The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

UK Edition
Publication Date: Jan. 31, 2017


US Edition
Publication Date: Jan. 31, 2017

I enjoyed the book - but had the benefit of a 12 hours daytime flight which meant that I read it in a single sitting and so enabled me to trace across the four stories (with important characters from one turning up as side characters in another) and over 800+ pages.

I am not sure its one I could easily recommend though and I would not be expecting or hoping that this book makes the shortlist.

I agree with Gumble. I enjoyed reading this and I blitzed it in a similar way (although not all in just one go). But I also would struggle to recommend it and I don't think it should make the short list.

The charge that will most obviously be made against 4321 is that it is too long, that it is a book desperately in need of a strong editor. There's no denying the validity of such criticism. The sheer length of 4321 will deter many readers; there's an investment in time and concentration needed to read it.
Notwithstanding, I thought 4321 was excellent for the most part.
It's a novel which is concerned with the chance factor in our lives.
what if events had turned out differently.
This is a familiar Auster theme and provides the underpin to his New York Trilogy
The structure of 4321 is such that the reader is drawn into multiple stories simultaneously, and this worked well for me.
And it's a life story that deals with the struggles, dilemmas, unexpected events, that we all face to a certain degree. A multiplicity of the commonplace rather than grand or exceptional events. It speaks to us all.

I suspect that 4321's timeframe and settings will have pitched it against The Nix when the longlist was compiled.

4321 is a book that is well worth persevering with and one worthy of the Booker spotlight.

If I have the discipline (which I don't) I'm waiting for the cheap and compact paperback version which will be out on 5th October. I will be abroad the following week so I am confident i'll finish it by the time the winner will be announced.

A young Jewish male, Archie Ferguson, born in New Jersey after WWII, has four separate trajectories through his early life, each slightly different because of events that did or didn't occur early in life. Dad dies or gets rich or is robbed by other family members. And the result is four stories, four trajectories of the same young man. But Archie himself? Not really very different at all in the four. It is simply details that change. Some of those details are fundamental, but somehow they don't add up to more than one Archie. What we do have are way, way too many people and details stacked into those four story lines (or really three, one of the Archies dies early on). The Archies are writers, diligent learners and sex obsessed. They also angst about everything.

The main problem with this book, and in my opinion there are a long list of problems, is that it needlessly rambles. If Archie worries about something, the readers hears about it for pages. If Archie spends time with a love interest, pages of details pile up adding absolutely nothing to the narrative. The writing is surprisingly slack for Auster. It is interesting that all the Archies write, and except for one who is a newspaper writer on probation under the dictatorship of an editor who every day takes his wonderful stories and makes them worse, none of these Archie writers ever has an editor. Archie needs no editors. Auster needs no editor? This book needed a fearless editor to slash hundreds of pages from the thing.

I also didn't think the use of political events worked. The book largely takes place during the 1960s, and Auster provides very detailed discussions of several events including the student demonstrations, particularly at Columbia and the Newark riots. But Auster is so caught up in giving us the day by day of these events, and his interpretation of those events, that he loses track of Archie and the narrative. These are big clunky islands of information and opinion around which flow the narratives, but there is a serious lack of connection between the two.

The last few pages where the surviving Archie essentially tells us how he wrote 4321 should have been deleted. It feels as though the author lost confidence in his big book at the last minute and felt the need to explain things.

I thought of the last few pages as the punch line to a (very) long joke.

@lascosas ARGH (comedic yell) - your review was way too spoiler-y. You could have hidden bits and pieces!!!!

No! We don't do spoiler tags or worry about spoilers in book threads, Robert! That's group policy, mandated from on high!

Generally there's always one thick book on the list so i leave that til the very last. Coincidentally with 4321, the cheap paperback will be out a few weeks before the prize announcement so it's good timing

Oh to date my fave Auster is Moon Palace

Interesting to read here divergent views on 4321.
The uber length of the book is the first and most obvious feature that will deter readers.
I agree, and previously floated the thought that some editing might be a good idea (difficult for an editor to suggest to an established author, writing possibly hi last book).
Maybe cut out ten per cent and reduce to 800 pages.

This is not a book of four separate stories, or four stories interlinked. It's one story four times.

There absolutely has to be repetition (all over the place) for this to work.
It's the repetition of certain events and people interactions, which spotlights how different outcomes can and do, follow from small changes in life's journey .

I agree with Jonathan: 4321 is a book that is well worth persevering with and one worthy of the Booker spotlight. And in addition, I'm looking forward to Richard Linklater transforming it into a series of three or four films, each focusing on a different Ferguson.

