Baumgartner

by Paul Auster, Luka Novak (Translator)

Življenje Syja Baumgartnerja – profesorja filozofije tik pred upokojitvijo – je zaznamovala globoka ljubezen do žene Anne. Zdaj, po njeni smrti, se skuša znajti v življenju brez nje. A Annin glas ga še vedno spremlja v prav vsakem spominu na prizore iz strastnih štirih desetletij, ki sta jih preživela skupaj. Baumgartner se spoprijema s profanostmi vsakdanjika in odkriva nova občutja, poti pa mu prekrižajo nove osebe.

Roman Baumgartner je sijajno, toplo delo in zadnja mojstrovina enega največjih sodobnih pisateljev, ki je imel posluh za pretanjenosti življenja kot nihče drug.

Genres: Fiction, Audiobook, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, The United States Of America, Americana, American

200 pages, Hardcover

First published November 7, 2023

About the author

Paul Auster was the bestselling author of 4 3 2 1, Bloodbath Nation, Baumgartner, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature. Among his other honors are the Prix Médicis Étranger for Leviathan, the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke, and the Premio Napoli for Sunset Park. In 2012, he was the first recipient of the NYC Literary Honors in the category of fiction. He was also a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions), the PEN/Faulkner Award (The Music of Chance), the Edgar Award (City of Glass), and the Man Booker Prize (4 3 2 1). Auster was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He died at age seventy-seven in 2024.

Reviews

[Ilenia Zodiaco · Rating 4 out of 5]

145 pagine di eredità. Un’elegia e un commiato per una letteratura che nessuno scrive più e che comunque nessuno scriverà più come lui.

C’è tutto: i telefoni che suonano e ti cambiano la vita come in trilogia di NY, ovviamente la City di vetro e le sue strade, c’è il New Jersey, il baseball, quell’amore fulminante che dura una vita e ti scava dei canyon dentro.

C’è tutta la narrativa di Paul Auster con le liste e gli elenchi di case e oggetti, gli aneddoti di famiglie di origini europee e gli effetti dell’America sulla loro identità.

C’è tutta la vita di Paul Auster che si nasconde tra i dettagli di finzione. La vita che prende un senso solo quando la scrivi nelle lettere, nei libri, nei fogli volanti. I suoi intrecci sono sempre storie nelle storie.

C’è solo da dire grazie per queste 145 pagine. Rimarrà deluso chi cerca qualcosa di nuovo. Ma quello che era nuovo Paul l’ha già fatto e questo libro è un lungo sguardo, indugiante, compassionevole a quello che è stato. Perché c’è stato. E tutto quello che è stato è importante. La letteratura salva le minuzie, che minuzie non sono. “La macchina bianca” della vita.

[Vit Babenco · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story begins with a series of accidental occurrences happening to Baumgartner during a single morning...

That was the start of it, he says to himself, the first mishap of the day, which led to all the others on this day of endless mishaps, but as he continues to look at the blackened aluminum pot on the other side of the room, his thoughts slowly drift away from the dumb-show pratfalls of this morning to the past, the far past flickering at the outer edge of memory, and bit by lilliputian bit it all comes back to him, the lost world of Then…

He recalls his youth… His family… His career… His late wife… He’s living in the past…
But one night he saw a strange dream that made him awake to the present…

Such is the power of the imagination, he tells himself. Or, quite simply, the power of dreams. In the same way that a person can be transformed by the imaginary events recounted in a work of fiction, Baumgartner has been transformed by the story he told himself in the dream.

A new spark ignites him… He feels alive… He starts living again…

This time is different from all those other times, however, and Baumgartner is ablaze with plans, bold plans that go far beyond the customary business of having his teeth cleaned or buying a new pair of shoes.

However the story has no real momentum… The narration is rather oozing than running… His wife’s stories and his own sketches and books seem to be trivial and vapid…
The old age is no handicap to dreams and everybody keeps dreaming until the end.

[Violeta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Minutes after hearing that Paul Auster passed away on May 1, 2024, I remember what I had thought of what was to be his last book and realize that he had every reason in the world to write it the way he did.

Stories don’t have to end but Life does and it’s a small (or big) consolation that he’ll go on living in his readers’ minds through his work.

He was one of the writers that have kept me company throughout my reading life and this small note is my own way to bid farewell.

……………………………………..

In one of the most beautiful passages of this novel, its eponymous hero transcribes word for word one of the many short fables he has written over the years. It’s titled LIFE SENTENCE and it is a 2-page narration of an author’s sentence (for a crime that isn’t revealed) to a “life of making sentences.”

The prisoner admits that, although incarcerated, the door of his cell has never been locked, but for reasons he cannot fully understand he has chosen to never walk away. After fifty-plus years of solitary confinement he realizes that the years passed in a flash because the great concentration required to build works composed of sentences made each hour feel like a minute. He has become old but he still feels young, and he realizes that as long as he can hold a pencil and see the sentence in front of him, he will carry on with the same routine he has been following since the day he arrived at his wall-less prison.

It seems to me that this book was put together for the sole purpose of delivering this story.

Entrapment in cages of our own making is a recurrent theme in Auster’s work. In this newest novel of his, the isolation and inwardness are not entirely self-inflicted; they are the result of ageing, widowhood and the inevitable loneliness that comes with both. Both Baumgartner (the fictional hero) and Auster (his creator) are in that stage of life where the Present and Future hold far less potential for stories than the Past does. But stories are their world, and no one can go on living a coherent life far from their world. And so, they go on narrating their stories of past and present and dreaming their stories of the future.

Past stories are especially moving and clearly structured. Present stories are excruciatingly rich in detail that doesn’t always serve the narrative. And future stories project their author’s yearning for more. More stories, life, meaning - for the game not to reach its end…

I’ve always been mesmerized by Auster’s incredible talent for finding beauty in both the mundane moments of everyday life and the abstract world of ideas. By his ability to combine realism with metaphysical elements and come up with totally transporting narrations. This time it didn’t quite work. This time the stories didn’t manage to form a whole, they didn’t lead to something solid that justified their existence.

But, maybe, they didn’t have to. Maybe a born storyteller with a long and prolific career such as Auster’s, deserves the right to go on telling his stories in order to answer his own needs, more than anything else. Maybe, in his 70s, he doesn’t really wish his stories to lead somewhere because the endpoint of things and stories and people is too palpable and not the abstract idea it once was…

Whether, in my 50s, I’m the right audience for these stories (because I’m not yet there where things don’t have to add up to something and inconclusiveness frustrates me more than it comforts me) is not and shouldn't be the author’s concern. Every book has its ideal readers and so many of his books have inspired, amused and intrigued me throughout the years; perhaps it’s not yet time for this one to do the same.

I’m making a mental note to revisit it in the not-so-distant future, acknowledging its author’s need to dream of a future as very much my own.
One way or another, Auster managed, once more, to find his way to my heart and mind.

