of one Ferguson ends to bleed through later in the book and meanwhile switch to another Ferguson, I found myself simultaneously mourning the momentary loss of the previous, while gently anticipating the arrival of the upcoming.
It was easy in the beginning, as the introductions to each Ferguson are necessarily laid out, to get a bit muddled, the lines between quadruple Fergusons stays out of focus — except the one currently being read. Other than a couple of key factors, even as the novel progresses, it's hard to separate them properly and remember which Ferguson did this or that. But after trying so hard for the first quarter of the book, and following each Ferguson through adolescence, the realization was apparent. It does not matter; there is only one now, only one present — and it is just whichever road the current Ferguson is on.
As an epic coming-of-age story, the sheer amount of life that exists in this novel is glorious. Not only is Ferguson a different Ferguson in each iteration, but so are all the people in his life — and while there are some fixed characters who float into his life regardless of the version, there are notable differences, notable absences, that suggest that every other person is also co-existing in their own altered version of themselves. It is breathtakingly beautiful in that way.
Ferguson is adorable as a child — loving and aching to be loved. He's curious and wondrous. College-age Ferguson eats up a good portion of the novel, and the timeline slows down to accommodate. Here he's at his most mindful: vividly aware of current events, impressed by an exhaustive list of authors and poets and thinkers and filmmakers, and yet still achingly introspective. At different times, Ferguson can exist at his most self-destructive (why can you not slap someone when they're hiding in the pages of a book?). There's even a nod to this within the text itself, ". . . but as the reader will have observed by now, Ferguson did not always act in his own best interests." But Ferguson as a young adolescent, up to age 14 or so, seems to be my favorite. At this age, he's his most thoughtful, most impressionable, and his most pure version of his core self. While that does make it harder to keep them separate while reading, after having finished the book, I am reminded that it doesn't really matter.
Auster seems to favor nature over nurture, at least when imagining Ferguson. For although Ferguson's circumstances will change, he is basically the same core being. One may favor basketball while another dearly loves playing baseball, one becomes a journalist while another a novelist, but his central self is so firmly established that I found solace in this idea when thinking about my own what ifs of childhood.
Apparently this masterpiece is quite different from the typical Auster. Having never even come across his name before — how that's possible, I have no idea — I was not subject to any expectations coming into this novel. (Clearly none at all, given that I didn't even have a clue about the story itself.) Auster adopts a Woolfian delivery of long, meandering sentences. I loved them — strong enough to easily follow the thought, and stretched out farther than flimsier sentences could stand. The writing was a river of ideas, flowing through the novel, connecting each ocean called Ferguson to the others.
I've already returned my library copy and ordered a personal hardcover replacement. Given the structure of the novel, with my next reread I think I'd like to attack its mutant form and read each Ferguson individually. The temptation was certainly there to do that with the first read, but I am so glad I didn't — the flow, the charm, the devastation, and the incredible sense of time and place, especially when you take into account all the astounding world events that are woven so firmly into all the stories, would've been lost and the experience would've been completely changed. As it was, 4 3 2 1 broke my heart only to refill it, to break it again, and then refill it once more, in a ceaseless cycle of life, sur papier.
I remembered nothing about why I even had it on my list to begin with or how it came to be there. No idea what struck me about the summary or recommendation at the time it was added. But it was barely a toddler of a book, having been published at the end of January 2017 — and existing within my realm less than a year later . . . coming to my attention in some way around September of its release year. So, into this giant book — didn't realize it was quite the doorstopper until I picked it up — I dove, unaware of even the basic premise. And weeks later, I have finally emerged — and find myself missing Archibald Isaac Ferguson already. All four of him.
"Everything solid for a time, and then the sun comes up one morning and the world begins to melt."
As blind as I went into this, it is not a completely necessary thing to do. The basic premise is an exploration of a young man whose identity is split into three other identical young men. Not really a Sliding Doors structure, where one little thing causes these different timelines to branch off with their own events. No, it's more like these are completely separate Archies — like a multiverse. Almost like acknowledging that there are only four instances where circumstances converge to allow for Archie's birth. Multiverse meets capital-L, capital-F Literary Fiction.