My feelings about 4 3 2 1 evolved as I read it. I initially felt burdened by its length, more because I was eager to read the six other unread novels on the longlist than because of the length of 4 3 2 1 in and of itself. As with other extremely long novels, I found it sometimes difficult to keep separate some of the strands, made more difficult here because of the alternative Fergusons with their alternative lives and alternative relationships with the same characters. But Auster’s imagination and energy impressed me, and I became emotionally invested in each of the four Fergusons. The later chapters focusing on the three Fergusons who survived into early adulthood were most effective for me, and especially those dealing with the Columbia University uprising. The ending came as a bit of a surprise and perhaps a disappointment, but did nothing to lessen my overall appreciation for Auster’s achievement. All in all—and despite my earlier and now deleted comments here—I’m looking forward to slowly rereading 4 3 2 1 when I’ve finished the Booker longlist. When I reread, I plan to read each alternative Ferguson as a continuous narrative.

Incidentally, I wonder if any single small neighborhood in any other relatively small American city has generated as much fictional attention as Weequahic. Now if only all of the Weequahic characters from 4 3 2 1 and Roth’s novels could populate a single novel.

I just read a brief interview with Paul Auster, and he said he knew the book would be long before he started writing it because of the premise. The challenge was to keep it as lean and swift as possible." I know the book is an elephant, but I hope it's a sprinting elephant."

I enjoyed the book, but I think the size is a bit daunting. For me it was well worth the time and effort though!

Jill,
Its good to see a little love for 4 3 2 1
It is a book defined by its length and on this group forum, particularly at this time, there's a degree of pressure to read more books, and faster. That doesn't help 4 3 2 1.
I too thought the book was well worth the time (I read this immediately on release).
In a strong Booker year, but one with very "serious" messages, Auster came up with one of my favourite funny sentences in 4 3 2 1 (the others so far have been in Reservoir 13). Ferguson's love life is non existent; as he says:
"the only girl he saw with any regularity was last year's Miss April in the copy of Playboy "

I thought there were several very funny sentences. My personal favourite was and the only literary man known as Archibald anywhere in the world was Ferguson’s least favorite American poet, Archibald MacLeish, who won every prize and was considered to be a national treasure but was in fact a boring, no-talent dud.

And I also read it immediately on release, which meant a bit less time pressure to get it finished (compared with trying to read the longlist before it becomes short). I took my time over it and enjoyed nearly all of it apart from the third quarter, really.

Finished it! I feel like I should get a prize, lol. I refrained from visiting here because of the whole spoiler thing, but it is interesting to see the various perspectives.

I thought most of this book was extremely interesting - - not so much the presence of the four lives to be honest, but more the focus on one character in such a detailed and realistic manner. This book contended, in a microscopic way, with all of the issues most of us face . . .everything from figuring out where to live and what to study to love to familial relationships to the impact of money. I almost felt the four different lives really served more to underscore the character's baseline traits; those that did NOT change from story to story. Ferguson always seemed like Ferguson to me. I liked that, and in some ways, I think that is harder to do than to write four very divergent tales of one person.

The length is a bit of a problem. I know a LOT of people who I could recommend the first 500 pages to . . .after that, I felt it was still good, but not AS good. And to be honest, I feel like I had a leg up - - I'm a Jewish person who grew up in the metro NY area and who lived in Rochester, NY for 20 years. If I had any doubts that the historical elements were well researched, those were dispelled completely by the details in the Rochester section. Yeah, if you say the guy is eating a "garbage plate" at Nick Tahou's, you've done your homework. Only in Rochester.

My feeling is this doesn't make the shortlist, but it didn't diminish my enjoyment . . .I've never read Auster before. Anyone have a recommendation of another of his to try?

Anita wrote: "Finished it! I feel like I should get a prize, lol. I refrained from visiting here because of the whole spoiler thing, but it is interesting to see the various perspectives.

I thought most of this..."

Moon Palace!! :)

Ooh yes, I love Moon Palace! And Man in the Dark - if you want a shorter one to start with.
I also recommend Here and Now: Letters - where Auster exchanges letters with J.M. Coetzee, it's brilliant - one of my all time favourite bookish books.

Thank you so much for the suggestions! I will check those out for sure.

Update: Scarily, I apparently read Man in the Dark in 2009, and I have absolutely no recollection of doing so whatsoever. Even after reading the blurb. Hmm. That's truly worrisome. I'm not old enough for that kind of memory lapse.

I call them senior moments - for me they started in my late 30s ;-p

I don't forget that I have read a book, but I do often forget what it was about. Strangely, the thing I forget most often is the ending. Which is actually great news when it comes to re-reading!

Just started reading. It seems I might be here a while...