[Emmanuel Kostakis · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Does an event have to be true in order to be accepted as true, or does belief in the truth of an event already make it true, even if the thing that supposedly happened did not happen?”

Auster is getting up close and personal with his alter ego...

All started with Kierkegaard and an old crummy aluminum pot for Seymour (Sy) Baumgartner to drift away from the present to the flickering past, to the lost world of Then. A dreamer with a subdued perception of being, battles his convictions and collapses from the burden of memory and loss. He tries to pick up the broken pieces of his reality, but the unbearable toil of his “divided” life pesters him, leaving him tiptoeing into the void of solitude. In the end and when everything seemed lost…deliverance! The cacophony of false hopes is finally disrupted; harmony prevails, resurrecting his willingness to be!

“Remember this moment, little man, remember it for the rest of your life, for nothing more important will ever happen to you than what is happening to you right now.”

Auster continues to play with the concept of identity, blurring the lines between reality and fiction, consciousness, and reverie. He utilises vignettes from the past to probe the complexities of the human experience, putting the audience in Baumgartner’s state of mind. His staccato yet rich prose encapsulates brilliantly the monotonic inner voice of Baumgartner and brings the story together in an absorbing and deeply engaging way.

In searching out the truth be ready for the unexpected, for it is difficult to find and puzzling when you find it (Heraclitus).

Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC, via NetGalley

4.3/5

RIP Mr. Auster…

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

He is seventy year old, after all, and the time for dithering has come to an end.
from Baumgartner by Paul Auster

I turned seventy-one this year. I discovered that my knees are worn out. I fell down a step and tore a rotor cuff. We cleared out our son’s childhood toys and books and college papers this summer. With every load hauled out of the basement, it felt like I was erasing his past. Even if with his permission. Sometimes, the brevity of life left and the decades of life that has passed hits me like a brick and I shudder with recognition: I am old and have squandered my days.

Reading books about the so-called ‘elderly’ in their early seventies, dealing with physical limitations and the siren call of memories of times past is disconcerting. Do I even need to read them–I am living it.

“To live is to feel pain,” Sy tells himself; “and to live in fear of pain is to refuse to live.” His beloved wife Anna died tragically nearly ten years ago and he had refused to feel the pain for ten years, was dead inside.

Paul Auster’s new novel begins with Sy Baumgartner’s very bad day of forgetfulness and accidents on the first day of spring. And on this day, “the lost world of Then” came flooding back, the first time he saw Anna, their life together.

He has no idea how many years he has left, or more disconcerting, how many years of active, competent years, all which will “flit by in a blink.” He is aware that “the world is burning up,” and yet he finds solace in a beautiful September day that demands you go outdoors to enjoy it.

Sy finally decides to propose to the woman he has been seeing; it doesn’t go as he had hoped. Then, a grad student expresses interest in Anna’s writings, someone who loved her one published poetry book, and she inquires if she could have access to all Anna’s papers for research. It gives Sy new interest in the future, a way to keep his wife alive for future generations.

The novel closes with Sy surviving another accident, suggesting this is the beginning of Sy’s last chapter.

I try to keep in the present, to not regret the past or the shortening of the days. Reading prepublication books is one way I stay connected to the ‘now’, or more exactly, to the future. It is a way of proving to myself my mind is still good and I can contribute.

But, like Sy, an accidental misstep and injury brings into focus what I lose every day. And a novel like Baumgartner, expressing the wisdom one writer has garnered can help we the ‘elderly’ feel less alone and give younger readers insight into their future.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

[Christopher Febles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe I’ll change it to 5. It affected me in a big way. Review to follow.
--
Seymour Tecumseh (“ST”) Baumgartner, philosophy professor at Princeton, is approaching his seventh decade. He’s a widower whose beloved wife Anna died in a tragic beach accident ten years ago, a loss that left him reeling. He’s picked up the pieces, has a new love, and is getting ready to retire. But his body and mind aren’t what they were, and lately he’s been wondering if he’s made the right choices. Pervading the novel is the notion: will old(er) age end in loneliness?

I became a Paul Auster fan many years ago when I perused my wife’s bookshelf when we were first dating. Always good to share interests, right? That set me on a path, which left off six years ago with the masterpiece, 4321. This is now the ninth book of his I’ve read, and I cherish them all (with 4321, Leviathan, and Moon Palace taking top billing).



That said, I was skeptical because of the layout of this novel. Nearly plotless, heady, introspective, intensely philosophical? Hmm. Those are all the reasons I never finished any Proust (yes, I’m a troglodyte). But, at just 208 pages, I figured that even if I did get bogged down, the traffic jam of thought wouldn’t last long.

I forgot, however, why I love this author in the first place. You philosophy majors can go ahead and laugh, but I find his writing deeply existential in a common-man way. OK, Sy isn’t exactly Joe Sixpack, as a Princeton professor and all, but Auster tortures him in a manner to which we can all relate. I adored the first chapter: the accidents, the solitude, the rambling of thoughts, things that happen to anyone. It’s all told in Sy’s head, and the sentences are Faulkner-esque, stretching for nearly half a page…but since it’s tactile, easy to imagine, it absolutely works. It’s not, “He loved his wife with all his heart,” but rather, “Anna looked like this,” and “She ran like the wind.” Auster illustrates his MC’s feelings, and somehow I was made to feel them intensely. Only a master does that.

He also has a way of describing characters with such intricacy, importance, and care. Even the gasman that shows up is given a personality, a tenderness that challenges our assumptions and fits in perfectly with Sy’s thoughts. Each gets a little backstory, which you think would be tedious. But no, “show, don’t tell” wins again. We see the contrast between Anna and Judith (his new love) shown through Judith’s upper-middle-class upbringing. We get a sense of every member of Sy’s family through the dress shop, through lived history, through interpersonal conflict. Again, it’s palpable, and thus, it’s not really introspection, is it?

Even better, Auster gives us love, pain, long-ago happiness using a tremendously creative and well-executed tactic: the main characters’ writings. Sy stumbles across short stories and poems written by his wife and shares them with us. I love an author who can portray different voices in the same novel, and Auster’s no slouch. Anna’s childhood memoir flattened me, and I’m no lover of poetry, but I adored the verse that seemed to be the beginning of their love affair. Not as crazy about one of Sy’s memoirs, but it was still an interesting way to share feelings and thoughts. The ending is a little abrupt and vague, but I gave it some thought and I’m OK with it now.

So, once again, if you consider yourself a budding philosopher, I won’t begrudge your snickering. But the reason I loved this novel was the everyman existentialism, the contemplation of Sy’s place in the world, his contributions to society, his struggle with his fears of loneliness. He looks, for example, at his relationship with his sister Naomi with regret and longing, and through real-life actions and tangible memories, we feel those regrets. Time and again I set down my Kindle, letting the sensations wash over me. But not for long, since I ripped through this novel, not your stereotypical “page-turner,” in a day and a half.

I could sit in these feelings all day. The ideas and situations Auster presents are the kinds that would remind me that the examined life is worth living.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Press for the distinct honor of receiving an advance copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Baumgartner will be released November 7, 2023.