The lead up to Archie's father's father arriving in the United States, a Russian Jew whose last name disappears and is bumblingly given a new name of Ichabod Ferguson at Ellis Island, and Archie's parents meeting is the opening to the book. From there, Auster branches out with each variant of Archie (Auster has Archie refer to himself as Ferguson throughout, but all the people in his life call him Archie) bunched up next to the others in chapters that are broken down by parts. For instance, Chapter 1 is broken down to be Chapters 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4. Each Archie maintains the slot assigned as the novel moves forward, so that Archie-1 always exists as X.1 for each subsequent chapter. Like versions of software, making it easy (if it becomes necessary) to refer back to a previous version before the current update.
So the four Archibalds belong to the same parents, exist in the same bodies, and share the same genetic makeup. But each Archibald exists in a different timeline and after moving from the New York apartment where he's born, each Archie lives in a different New Jersey suburb, going to a different set of schools, and existing in his own set of circumstances.
Auster writes all the timelines concurrently, so that all four segments of the first chapter roughly cover Ferguson's life over the same lapse of time. And as one division of one Ferguson ends to bleed through later in the book and meanwhile switch to another Ferguson, I found myself simultaneously mourning the momentary loss of the previous, while gently anticipating the arrival of the upcoming.
"Memories are not continuous. They jump around from place to place and vault over large swaths of time with many gaps in between, and because of what my stepbrother calls this quantum effect, the multiple and often contradictory stories to be found in the scarlet notebook do not form a continuous narrative. Rather, they tend to unfold as dreams do—which is to say, with a logic that is not always readily apparent."
It was easy in the beginning, as the introductions to each Ferguson are necessarily laid out, to get a bit muddled, the lines between quadruple Fergusons stays out of focus — except the one currently being read. Other than a couple of key factors, even as the novel progresses, it's hard to separate them properly and remember which Ferguson did this or that. But after trying so hard for the first quarter of the book, and following each Ferguson through adolescence, the realization was apparent. It does not matter; there is only one now, only one present — and it is just whichever road the current Ferguson is on.
"The world was churning. All things everywhere were in flux."
As an epic coming-of-age story, the sheer amount of life that exists in this novel is glorious. Not only is Ferguson a different Ferguson in each iteration, but so are all the people in his life — and while there are some fixed characters who float into his life regardless of the version, there are notable differences, notable absences, that suggest that every other person is also co-existing in their own altered version of themselves. It is breathtakingly beautiful in that way.
Ferguson is adorable as a child — loving and aching to be loved. He's curious and wondrous. College-age Ferguson eats up a good portion of the novel, and the timeline slows down to accommodate. Here he's at his most mindful: vividly aware of current events, impressed by an exhaustive list of authors and poets and thinkers and filmmakers, and yet still achingly introspective. At different times, Ferguson can exist at his most self-destructive (why can you not slap someone when they're hiding in the pages of a book?). There's even a nod to this within the text itself, ". . . but as the reader will have observed by now, Ferguson did not always act in his own best interests." But Ferguson as a young adolescent, up to age 14 or so, seems to be my favorite. At this age, he's his most thoughtful, most impressionable, and his most pure version of his core self. While that does make it harder to keep them separate while reading, after having finished the book, I am reminded that it doesn't really matter.
Auster seems to favor nature over nurture, at least when imagining Ferguson. For although Ferguson's circumstances will change, he is basically the same core being. One may favor basketball while another dearly loves playing baseball, one becomes a journalist while another a novelist, but his central self is so firmly established that I found solace in this idea when thinking about my own what ifs of childhood.
". . . and what did it mean to be himself anyway, he wondered, he had several selves inside him, even many selves, a strong self and a weak self, a thoughtful self and an impulsive self, a generous self and a selfish self, so many different selves that in the end he was as large as everyone or as small as no one, and if that was true for him, then it had to be true for everyone else as well, meaning that everyone was everyone and no one at the same time . . . ."