I've been packing and moving these past few weeks, and so I looked for a longlist book to listen to on audio book. Found this one, read by the author I believe, and it started out great; but after 36+ hours of the same narrative tone, I really just wanted it to be over.

I do wonder if I would have liked it more or less reading on the page.

If this had been a 5 or 600 page book, I think I would have ranked it much higher.

This link should work I hope - interview from today with Auster, at a Danish literary festival :-)

https://www.facebook.com/LouisianaCha...

Still going... Almost a quarter of the way through and liking what he's doing. But there's so much of it!

Would this idea have worked with a smaller novel? Would it have worked if published as four separate novels?

For me, yes, it could be shorter (but mainly because one section is about 150 pages too long!).

It can't be four separate novels. When you get to the end, you will see why.

Thanks Neil. I'll check back with you when I've finished reading, and I'm now looking forward to carrying on reading even more!

I am with Neil - chop out 150 pages of student politics and you would have a novel that was easier to carry as well as more enjoyable to read and one I think would have been much higher on my longlist rankings

Gumble's Yard wrote: "I am with Neil - chop out 150 pages of student politics and you would have a novel that was easier to carry as well as more enjoyable to read and one I think would have been much higher on my longl..."

Definitely in the camp in favor of a 100 to 150 page trim.

This is a real 3.5 stars for me: I gave it 4, reduced it to 3 and am now contemplating going back to 4!

It's just that student section that goes on too long that causes the problem!

I'm still humming and hawing on this one - does it work to read one section (number 4 would seem the obvious pick) all the way through to turn it into a sensibly sized novel, and then revisit the other versions of the story if that one proves of interest?

Paul wrote: "I'm still humming and hawing on this one - does it work to read one section (number 4 would seem the obvious pick) all the way through to turn it into a sensibly sized novel, and then revisit the o..."

I don't really think so. Even though it is ostensibly four different stories, I honestly believe that each story is building the character of Ferguson to portray ONE person. Yes, that person takes some different paths and makes some different choices along the way, but the baseline character development itself, in my mind, was formulated by seeing what elements remained the same across all four narratives.

I honestly think you would be better off just reading through roughly page 500 and maybe the very final chapter, lol.

Paul - no, that would not work. As you will discover if you ever get to the last chapter.

Definitely no Paul.

I was really struggling for the first 150 pages of this one - re-writing a tedious story four times does not exactly make it less tedious.

But suddenly one of the alter-egos has been killed off and his section replaced by a blank page.

Now living in hope that none of them survive past page 250 and the last 600 pages are blank. That really would be a trick worthy of a Booker longlisting.

Paul wrote: "I was really struggling for the first 150 pages of this one - re-writing a tedious story four times does not exactly make it less tedious.

But suddenly one of the alter-egos has been killed off an..."

Ha ha ha! Um, I fear you are going to be disappointed . . .

Oh dear! The first 150 pages are probably the best bit!

Actually, I liked about 500 pages of it and then some more at the end.

But if you don't like the first bit, it's a long way to the end.

Paul wrote: "I was really struggling for the first 150 pages of this one - re-writing a tedious story four times does not exactly make it less tedious.

But suddenly one of the alter-egos has been killed off an..."

That would be a surefire Goldsmith's winner!

It would be a lot of dead trees!

Well no more dead trees than what we actually have but less ink and more time to read better books.

Still laughing at Paul's remark at ranking it #13: "could see it going lower".

Paul, thanks - I was already less than enthusiastic about reading this and you have convinced me that I should wait for the paperback, and may not bother at all unless it makes the shortlist - there are other Auster books I should read first...

Still reading...

37% of the way through.

I should definitely have created a chart.

John wrote: "Still reading...
37% of the way through.
I should definitely have created a chart."

John, perhaps you should bookmark the first page of each chapter, so that you can then reread chapters referring to each Ferguson.

So far this could be my favourite - but I still have 1/3 to go :-)

I'm 70 pages in and really enjoying it but have to admit I was thrown by the structure a bit. I knew it was 4 different versions of the same story but assumed each story would be told in its entirety before moving on to the next one, which meant I got very confused for a few pages before realising and almost wanted to start again and pay more attention! I really like the writing style, it reminds me of Fitgerald's This Side of Paradise.

The only issue I have about the length is that it's difficult to carry around. I have to put it in the bottom of my bag and then empty said bag when I have sat down on the bus to get it out again...

Isobel wrote: "The only issue I have about the length is that it's difficult to carry around. I have to put it in the bottom of my bag and then empty said bag when I have sat down on the bus to get it out again...."
That's why I am waiting for the paperback (that and the price!), but I suspect the paperback will be pretty weighty too.

The Kindle version doesn't weigh much.

Audiobook is also quite manageable :-)