World Famous Comics: Travels in the Scriptorium: A Novel
Travels in the Scriptorium: A Novel
By: Paul Auster Publisher: Picador Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Picador Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 160 Publication Date: December 26, 2007 Release Date: December 26, 2007
An old man awakens, disoriented, in an unfamiliar chamber. With no memory of who he is or how he has arrived there, he pores over the relics on the desk, examining the circumstances of his confinement and searching his own hazy mind for clues.
Determining that he is locked in, the man--identified only as Mr. Blank--begins reading a manuscript he finds on the desk, the story of another prisoner, set in an unfamiliar, alternate world. As the day passes, various characters call on Mr. Blank in his cell, and each brings frustrating hints of his forgotten identity and his past.
Both chilling and poignant, Travels in the Scriptorium is vintage Paul Auster: mysterious texts, fluid identities, a hidden past, and, somewhere, an obscure tormentor. And yet, as we discover during one day in the life of Mr. Blank, his world is not so different from our own.
Blank Slate Paul Auster's novel is short(at 145 pp.) but quite thought-provoking.
The subject of the novel - nameless man wakes up not knowing who, why when or how about his identity or anything remotely important - is not a new one and the bulk of the text feels like an extended Twilight Zone episode. The only difference here is that we do not get a Twlilight Zone ending. Lead character, Mr. Blank, may very well not exist as we know it - or he may simply be a character/plot-line in within the wellspring mind of a random author - waiting to be given identity, meaning, etc. or breathed into life through the creative energies of said author.
"Travels In Scriptorium" is purely intellectual 'stuff' and, as such, can only be recommended for those engaged in the 'life of the mind'.
I'm done with Auster I own hard bound 1st editions of the entire ny trilogy and have been a big fan of auster. But this book is one that simply should never have seen the light of day. Cold, uninteresting, self-absorbed and uninvolving. I won't be waiting for the next one...
Clever, but forgettable An old man in a room. There's a bed and a desk and a chair that can rock and swivel and has casters on its feet. There is a bathroom and a door that may or may not be locked that leads to whatever's outside the room. On the desk there is a stack of pictures--photographs of people--a pen and paper, an unfinished, apparently fictional manuscript. The old man cannot remember who he is or anything about his circumstances. He tries to piece things together from the scant information he has--including the manuscript, which he reads--and from halting conversations with the people who come in and out sporadically to care for him. But his mind is not sharp and his groping for clues is ineffectual. Nor is his body functioning well--with the singular exception of his penis, which works admirably.
Reading Auster's novel, we experience the old man's frustration over his failure to remember things, but also frustration because of the man himself, because he is unable to react effectively to his circumstances--presumably a function of the medicine he's been given.
"He ponders the details of Sophie's recent visit, chastising himself for not having asked her any questions about the things that concern him most. Where he is, for example. Whether he is allowed to walk in the park without supervision. Where the closet is, if indeed there is a closet, and why he hasn't been able to find it. Not to mention the eternal enigma of the door--and whether it is locked from the outside or not."
For the reader, the experience is akin to having a frustration dream.
Auster is playing with us in his short book, blurring the boundary between reality and fiction and tormenting us along with his protagonist, nesting fiction within his fictional framework--some of the story within a story written down, some composed orally by the old man. We are invited to speculate about the relationship between the two stories--the main storyline and the story of the manuscript. (We may wonder, too, at the old man's acuity, despite his diminished state, when it comes time for him to craft a conclusion to the story in the manuscript.) In the end we are let it on what's going on. The revelation is interesting but not affecting or shocking. It's rather like an episode of The Twilight Zone, complete with a Rod Serling-esque wrap-up at the book's end. One closes the book thinking it clever, but ultimately forgettable.
-- Debra Hamel
This copy comes with a remainder mark, so is not a clean copy. If you are like me and want all your books clean of any markings, pass this by because the discount price doesn't tell you that it has a remainder mark, a black mark on the top of the pages to indicate it is not a full price item.
Experienced It All Before The problem is not so much that the puzzles and questions in Travels in the Scriptorium aren't resolved. It is they aren't interesting puzzles to begin with. And the quotidian style manages to be both sparse and yet over-written.A final metaphysical flourish explores the relationship between art and life, as Auster is held to account by his own characters. 'Without him, we are nothing,' the novelist's own creation writes, 'but the paradox is that we, the figments of another mind, will outlive the mind that made us ... and our stories go on being told, even after we are dead.' As this idea was around for most of the 20th century, if not before, let's hope it doesn't continue to drag novelists into self-indulgent introspection in the 21st.
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