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5★
“If the story turns out to be so astounding and so powerful that your jaw drops open and you feel that it has changed or enhanced or deepened your understanding of the world, does it matter if the story is true or not?”

No, I don’t think it matters. When you consider the billions of people living in the world now and the even more billions who preceded us, any story could have been true somewhere along that long line, couldn’t it?

Auster tells Sy Baumgartner’s story in the third person in long, meandering sentences that I enjoyed. The thoughts ran together naturally, and kept the story moving, like Sy’s mind, which never stops thinking, although Sy himself doesn’t actually move very much. He’s feeling old and useless and stumbling.

S.T. Baumgartner is a writer, his late wife Anna was a writer, and he’s always been happily absorbed in his work. But it’s hard now. He’s supposed to be finishing his latest novel but seems to have stalled a bit.

It is ten years since Anna’s accidental death at 58, which he has not completely come to terms with. Her study is as she left it, and his loyal cleaner, Mrs. Flores, keeps it clean and ready for use.

One evening, very late, he gets a phone call from 12-year-old Rosita Flores, sobbing. No, her mother is fine, but her father, a carpenter, just cut two fingers off at work and her mother has gone to the hospital so won’t be coming to work.

The girl is distraught, so Baumgartner keeps talking to her, telling her how well doctors can reattach fingers these days, and calms her down. Meanwhile, he is badly shaken and thinks about all the stories he’s heard about phantom limbs. That’s it! That’s his problem.

“He is a human stump now, a half man who has lost the half of himself that had made him whole, and yes, the missing limbs are still there, and they still hurt, hurt so much that he sometimes feels his body is about to catch fire and consume him on the spot.”

They were both writers, but because he was a Princeton Professor, he had to work on a computer for their digital records. In her office, Anna would clack away happily on her ageing Smith Corona typewriter.

“…mostly because the touch of the keyboard was too soft and made her fingers ache, she said, whereas pounding on the more resistant keys of her portable built up the strength of her hands, so she ditched the Mac by passing it on to the sixteen-year-old son of her oldest first cousin and returned to the tactile pleasures of rolling sheets of paper into the Smith Corona and filling her room with loud woodpecker music.”

Sy missed the “the sound of Anna’s mind singing through her fingers as they hammered the keys” so much that he occasionally went into the room and typed a bit, just to hear the sounds again.

He has dropped out. The sole contact he welcomes is with the woman who delivers parcels, so he orders books he doesn’t want, just to have a short conversation at the door every day.

He’s increasingly absent-minded, suffering from what I’ve heard referred to as The Hereafters. You know, when you enter a room or open the fridge, and say, “What am I here after?”

He decides Anna’s poems should be published. She is already a published author and translator, but she kept her poems mostly to herself.

“…the crackling, effervescent poet he had lived with for close to two-thirds of his life deserved to be read by someone or many someones other than the aging sack of bones that had been her husband.”

It’s a conversational sort of book. He speaks in the present tense as if he’s thinking out loud or talking to us, making it feel very personal. It’s like meeting an old man who becomes more and more interesting as he talks about his late wife, his trips to Ukraine, and his family’s history. We get a sense of his place in the world – fixed.

Then, more things begin actually happening in the present, and he rejoins the world. He is no longer ‘fixed’, and while I don’t begrudge him that, I felt the tone changed.

Of course I don’t want him to live in the past, worshipping at some weird shrine to his late wife. But something seemed different, Whatever it was, while the rest of the book still held my interest, I was less absorbed than before. Or so I thought.

And then, the ending! That was completely unexpected and will keep me thinking about this fellow a lot longer than I thought I would. It also made me rethink my reaction to the change of tone.

All in all, I enjoyed being introduced to Paul Auster and his creation, Baumgartner.

Thanks to #NetGalley and Faber and Faber for a copy of #Baumgartner for review.

[Andrew Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

At what point in life do you find yourself looking back at what has been more often than you look forward to what is to come? In truth, I believe I may have already reached that point. Certainly, Sy Baumgartner, the seventy one years old academic featured in this story, has. As we meet up with Sy he’s not having a great day, he’d been contemplating how to invest his time but now he’s had a fall, which has really scuppered any plans he might have tentatively formed. however, following a telephone call from an old friend, he's become somewhat reinvigorated, he’s been prompted to dig out and sort through the unpublished writings of his late wife, Anna. It seems that a young scholar is interested in writing a thesis based on Anna’s work - Sy had arranged for a collection of her poems to be published some years earlier - and now it seems that her unpublished pieces would also be of interest.

This exercise causes Sy to recall events from when he’d first met Anna right up to the point a tragic accident took her life, some ten years ago. As he works through a large pile of poems and other assorted pieces, his mind is filled with thoughts prompted by Anna’s writing, or at other times it’s his own recollections that take over. This might all sound somewhat maudlin, but actually it’s anything but in the hands of someone as skilled as Auster. Yes, Sy misses Anna terribly, and in many ways, he knows he’ll never really get over his loss. But to some extent he’s forced himself to move on, and, in fact, he’s now mulling over the idea of proposing marriage to a woman he’s been seeing regularly for some time.

Auster has amazing range: he’s written some of the most imaginative stories I’ve ever read (Timbuktu and Mr. Vertigo immediately spring to mind); In the Country of Last Things took readers to a disturbing dystopian future; The New York Trilogy is a series of interconnected detective novels, and the list goes on. He’s also reflected deeply on his own life in books such as The Invention of Solitude and Winter Journal. So where does this one fit? Well, Sy is a little younger than the author, but not by too much, and other links also stand out: a home city of Newark, a period of living in Paris as a young man and Jewish parents with some Austrian ancestry. So, though it’s not a story of Auster’s own life, I do feel that he brings something of himself to this short but brilliantly observed novel. Sy is a man reflecting on the life he’s lived and on his more limited future, about what he’s had, what he’s lost and also the randomness of things - how things might have played out so differently. It’s not my favourite Auster novel - maybe it’s a little too close to home for that - but it is an affecting tale, one that’ll certainly stay with me, and perhaps haunt me, for some time to come.

My thanks to Grove Atlantic for providing an advanced reader copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Helga چـو ایـران نباشد تن من مـباد · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Where are we?
Where? Why, we’re here, of course, where we always are – each one of us locked in his or her here from the moment we’re born until the day we die.

S.T. Baumgartner is an aging phenomenologist, an esteemed member of the Princeton faculty and the author of nine books on philosophical and aesthetic subjects.

It’s been a decade since the seventy one year old Baumgartner has lost Anna, his wife, the one and only love of his life. But he still finds himself thinking about her and even some days waking up seemingly to the sound of her typewriter, believing she is still alive.

Remember this moment, little man, remember it for the rest of your life, for nothing more important will ever happen to you than what is happening to you right now.

But when Baumgartner wakes from these nostalgic dreams, he finds himself all alone, lonely and afraid. Afraid of the future; afraid of senility; afraid that soon, he will forget everything; that he will forget Anna.