Apparently this masterpiece is quite different from the typical Auster. Having never even come across his name before — how that's possible, I have no idea — I was not subject to any expectations coming into this novel. (Clearly none at all, given that I didn't even have a clue about the story itself.) Auster adopts a Woolfian delivery of long, meandering sentences. I loved them — strong enough to easily follow the thought, and stretched out farther than flimsier sentences could stand. The writing was a river of ideas, flowing through the novel, connecting each ocean called Ferguson to the others.
I've already returned my library copy and ordered a personal hardcover replacement. Given the structure of the novel, with my next reread I think I'd like to attack its mutant form and read each Ferguson individually. The temptation was certainly there to do that with the first read, but I am so glad I didn't — the flow, the charm, the devastation, and the incredible sense of time and place, especially when you take into account all the astounding world events that are woven so firmly into all the stories, would've been lost and the experience would've been completely changed. As it was, 4 3 2 1 broke my heart only to refill it, to break it again, and then refill it once more, in a ceaseless cycle of life, sur papier.
"The gods looked down from their mountain and shrugged."
I liked the concept of this one--the four different paths Archie Ferguson's life could have taken, but I rarely find a novel needs to be nearly 900 pages long. At the end I was reading it out of a spite--"Oh yes, I'm going to finish this tome."
hey girl are your eyes paul austers 4321 because i’m
getting lost in them ha ha ha.
it’s pretty good
getting lost in them ha ha ha.
it’s pretty good
I'm not sure that I've ever read a book about which my opinion varied so wildly while in the midst of reading. Originally, I was a bit skeptical, finding the device of four simultaneous lives being covered at the same time a bit gimmicky, but after the first few hundred pages, I was enjoying the device immensely - so from an initial 3 stars, I moved to a very strong 5. But at some point, while not wearying of the device, I began to dislike the main character immensely. Although, I am not one of those readers who feel it necessary to like or even care about a main character in order to stay interested in a book, Ferguson just about continually made me want to either gag at his preciousness or smack him a good one.
At some point along the way, fairly early on really, Auster opts for a main character (or four of them) who is not an everyman type whose life could go in strikingly different directions based on the whims of fate -- a death, a job lost or gained, a personal misunderstanding – but opts instead for a wonder-boy, whose brilliance and abilities awe those who he deigns to recognize as worthy of his love no matter which embodiment of him we are considering at the moment. Every adult he meets is either a narrow-minded jerk throwing obstacles in his way or an insightful individual willing to do anything to enable this brilliant 16-18 year old’s path to be as clear and uncluttered as possible so that the world will know of his greatness. I may be laying it on a little thickly, but that is about the size of it. In addition, Ferguson, while being fully enamored of himself (he belittles his full scholarship to Princeton because the place is not worthy of him, but he opts for the school anyway since he can’t afford otherwise but runs off to New York every weekend to breathe the air), still attempts to denigrate his work (“Oh, woe is me, I wrote this book at the tender age of 18, but it is totally trash and no one will ever understand it or want to read it.”) despite the adoration of those with whom he comes in contact (“No, Archie, this is the best thing ever written. I’ll find a publisher and you’ll see.” Publisher: “This book will live on long after you are dead (clumsy foreshadowing).” (BTW, those aren’t direct quotations but close enough to the sort of thing that occurs again and again and again.)
As for the four-lives-at-once concept, Auster handles the device well in most regards, but fails to confront the real complexity of the idea. For example, the nature vs. nurture question is pretty much decided on the nature side to a very weird and specific degree. All of the Fergusons are brilliant and language/music oriented individuals, which is understandable from a genetic point of view; however, they are all also extremely attracted to classical music, old and foreign films, ancient poetry, etc., while being utterly clueless about contemporary music (this is the 60s and the Beatles get mentioned once, but Bach? Oh, yes, Ferguson rarely cries except for the time he and Gil sat listening to the three-hour long St. Matthew’s Passion and he broke down somewhere on the third LP side.) What? I’ve taught 30+ years of high school English students and have never run across anyone remotely like the Fergusons: one of him, for example, quits the basketball team because of something he read in Crime and Punishment at 15 years of age.
