When I first sat down to piece together a post on Paul Auster’s Oracle Night, I found myself at a loss for a direction, as a paradoxical condition similar to being both loss in a labyrinth as well as being at sea without a compass. Not claustrophobic, but not the freedom of an open spaciousness either. Somewhere between the two?
Auster writes books of components, assembled within interconnected themes and characters and stories that constantly churn out further stories. Finding a center that holds the pieces all together?
Often with post-modern writing (I‘m thinking of DeLillo and Pynchon), the flood of information remains partly on the surface to demonstrate a contemporary world awash in the proliferated changes that have resulted from the past century’s exponential developments. And while this is an aspect of Auster’s writing also, the difference is that with each of the tangents he places into his narratives, even if only a page long, they are not without their own intensity.
One could imagine turning the book inside out with the main narrative becoming only minor and one of the side stories being developed into a central narrative, and done so without any loss to the end impact of the reading.
As a reader moves through Oracle Night, they find that the most prominent story in the book is concerned with marriage. David Orr is a writer in his mid 30’s, and when the book begins, we find that he has just reentered the world after a near fatal accident. More specifically, in the first few pages, we find him at a stationary shop to purchase some writing supplies. From here, the book burrows in and out of various striated story lines, of which include David’s daily life, his personal life, stories that are told by other characters, the manuscript he begins to write, books contained within the manuscript being written, and so on.
And all of these stories are told with exacting detail, reflecting the influence noir has had on Auster. All, except for David Orr’s relationship with his wife.
Through various cryptic remarks and behaviors displayed by David Orr's wife, the reader picks up on an intense uncertainty existing, which does not result in animosity or tension so much as a strain within the mind of David Orr (and the reader) to fill the gap, the blank, the unknown. And it is David Orr’s process of coming to terms with this unknown that becomes the focus of the book. Is it better to leave it as an unknowable? Something David Orr should simply let pass in its own good time? Should he play detective and assemble all the possible clues to formulate a ‘most likely’ scenario, at the risk of falling into personal subjectivity? Face the matter as a realist, believing that a factual account is possible and should be strived for as much as possible?
These are the questions we all ask of ourselves when understanding any relationship, and which become most prominent and consequential within a marriage. And this is in line with the rest of Auster’s books as they all involve the known and the unknown aspects inherent to relationships. Auster also writes about what it means to be a writer, especially in his first book, The New York Trilogy, and is returned to again in Oracle Night, but this also embodies a relationship, the relationship between the author and his work, which can then be subsequently extended to a person’s relationship with reading, with life, and with other people-- as something which we create. If not always the outcome, then our relational understanding of the relationship.
This is the second time I’ve read Oracle Night and the first time around it slipped past me from not picking up on how all the varied pieces work together. I’m hesitant to say “into a whole”, instead, closer to how they are all reflect one of the same.
Auster writes books of components, assembled within interconnected themes and characters and stories that constantly churn out further stories. Finding a center that holds the pieces all together?
Often with post-modern writing (I‘m thinking of DeLillo and Pynchon), the flood of information remains partly on the surface to demonstrate a contemporary world awash in the proliferated changes that have resulted from the past century’s exponential developments. And while this is an aspect of Auster’s writing also, the difference is that with each of the tangents he places into his narratives, even if only a page long, they are not without their own intensity.
One could imagine turning the book inside out with the main narrative becoming only minor and one of the side stories being developed into a central narrative, and done so without any loss to the end impact of the reading.
As a reader moves through Oracle Night, they find that the most prominent story in the book is concerned with marriage. David Orr is a writer in his mid 30’s, and when the book begins, we find that he has just reentered the world after a near fatal accident. More specifically, in the first few pages, we find him at a stationary shop to purchase some writing supplies. From here, the book burrows in and out of various striated story lines, of which include David’s daily life, his personal life, stories that are told by other characters, the manuscript he begins to write, books contained within the manuscript being written, and so on.
And all of these stories are told with exacting detail, reflecting the influence noir has had on Auster. All, except for David Orr’s relationship with his wife.
Through various cryptic remarks and behaviors displayed by David Orr's wife, the reader picks up on an intense uncertainty existing, which does not result in animosity or tension so much as a strain within the mind of David Orr (and the reader) to fill the gap, the blank, the unknown. And it is David Orr’s process of coming to terms with this unknown that becomes the focus of the book. Is it better to leave it as an unknowable? Something David Orr should simply let pass in its own good time? Should he play detective and assemble all the possible clues to formulate a ‘most likely’ scenario, at the risk of falling into personal subjectivity? Face the matter as a realist, believing that a factual account is possible and should be strived for as much as possible?
These are the questions we all ask of ourselves when understanding any relationship, and which become most prominent and consequential within a marriage. And this is in line with the rest of Auster’s books as they all involve the known and the unknown aspects inherent to relationships. Auster also writes about what it means to be a writer, especially in his first book, The New York Trilogy, and is returned to again in Oracle Night, but this also embodies a relationship, the relationship between the author and his work, which can then be subsequently extended to a person’s relationship with reading, with life, and with other people-- as something which we create. If not always the outcome, then our relational understanding of the relationship.
This is the second time I’ve read Oracle Night and the first time around it slipped past me from not picking up on how all the varied pieces work together. I’m hesitant to say “into a whole”, instead, closer to how they are all reflect one of the same.
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