He is a human stump now, a half man who has lost the half of himself that had made him whole, and yes, the missing limbs are still there, and they still hurt, hurt so much that he sometimes feels his body is about to catch fire and consume him on the spot.

This semi-autobiographical novel takes us back to Baumgartner’s past, to his childhood, where he remembers his father and mother and their life in New York.

“Time moves in one direction, memory in another.”
-William Gibson

And this is a trip down the memory lane for Baumgartner; remembering, reliving, contemplating, but never losing Anna’s voice; never un-remembering her.

[Wulf Krueger · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let’s start with the good: Paul Auster still is a great author and his mastery of language is second to none. He is extremely empathetic and feels with his characters. Auster is very near to them and allows us in a masterful way to share in their feelings, ideas, and worries.

Especially the ageing Baumgartner who reads a bit like Auster’s alter ego is an amazingly life-like character who reminisces about his life - married for decades to his late wife Anna, an intensive relationship with another woman, rejection and recovery: Auster takes us on a journey through Baumgartner’s life.

And this is where the cookie - for me - crumbles: While Baumgartner is a wonderful character, he has led an unremarkable life. Not only Baumgartner himself but most people around him as well, it seems. Consequently, the story Auster tells us is lacking in sheer substance and is, as such, nothing very special.

I can relate to many of the aspects at the heart of this story:

»It’s just that we need to get our terms straight before we plunge in and start to talk. Yes, she would still be alive if she hadn’t gone back into the water, but then we wouldn’t have lasted together for more than thirty years if I had done things like trying to stop her from going into the water when she wanted to. Life is dangerous, Marion, and anything can happen to us at any moment. You know that, I know that, everyone knows that—and if they don’t, well, they haven’t been paying attention, and if you don’t pay attention, you’re not fully alive.«

I made numerous highlights and annotations because I loved many ideas and passages but the story itself lacked depth.

Paul Auster remains one of my favourite authors and I’ve read pretty much everything he ever wrote and intend to keep doing so, but, sadly, this novel only receives two stars from me.


»And that is all I will ever ask of you, my newborn son, in the first hours of your long journey toward becoming a man who can think and act and take part in the world—only this and nothing else: to fight the good fight.«


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Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam

[Argos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yazarın kendi ifadesiyle muhtemelen son kitabı, üstelik tamamlayamamış. Önce Covid arkasından kanser ve yoğun kemoterapi derken kafasında planladığından erken bitirilen bir roman “Baumgartner”. Konusu kitap arkasındaki tanıtım yazısında ve Goodreads’teki “kitap tanıtım” bölümünde var, hiç bahsetmeyeceğim. Ana hikayeyi birkaç küçük iç hikaye ile zenginleştirmiş Paul Auster.

Özellikle çocukluk ve gençlik yıllarında yaşayıp da şimdi hatırladığı bazı olayları ve kişileri, yani yaşam deneyiminden bazı notları aktarmış, yani az da olsa otobiyografik öğeler barındırıyor. Hatırladıklarına ayrıca eski mektupları ve yazıları da ekleyerek hikayesine gerçeklik kazandırmış.

Usta bir kalemden bu kez duygusal ama okuru mizahtan da mahrum bırakmayacak güzel bir yapıt çıkmış ortaya. Okurken sanırım yaşımdan dolayı sık sık empati yaptığımı farkettim. Sevdim, öneririm.

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off I'm an Auster devotee. Have been for decades. I try really hard not to let it influence reviews but it's difficult when I'm pretty sure the writing and the story are going to be wonderful before I've even started the first page.

So Baumgartner is possibly a love letter to ageing or marriage or literature. Whatever it is a lovely story about ST Baumgartner, a writer, and Anna, his late wife, a poet.

We start when Baumgartner is in his seventies and has managed to have an accident in his own home. As he recovers he begins to recall parts of his life with Anna. As time goes on he tells us more about his present life - the possible and failed romances, the book he is writing, the grad student wanting to write a dissertation on his wife's unpublished work and also his family history.

Auster always packs a lot in to his books but it never feels that way. His writing has changed so much over the years bit, for me, its never been less than perfect.

Thankyou to Netgalley for the advance copy. Most welcome.

[Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a sweet and melancholy trip down memory lane with a widowed professor emeritus. Not my usual fare but I always enjoy Paul Auster's writing and this was no exception.

[Paula Mota · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5*

Viver é sentir dor, disse para consigo, e viver com medo da dor é recusar viver.

No início de Abril comecei a ouvir o audiobook deste livro, lido pelo próprio Paul Auster (com a sua dicção ligeiramente sopinha-de-massa), que é como tenho consumido a sua produção literária nos últimos anos, mas senti-me tão assoberbada com o luto do septuagenário que o protagoniza, que tive de pousá-lo. Foi infelizmente a morte deste escritor no final do mesmo mês que me impeliu a prosseguir, como uma espécie de homenagem possível a quem na minha adolescência me apresentou um final que eu nunca até aí tinha visto, tão em aberto que me fez achar que faltariam folhas ao meu exemplar. Mas eis que chega o fim indubitável e definitivo, cuja conclusão não fica ao critério de cada um, uma perda que lamento muito, apesar de ainda ter vários livros de Auster por ler.

Agora o tempo é essencial, e não faz ideia de quanto lhe resta. Não apenas quantos anos até esticar o pernil mas, mais exatamente, quantos anos de vida ativa e produtiva antes de a sua mente ou o seu corpo ou ambos começarem a falhar e ele se transformar num incompetente imbecilizado, crivado de dores, incapaz de ler ou pensar ou escrever.

Tudo começa com uma simples caçarola esquecida ao lume, o ponto de viragem nos últimos nove anos que Baumgartner viveu no estado de torpor que se seguiu à morte inesperada da sua mulher, Anna, poeta e tradutora de francês, espanhol e até português.

Dou graças a Deus por todas aquelas belas sonatas matinais quando era acordado pelo som dos dedos de Anna a martelar as teclas, ou seja, pelo som da mente de Anna a cantar através dos dedos enquanto martelava as teclas, e depois de um mês a viver sozinho na casa vazia tinha acabado de sentir tanto a falta daqueles sons que de vez em quando entrava na sala dela, sentava-se diante da máquina silenciosa e dactilografava alguma coisa – qualquer coisa – só para voltar a ouvi-los.

A dor é tão intensa e paralisante que a compara a uma amputação.

Agora é um coto humano, um meio-homem que perdeu a metade de si que o fizera completo, e sim, os membros em falta continuam no sítio, e ainda doem, doem tanto que por vezes sente que o seu corpo está prestes a pegar fogo e consumi-lo imediatamente.

Os dois primeiros capítulos caracterizam-se por um olhar restrospectivo imbuído numa enorme apatia e nostalgia, em que vemos como o protagonista ainda não foi capaz de superar a perda da mulher. Baumgartner está preso ao amor da sua vida, indeciso entre a eliminação de todos os vestígios de Anna e a cristalização da vida em comum.