On the other hand, if the four Fergusons are the same at birth with only the random acts of nature and society to interfere with and shape him/them, how does one of the beings turn out to be bisexual? This runs entirely contrary to his nature over nurture slant deeply embedded in the rest of the book. Ferguson is picked up by a guy in a movie theater, is seduced, and suddenly decides either direction works for him and pursues both. I don’t think it works this way.
4321 seems to be a case of an author’s having fallen deeply in love with his main character to the deficit of the book.
At some point along the way, fairly early on really, Auster opts for a main character (or four of them) who is not an everyman type whose life could go in strikingly different directions based on the whims of fate -- a death, a job lost or gained, a personal misunderstanding – but opts instead for a wonder-boy, whose brilliance and abilities awe those who he deigns to recognize as worthy of his love no matter which embodiment of him we are considering at the moment. Every adult he meets is either a narrow-minded jerk throwing obstacles in his way or an insightful individual willing to do anything to enable this brilliant 16-18 year old’s path to be as clear and uncluttered as possible so that the world will know of his greatness. I may be laying it on a little thickly, but that is about the size of it. In addition, Ferguson, while being fully enamored of himself (he belittles his full scholarship to Princeton because the place is not worthy of him, but he opts for the school anyway since he can’t afford otherwise but runs off to New York every weekend to breathe the air), still attempts to denigrate his work (“Oh, woe is me, I wrote this book at the tender age of 18, but it is totally trash and no one will ever understand it or want to read it.”) despite the adoration of those with whom he comes in contact (“No, Archie, this is the best thing ever written. I’ll find a publisher and you’ll see.” Publisher: “This book will live on long after you are dead (clumsy foreshadowing).” (BTW, those aren’t direct quotations but close enough to the sort of thing that occurs again and again and again.)
As for the four-lives-at-once concept, Auster handles the device well in most regards, but fails to confront the real complexity of the idea. For example, the nature vs. nurture question is pretty much decided on the nature side to a very weird and specific degree. All of the Fergusons are brilliant and language/music oriented individuals, which is understandable from a genetic point of view; however, they are all also extremely attracted to classical music, old and foreign films, ancient poetry, etc., while being utterly clueless about contemporary music (this is the 60s and the Beatles get mentioned once, but Bach? Oh, yes, Ferguson rarely cries except for the time he and Gil sat listening to the three-hour long St. Matthew’s Passion and he broke down somewhere on the third LP side.) What? I’ve taught 30+ years of high school English students and have never run across anyone remotely like the Fergusons: one of him, for example, quits the basketball team because of something he read in Crime and Punishment at 15 years of age.
On the other hand, if the four Fergusons are the same at birth with only the random acts of nature and society to interfere with and shape him/them, how does one of the beings turn out to be bisexual? This runs entirely contrary to his nature over nurture slant deeply embedded in the rest of the book. Ferguson is picked up by a guy in a movie theater, is seduced, and suddenly decides either direction works for him and pursues both. I don’t think it works this way.
4321 seems to be a case of an author’s having fallen deeply in love with his main character to the deficit of the book.
This book is technically wonderful and an immersive read. You can see the skill every page. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. BUT...I had major issues with the way gay or bisexual relationships were linked to crime, deviancy, death of parents, as an option when 'traditional' relationships weren't available and everyone's favourite gay trope- early death. As much as I was captured by the story/ies this really bugged me. Without this it would be a 5 easily.
Maravilloso ejercicio de imaginación de otras vidas posibles alternativas a la real, un juego al que todos hemos jugado alguna vez.
La idea es brillante por eso mismo, pero en mi opinión la ejecución no lo es tanto. Frases tan largas que terminan resultando tediosas, leía casi por inercia y me costaba recordar de qué iba la frase desde el principio.
La idea es brillante por eso mismo, pero en mi opinión la ejecución no lo es tanto. Frases tan largas que terminan resultando tediosas, leía casi por inercia y me costaba recordar de qué iba la frase desde el principio.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No