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A review by michaelontheplanet
4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster
3.0
Just a minute: the Freud gambit was always to try and make a list of the subject on the card, preferably one that went on and on and strayed perilously close to deviation but just the right side of it. If it were Jam Sandwiches, say, he’d list every conceivable flavour of jam in a single-word list, as far as kumquat or marrow, then all the various types of bread. It worked largely by boring the other competitors into a coma, and certainly filled the time efficiently, if not always entertainingly.
When a book’s held me prisoner for three weeks, I begin to develop Stockholm syndrome, increasingly dreading the end and delaying the moment by reading shorter and shorter snatches each day. With 4 3 2 1, much as the soapy nature of the tale - Ferguson’s life, loves and dramas set against a background of civil rights America - jolts agains the metafictional structure, it’s nonetheless compelling. You’ll need to find out how each of the four Ferguson versions end, and wonder which, really, is Auster. For this is prime roman à clef stuff. Writing is “a pretty tough business”, muses one of the enemies of Archie, the acknowledgement forming a paean to elegance over hackery. Or is it really Archie learning about taste and morality the American way from his petty-minded suburban high school teacher Mrs Baldwin, or Auster lecturing us?
We veer into musings on class and status, not without pith:
“...an elusive, indefinable quality that had to do with black-hatted English ancestors and the length of time spent on this side of the ocean and the money to live in four-storey townhouses on the Upper East Side that made some families more American than others, and in the end the difference was so great that the less American families could barely be considered American at all.”
But many pages are occupied with wandering narrative that jumps about for the sake of it as Auster admits:
“Ferguson imagined the reader would stitch them together in his mind...” “...he was spared “the onerous responsibility of having to write another autobiographical note about himself.”
Then there’s the lists. Lists and lists - oppositional, contrarian, journalistic, page-consuming, wordyrappinghooding, twisting by the pool, edit-defying, makeweight. See - anyone can do it. In the end, you’re mesmerised by the volume and audacity of it, and in these days of minuscule attention spans, that’s a very bold move. 3 out of 5 for sheer brass neck (and value for money).
When a book’s held me prisoner for three weeks, I begin to develop Stockholm syndrome, increasingly dreading the end and delaying the moment by reading shorter and shorter snatches each day. With 4 3 2 1, much as the soapy nature of the tale - Ferguson’s life, loves and dramas set against a background of civil rights America - jolts agains the metafictional structure, it’s nonetheless compelling. You’ll need to find out how each of the four Ferguson versions end, and wonder which, really, is Auster. For this is prime roman à clef stuff. Writing is “a pretty tough business”, muses one of the enemies of Archie, the acknowledgement forming a paean to elegance over hackery. Or is it really Archie learning about taste and morality the American way from his petty-minded suburban high school teacher Mrs Baldwin, or Auster lecturing us?
We veer into musings on class and status, not without pith:
“...an elusive, indefinable quality that had to do with black-hatted English ancestors and the length of time spent on this side of the ocean and the money to live in four-storey townhouses on the Upper East Side that made some families more American than others, and in the end the difference was so great that the less American families could barely be considered American at all.”
But many pages are occupied with wandering narrative that jumps about for the sake of it as Auster admits:
“Ferguson imagined the reader would stitch them together in his mind...” “...he was spared “the onerous responsibility of having to write another autobiographical note about himself.”
Then there’s the lists. Lists and lists - oppositional, contrarian, journalistic, page-consuming, wordyrappinghooding, twisting by the pool, edit-defying, makeweight. See - anyone can do it. In the end, you’re mesmerised by the volume and audacity of it, and in these days of minuscule attention spans, that’s a very bold move. 3 out of 5 for sheer brass neck (and value for money).