Até então, não tinha compreendido quão dividido tem estado relativamente a tudo quanto diz respeito a Anna, como desde o princípio a tem repelido e ao mesmo tempo se tem mantido preso a ela expurgando a casa de todos os resquícios dela e no entanto mantendo a sua sala de trabalho intacta.

Depois de um sonho revelador, há uma mudança de engrenagem no terceiro capítulo com um olhar que agora se torna prospectivo, com a presença de um novo amor e a ideia para um novo livro, “Os Mistérios do Volante”.

E é assim que Baumgartner redescobre os prazeres estimulantes, propriocetivos, do movimento, o simples ato de pôr um pé à frente do outro e propulsar-se através do espaço, a totalidade do seu corpo alinhada pelos ritmos paralelos da batida do coração, da expansão e contração dos pulmões, do movimento firme das pernas, esquerdo-direito-esquerdo-direito e quando começa a agir naturalmente nos dias que se seguem, sente uma confiança cada vez maior em si mesmo para continuar a atravessar o vasto prado interior que se estende à sua frente.

Em chegando aos últimos capítulos, ambos os olhares confluem. Baumgartner dá um pulo ao passado recordando a história de vida dos pais mas projecta-se para o futuro com a chegada de uma estudante que pretende fazer uma tese sobre a obra de Anna, culminando num final à la Paul Auster, obviamente.
Desde que li “O Livro das Ilusões”, o meu preferido do autor, que procuro outro que me cause uma sensação parecida, e “Baumgartner”, de facto, esteve lá quase. Atrevo-me a dizer que Paul Auster partiu em grande estilo.

Quando chegar o fim que ao menos lhe seja concedida a dignidade de o seu coração parar em pleno esforço de produzir uma última frase da sua lavra, de preferência as palavras finais de um sonoro vão-se foder dirigido aos loucos famintos de poder que governam o mundo.

[Banu Yıldıran Genç · Rating 4 out of 5]

bir yazarın, okumaya, sevmeye devam ettiğiniz ağır hasta bir yazarın son kitabını okumak zormuş. paul auster “baumgartner”ı yetmişlerine gelmiş bir profesörün terslikle başlayan bir günüyle açıyor.
ilk kez bir romanının adı karakterin adı bu arada. evet sy diye kısaca çağırabileceğimiz baumgartner her zamanki auster kahramanlarından. newark’ta doğmuş büyümüş bir yahudi amerikalı. ana baba zannatkar ya da dükkan sahibi, büyükbabalar avrupa’dan göçmüş, kahramanımız kendisini bildi bileli yazıyla ilgili ve ailedeki ilk akademisyen.
paul auster yıllardır bu ve buna benzer karakteri anlatıyor. temeldeki nüveler aynı ama nasıl yapıyor bilmiyorum, her seferinde bizi bambaşka hayatlara bambaşka dertlere yolculuyor. hatta 4321’de olduğu gibi dört ayrı hayata bile…
sy, on yıl evvel kaybettiği karısı anna’nın yasıyla meşgul. karısının evde olduğunu sandığı zor dönemleri atlatmış. başkalarıyla ilişki kurmaya açık ama karısının eşyalarıyla hala ne yapacağını bilmiyor. romanda araya giten parçalar var, bunların üçü karısının yazdığı anılar, bazen şiirler, biri de kendi anısı. bu parçaların yerleşimi, aktardıkları bizi paul auster’ın yapmak istediğine iyice yaklaştırıyor.
auster bu hayattan çekip gitmeden önce anılarıyla meselesini halletmek istiyor. olduğu ya da olmasını istediği, hiç fark etmez hayatındaki önemli anların, kokuların, hazların anımsanıp anlatılması gerektiğinin farkında. o nedenle yarattığı sy’ı roman boyunca durmaksızın başına üşüşen anılarla boğuşturuyor.
geçmişi düşüne düşüne, ondan parçaları anımsaya anımsaya iyileşiyoruz, ben bunu epeydir keşfettim. ve bu romanda sy’ın da yaşlanmasına rağmen hayata yeniden tutunmasına şahit oluyoruz. anna’nın yayımlanmamış çalışmalarına bakmak için gelecek olan öğrenci beatrix’le kurduğu bağ, duyduğu heyecan, yıllardır salladığı işleri bi anda kotarmak, heyecandan yerinde duramamak ve bam. auster bize bunu hep yapıyor.
inanılmaz şefkatli bir roman bu. sy’ın karısına, karısının ona duyduğu şefkat, insanlara iyilik yapma çabası neredeyse bize geçiyor. paul auster sy’ın anne tarafına kendi soyadını vermiş. annesine duyduğu sevgi, annesinin olgunluğu, kimsesiz bir yaşamdan kurduğu dengeli dünya bizi iyiliğe bir kez daha inandırıyor. ne de olsa yazarın hep dediği gibi “hepimiz birbirimize bağımlıyız ve hiç kimse başkalarının desteği olmadan ayakta kalamaz. tıpkı cuma ortaya çıkmasa ölüp gidecek olan robinson crusoe örneği gibi.”
seçkin selvi’nin ustalıklı çevirisiyle, yazarın bize vedası. umarım acı çekmeden bitirirsin yolculuğunu paul auster. güzellikle.

[Come Musica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Per tutta la lettura della storia di Seymour Baumgartner, una vita ordinaria, tanti gli echi che ho colto: da Oblomov a Martin Eden a Stoner, sebbene questi personaggi siano distanti da Baumgartner.

La vita ordinaria di Baumgartner, professore di filosofia, sembra chiusa tra il già stato e il sarà, in quell'interregno in cui il presente è quasi privo di rilevanza:

“sa soltanto che tra i vivi e i morti c’è un legame, e che un legame profondo come quello che c’era tra loro quando lei era in vita può proseguire anche dopo la morte, perché se uno muore prima dell’altro, il vivo può mantenere il morto in una specie di limbo provvisorio tra la vita e la non-vita, ma quando muore anche il vivo, allora è la fine, e la coscienza del morto si spegne per sempre. ”

Nonostante il dolore per la perdita della moglie e la possibilità di ritornare a essere felice, Baumgartner ha il pregio di aver conservato la capacità di meravigliarsi. Ha tenuto lontani da sé il disincanto e il disamore. E proprio questa sua capacità di rendere grazie alla vita per quello che gli ha dato

“e [...] mentre stendevano la coperta sul terreno sabbioso e lui si voltava verso il viso bellissimo e radioso di Anna, era stato travolto da un’ondata di felicità cosí potente che gli erano venute le lacrime agli occhi e si era detto: Ricorda questo momento, piccolo uomo, ricordalo finché campi, perché non ti accadrà mai nulla di piú importante di quello che ti sta accadendo in questo momento.”

Paul Auster, in “Baumgartner” ci lascia un insegnamento: quello di gioire di ciò che la vita ci ha donato, senza inquinare le nostre esistenze con paure e ansie

“Il 3 gennaio si scambiano una lunga telefonata. Baumgartner ce la mette tutta per soffocare le paure e controllare il tono di voce, ma quel pomeriggio Bebe è di ottimo umore, ha fatto le valigie ed è pronta a partire l’indomani mattina, e l’ultima cosa che vuole Baumgartner è inquinare la sua felicità con foschi presagi.”

[Marion · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5🌟🌟🌟
Wie weiterleben nach dem Tod eines geliebtes Menschen?

Das Leben von Sy Baumgartner war geprägt von der tiefen Liebe zu seiner Frau Anna. Nun ist Anna nicht mehr, und Baumgartner muss, nach über 40 Jahren mit Ihr, nun mit ihrer Abwesenheit leben.

In diesem kleinen Buch geht es um Verlust, Trauer, Liebe, Abschiednehmen, aber auch um das sich Verlieren. Baumgartner verliert sich in seinen Gedanken und Erinnerungen und der auktoriale Erzähler machte meine Erkenntnis zwischen echt und unecht bzw. wahr und unwahr nicht einfacher. Die Geschichte verliert sich in Verwirrungen und endet abrupt.

Reich an Mitgefühl und mit viel Aufmerksamkeit für die kleinen Dinge des Lebens. Leise und auch liebevoll.

Trotz ein paar, für mich etwas langweiligen Zwischenepisoden ( einmal ging es um Autos) hat mich dieses Buch gefordert und ich musste es in einem Rutsch lesen. Mir waren die 200 Seiten zu kurz und das Ende kam unerwartet. Austers Gedanken entwickeln sich , während der Geschichte, immer freier. Mag sein, dass dies, sowie die Länge des Buches und auch dieses Ende auf seine bereits damals vorhandenen Krebsbehandlungen zurückführen sind?
Das Ende des Buches war auch der letzte Satz für ihn?

[Faith · Rating 3 out of 5]

An elderly philosophy professor muses about his life, both past and present. The book begins and ends with a painful accident. Why does he remember seemingly insignificant events so vividly? How can he go on, following the death of his wife a decade ago? How must he accommodate advancing age? Some of his musings struck a cord with me. However, much of the book seemed banal. I’ve read only one other book by this author, and I had mixed feelings about it too. Maybe I just haven’t encountered his best work yet, but I’ll keep trying. In any event, this book held my interest, and some parts were really excellent. 3.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

INTERVIEWER
“The most powerful story in “The Red Notebook” would have to be the lightning story. You were fourteen years old when it happened. You and a group of boys went out on a hike in the woods, and suddenly you were caught in a terrible electric storm. The boy next to you was struck by lightning and killed. If we want to talk about how you see the world and writing, surely that would count as a fundamental moment.”

PAUL AUSTER
“That incident changed my life, there’s no question about it. One moment the boy was alive and the next moment he was dead. I was only inches away from him. It was my first experience with random death, with the bewildering instability of things. You think you’re standing on solid ground and an instant later the ground opens under your feet and you vanish.”
~~ The Paris Review

And there it is. The crux. The kernel. The heart at the heart of Paul Auster’s work.

The music of chance. The terror of chance. The utter volatility of chance. How mercurial and fearsome and stunning.

Paul Auster’s final novel swoops around the capriciousness of life with wide, swooshing wings and an unflinching gaze.

A little book that feels immense and inevitably fated. A book about all the little things and big things crisscrossing in an elderly man’s brain.

A last novel that is elegiac as hell and mournful and spirited and holding on, holding on for dear life.

Our beloved Brooklyn Existentialist lives on.

He gave us an Everyman as a swan song.

[Tracy Towley · Rating 2 out of 5]

When people think of literary fiction as "boring" and "not about anything," this book is exactly what they're thinking about.

This wasn't really a novel. It read more like the author was writing background for a character so that when they got around to writing an actual novel, they'd have a deep understanding of their character.

[Alexander Carmele · Rating 2 out of 5]

Verheerend dissoziativ. Ein Erinnerungsgefüge mit postmodernen Erzählkitsch.

Inhalt: 2/5 Sterne (gehobenes Rentnerdasein)
Form: 3/5 Sterne (flüssige, bis intensive, doch einfache Sprache)
Komposition: 1/5 Sterne (erzählerische Beliebigkeit)
Leseerlebnis: 1/5 Sterne (anspruchslose Selbstironie)

Ausführlicher, vielleicht begründeter auf kommunikativeslesen.com

Paul Auster schreibt mit Baumgartner ein Buch übers Altern. Seymour Tecumseh Baumgartner, emeritierter, siebzigjähriger Philosophieprofessor, lebt nach dem Unfalltod seiner Gattin Anna Blume allein und vertreibt sich seine Zeit damit, Bücher zu schreiben, seiner Gattin nachzutrauern und ihr bislang unveröffentlichtes lyrisches und autobiographisches Gesamtwerk zu verlegen:

Wo seid Ihr Mrs. Dolittle
und wenn Ihr fort seid für immer
kann mir bitte jemand sagen
warum dieser Wicht da drüben
mich über die Straße hin angrinst
im Knopfloch was kleinwinzig Rotes
das glüht wie ein Streichholz im Dunkeln.

Der kurze, knapp zweihundert Seiten lange Roman, besteht im Wesentlichen aus drei Teilen mit jeweils drei Frauen im Zentrum des Geschehens. Im ersten Teil dreht sich alles um Anna, um ihren Tod, ihre hinterlassenen Schriften, die Trauer, die Leere, die sich in Baumgartner breitmacht und endet, als er einen mysteriösen Anruf aus dem Jenseits erhält. Danach, im zweiten Teil, ändert sich der Ton. Baumgartner möchte nochmals heiraten, nämlich die sechzehn Jahre jüngere beste Freundin Judith, die gerade einer toxischen Ehe entkommen ist. Diese gelungenste Passage in Austers Baumgartner gibt der Figur Zeit und Raum, sich an seine Familie und ganzes weitere Leben zu erinnern:

Statt also weiter in die weißen Wolken und den blauen Himmel und das grüne Gras zu starren, macht Baumgartner die Augen zu, lehnt sich auf seinem Stuhl zurück, richtet das Gesicht zur Sonne und versucht, sich zu entspannen. Die Welt ist eine rote Flamme auf seinen Augenlidern. Er atmet ein und aus, ein und aus, zieht Luft durch die Nase ein und lässt sie durch halb geöffnete Lippen wieder ausströmen, und nach zwanzig oder dreißig Sekunden sagt er sich, lass die Erinnerungen kommen.

Im letzten und dritten Teil kommt die Studentin Beatrix „Bebe“ Coen ins Spiel , die laut einem Kollegen von Baumgartner arg an die junge Anna Blume erinnert. Sie möchte eine Dissertation über Baumgartners Frau anfertigen und erfragt Zugang zum unveröffentlichten Material, die ihr Baumgartner gerne gewährt. In sehr einfach gehaltenen Stil plaudert das Buch von Baumgartners Leben, im ersten Teil sehr inkohärent und unentschlossen, im zweiten, vertiefend, mit groben, überzeugenden Strichen ganze Lebensläufe skizzierend, im dritten dann aber wieder ironisch, halbherzig, trocken, bis zuletzt das Simulacrum eines offenen allegorischen Textes inszenierend:

Gleichwohl trägt er diese seltsamen Bilder seit Jahren mit sich herum, Millionen und Abermillionen Körper-Seelen in ihren Autos auf gigantischen, miteinander verbundenen Straßen und Highways, jeder einzelne hinter dem Steuer eine menschengroße Monade, eingeschlossen in das metallene Exoskelett eines insektengleichen Autos, jeder Mann und jede Frau dieser ungezählten Heerscharen allein inmitten fließenden, oft gefährlichen Verkehrs, und der Körper hinter dem Steuer, der auch Geist oder Seele oder Intelligenz ist, trägt die Verantwortung für Hunderte kleine und große Entscheidungen, die das Auto letztlich ans Ziel bringen.

Das Auto als Versinnbildlichung des Leib-Seele-Dualismus, absurd identisch angelegt an Platons Seelenwagen aus seinem Phaidros Dialog, nach welchem die Seele geflügelte Wagenlenker seien, die mit größter Not die Kutsche (den Körper) auf dem Weg halten zu halten vermögen, stellt nur eines der vielen direkten und indirekten Zitate im Text dar, z.B. auch, dass Baumgartner und Blume mit verteilten Rollen an Jean-Paul Sartre und Simone de Beauvoir erinnern, Karl Schwitters Gedicht An Anna Blume … etc.

Postmodern-montierend rattern die Seelen unentschlossen und mit gestutzten Flügeln durch Paul Austers Baumgartner. Es ist weder ein Erinnerungs- noch ein Liebesroman, weder philosophisch reflektierend noch essayistisch plaudernd, weder melancholisch noch sentimental, weder optimistisch noch pessimistisch, komödiantisch oder tragisch, sondern eher, leider, alles und irgendwie nichts davon.

Erzählerisch schlägt sich die Hilflosigkeit vollends nieder, wenn das personale Erzählen brüchig in ein postmodern ironisches auktoriales Plaudern umschlägt, also die Handlung, als Traum oder als Illusion oder Ereignis darstellt, und der Geschichte so jeden narrativen, d.h. glaubwürdigen, immersiven Zauber raubt: Es könnte ja alles auch wieder ganz anders sein. Kompositorisch eine Bankrotterklärung. Mache jeder also sein Eigenes daraus, nur benötige ich hierfür, vor allem bei diesem alltäglichen, beinahe nicht existierenden Ostküsten-Intelligenz-Setting, nun wirklich keine Romanvorlage dafür.

[Talkincloud]

To moje pierwsze zetknięcie z Paulem Austerem, i choć pewnie nie wybrałem najlepszej książki na początek – w końcu to jego ostatnia powieść – jestem zdecydowanie gotów sięgnąć po wcześniejsze dzieła tego autora. Historia Sy’a Baumgartnera mnie urzekła. Emerytowany profesor filozofii, który wspomina życie ze swoją żoną, opowiada o ich wspólnej tożsamości, trudnych momentach, jak i szczęśliwych latach. W tej opowieści odbija się echo nostalgii i tęsknoty za tym, co już nie wróci. Autor, jako człowiek zmagający się z chorobą i własną wizją odejścia, wyraźnie wlewa część siebie w postać Baumgartnera, tworząc metaopowieść poprzez symboliczną figurę pisarza, myśliciela i intelektualisty. To próba nadania swojemu życiu głębszego, być może bardzo literackiego sensu.

Auster umiejętnie bawi się przypadkowością i pozornie losowymi zdarzeniami, które mogą całkowicie zmienić trajektorię życia. Już od pierwszego rozdziału dostrzegamy ten motyw: garnek spada na podłogę, oparzenie, dzwonek do drzwi – i pojawia się postać znikąd, która staje się dla czytelnika kluczowa, choć początkowo nie wiadomo dlaczego. Być może za tym wszystkim stoi jakiś niewidzialny porządek, a bohater jest prowadzony przez wyższą siłę – sugestia, że znajduje się w „cudownych rękach”, idealnie wpisuje się w tę wizję metaopowieści.

Historia ta jest nie tylko zmaganiem się ze stratą ukochanej osoby, ale także walką z traumą, która powraca we wspomnieniach – dorastanie, dojrzewanie, odkrywanie rodzinnej historii. To wydaje się kluczowe w prozie Austera. Mimo że książka nie jest długa, udało się w niej zawrzeć egzystencjalne poszukiwanie sensu, tożsamości i próbę wywinięcia się chaosowi oraz wszechobecnemu smutkowi.

Jestem na tak. Mam lekki niedosyt, więc na pewno sięgnę po inne historie tego autora.

[Terrie Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Complexities of the Human Experience...

Sy Baumgartner, 71, is a philosophy professor and noted author on the cusp of retirement. He continues to struggle with the tragic loss of his wife, Anna, ten years ago. Navigating life without her has been difficult, his grief overwhelming, as his thoughts constantly spin with memories of her...

Baumgartner is a slow-paced and reflective novel with themes of loss and grief, aging and impending mortality, and explores how ordinary moments and extraordinary events shape our lives.

As someone of the same age as our protagonist, Sy Baumgartner, I found this story to be both relevant and relative, thought-provoking and thoughtful, depressing and hopeful. I, too, contemplate and worry about living life without my soulmate and husband of 50+ years. As we age, we see and feel how our bodies change and become more cognizant of our mortality. These age-focused meditations feel like a normal part of the shared human experience. That would be my hope!

Baumgartner is the first book by Paul Auster I have read. I found his writing style complex and reflective, and his storytelling poignant and quietly powerful. This was an immersion read; the audiobook, narrated by the author, felt like a gift!

4⭐

[Aletheia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una novela tierna, pausada y aparentemente sencilla, sin caer en tópicos ni simplismos sobre un hombre al final de su vida. Me ha gustado mucho todo lo que es autorreferencial en la novela, y los juegos metaliterarios y del lenguaje, con los relatos, poesía y referencias a obras de ficción dentro de la ficción.

"Una persona sin relaciones con los demás carece de vida, y si tiene suerte suficiente para mantener una relación profunda con otra persona, tan profunda que la otra persona es tan importante para uno como uno lo es para sí mismo, entonces la vida es más que posible, merece la pena."

La música de fondo de la novela, además del envejecimiento, es el amor que el viudo Baumgartner sentía por su compañera, me encanta que no sea de forma ñoña ni exagerada. Hay vida para Sy después de la muerte de Anna, pero ni frivoliza la pérdida de un ser tan querido ni deja de vivir por ella y su memoria.

Me gustó el inicio tan catastrófico y con ese aire de inevitabilidad, todos los temas importantes que trata con decisión pero sin drama durante esta novelita tan condensada, pero no me termina de convencer el final. Se embarulla un poco y no resuelve nada. No me importa un final abierto si al menos has terminado de cerrar un poco alguna otra subtrama. Aún así es una lectura ágil y muy agradable.

"No una verdad científica, quizá, no una verdad verificable, sino una verdad emocional, que a la larga es lo único que cuenta: lo que nuestro hombre siente y cómo se siente en relación con esos acontecimientos."

Nos faltó tiempo de Paul Auster en este mundo. No es su mejor novela pero nadie pierde el tiempo leyéndola.

[CanadianReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

This slim novel focuses exclusively on Sy Baumgartner, a 70-year-old philosophy professor at Princeton. Ten years before the story opens—when Baumgartner and his wife were on holiday—Anna, a strong swimmer, was drowned by a rogue wave.

The two were soulmates, and the novel mostly documents the protagonist’s bereavement and efforts to go on without his beloved. Some of Anna’s poems and autobiographical pieces, Baumgartner’s own writing projects, and the couple’s family histories are included in the book. Baumgartner also tells the story of his falling in love (over the past two years) with a younger friend of Anna’s and his hopes for a second marriage to this woman. Alas, it is not to be. As the story nears its conclusion, he looks forward to the arrival of Beatrix “Bebe” Cohen, an intelligent and sensitive Michigan University graduate student (the child he and Anna might have had, were they able to). She hopes to make Anna the subject of her doctoral work, and wants to go through the poet’s papers. Baumgartner is excited at the prospect of sharing these and seeing his wife recognized.

This is the first novel of Auster’s I’ve read. I was scared off his work for some reason, expecting it to be intimidating. Some years ago, I attempted reading something by his wife, Siri Hustvedt. I don’t even remember which book it was—possibly the one about her neurological condition. I recall finding it cerebral, chilly, and difficult, and I believed I would encounter something similar in Auster. To my surprise, Baumgartner was remarkably accessible. I enjoyed it, but didn’t find it a particularly moving, invigorating, or memorable read. There really isn’t much to it. I have no idea if it is representative of his other work. It’s possible I’ll try others . . .

[Kuszma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Törékeny remekmű az elmúlásról. Törékeny egyfelől azért, mert olyan sok dolog csak jelezve van benne - például ahogy a gyász hatására az identitás az őrület peremére téved, és ott megszédül, vagy amikor elfogadjuk, hogy a veszteség után szabad új kapcsolatokat kialakítani, és ez nem árulás. És törékeny azért is, mert Baumgartner (az elbeszélő) úgy fekszik az író tenyerén, mint egy tojás, kiszolgáltatottan és sérülékenyen. Bármelyik pillanatban megtörténhetne, hogy Auster összeroppantja őt, ott lebeg a levegőben a tragikus, drámai vég, az a negatív érzelmi katarzis, amivel az utolsó oldalakon a szerző oly egyértelműen kokettál.

Régen olvastam ilyen szép lezárást. Hajlok rá, itt nem pusztán arról van szó, hogy Auster (spoiler következik!) elengedi Baumgartnert, megadva nekünk a lehetőséget, hogy olyan utolsó fejezetet gondoljunk el neki, amilyet megérdemel. Hanem az életmű végére is írásjel kerül - de nem pont, hanem vessző vagy talán kettőspont. Így lesz az egész egy hosszú, lezáratlan mondat, aminek az utolsó szavait nekünk kell kimondanunk.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sy Baumgartner burns his hand on a pot handle, and thus begins yet another spare, beautiful work by one of my favorites. I've been reading this guy for 40 years now, and he never disappoints, never cheats. He asks his reader to fill in their own blanks, but he does it in a nonlinear, spiraling fashion.

We learn of Sy’s devotion to his wife who had died in a freak swimming accident ten years previously, and we learn her thoughts through her writing, so she becomes as alive a character as he. Auster even throws a little meta into the mix, so the reader wonders how much of Sy is Paul. One passage struck me strongly, as aging seems to be the overriding theme: "...the advancing afternoon has moved a bit more rapidly than he had thought, that the moment will soon be coming when the sun declines into an even more acute angle and the world it shines upon will be bathed in a spectral beauty of glowing, breathing things that will slowly dim and vanish into darkness when night falls." Anyone experiencing the effects of aging can relate.

[Maciek · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm a fan of Paul Auster and was deeply saddened by the news of his passing earlier this year. I've read all of his novels, and even though I thought that 4321 was a total borefest I was looking to reading more of them; and then, suddenly, he was gone, and with him all the possible books he could have still written.

Luckily, I had one more to go. An ace in the hole. Baumgartner, published a year before his death. How did it get past me? I don't know, but I was happy to dig in. Even more so. I was happy to say goodbye by reading one last novel by a favorite author.

The good news is that, contrary to his previous tome, Baumgartner is mercifully short; the whole thing clocks in at just a little over 200 pages. The bad news is that just like its predecessor, it is once again an absolute borefest.

The plot - however little there is of it - revolves around the eponymous protagonist, Sy Baumgartner, who spends almost the entirety of the book reflecting on his life and people that he knew, focusing mostly on his late wife, Anna. Baumgartner spends the majority of the books musing about Anna and how they met, how she changed his life, and how her absence still affects him. It could be an absolutely beautiful homage to lost love - even if fictional - if it weren't so incredibly dull. I'm sure you've heard readers dismiss literary fiction as "boring", "plodding", or "not having a real plot" - this is Baumgartner to a T. This novel is the very definition of navel-gazing; however, one must ask, why should we even bother to attempt to gaze at something that was done so many times before, and so much better - including by the author himself?

It's pretty clear that Baumgartner is a fictional stand-in for Paul Auster himself; numerous events from his life were clearly inspired by Auster's own experiences. It's obviously not a bad thing - most authors draw inspiration from their own lives. In this case, however, Auster doesn't really do anything with his fictionalized alter-ego; Baumgartner is sympathetic, but unremarkable, and nothing particulatly interesting or inspiring ever happens to him. We can relate to him, but we can't learn from him, we can't be inspired by him, there's nothing that we could take away from our brief acquaintance. Putting it bluntly; if Baumgartner did not exist, it would be wholly unnecessary to invent him, and the world would chug along just fine.

If you haven't read any Auster, I would suggest his other, earlier novels, such as The Brooklyn Follies. That novel is populated with interesting characters, who undergo a journey of discovery along with the reader - the exact opposite of Baumgartner, where nothing ever happens and nothing is learned along the way. It makes me sad to know that this is Paul Auster's last novel; it reads almost like a draft of something bigger, a sketch of something deeper that he was working on, but now will never finish.

[Marion · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein älterer Mann mit seinen Erinnerungen …. Ein wunderbares Buch.
Mir hat es viel Freude bereitet.
Paul Auster schreibt, ich lese und die Zeit vergeht fast unbemerkt, es wirkt so leicht und ist doch überhaupt nicht belanglos.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

* Yawn *. That's my review.