4 3 2 1

Reading too many other things and don't have the headspace. I would love to read it physically and annotate later on. Back on the TBR it goes. 

The first Auster I've read, and it didn't disappoint. This one's a huge book, 1141 pages in the Finnish edition, and it kept me captivated until the end. Ok, some parts of the university life I ended up a bit glossing over, but the beginning and the end were particularly good.

My knowledge of the 1950s and 1960s in the US has been a bit weak; Forrest Gump comes to mind, but not much else, thus it was quite interesting to read about the social movements in the 1960s.

All in all a fascinating approach.

Simplemente genial. Un planteamiento que me reencontró pues ya lo había repasado en mi, pero Auster lo plasmó increíblemente. 35 horas o 960 páginas que me cuestionaron profundamente.

Auster's use of duration makes you deeply and uncomfortably aware of the parallel lives you're not leading. In his 4 versions of 1 life story, anything that you think should stick is on shifting ground (sexuality, broad strokes of human relations, lifelong careers all provide to be results of banal contingencies) and anything arbitrary can have staying power (liking films lol). There are two endings. One is weak - to be vague, he briefly suggests that the 1,000 pages you've just read are a matter of ‘epistemology' rather than ‘ontology', and that spoils the meal. Auster has always been too cool (read: undisciplined) to care about the coherence of the random narrative devices he lobs over to his readers - they often do not fit in the novel, they are just novel. That is the sense in which he is a post modernist (the rest of his work reads very modernist). The other is strong - after 1,000 pages on the absurd twists and turns that violently stich together one already above average life, he shows us there are true men of agency and destiny who fuck shit up for the rest of us because they are simply too powerful.

This book is definitely not for everyone, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's incredibly long and very slowly paced, but it's also intricately detailed, and methodically planned. On one level, it's a tale about the four different ways a young man's life could go. On another level, it's a vivid picture of life in New York in the 1960s, with special emphasis placed on political and social turmoil. It's also a bit of a love letter to literature, poetry, and the act of writing. Perhaps the most compelling part of the book to me were the vividly realized characters. It was hard to imagine that they were all simply inventions from Auster's mind and not real people. It may be difficult for some readers to commit to such a long and slow read, but if you're willing to live in this world for a long time, Auster will take you on an interesting and compelling journey.

blerghhhhhh

4.5 stars

hey girl are your eyes paul austers 4321 because i'm
getting lost in them ha ha ha.

it's pretty good

2.5 stars. It was long. Loooooonnnngggg. Long. I loved the premise, one protagonist living 4 different possible lives. Yes please! The writing was decent, but it was just too damn long. I stopped caring about the characters and just wanted to get it over with.

The clever format of this book—one character with four different lives—is the draw to this book. It's a huge book, with my hardcover copy of 866 pages, but it's not only long but dense. The sentences run on and on, and the reader can't escape from the strings of words, the story of Archie Ferguson, the stories of the Archie Fergusons, wound around the story of America in the 60's. Oddly, the Archies all seem equally plausible, a boy who adores his father or a boy estranged from his father, a boy who loves Amy or a boy who befriends Amy, all the ways that life can weave and jump and pop and skip equally true and possible. I don't think I've ever come to know a single character as well as I have Archie Ferguson, and I honestly wish I didn't know him as well as I've come to know him, with some versions speaking cruel words and severing ties with others, and some versions committing destructive acts with terrible results. It was a marathon of a read; I'm both glad I read it alongside some other version of myself who is glad she didn't.

This book is 100% not a novel I'd normally pick up - but my “read the lit prize shortlist” challenge brought it to my attention, and this type of novel is absolutely why I'm expanding my reading horizons with that challenge.

A 800+ page novel, written by a dude, about another dude? Pass. Not my wheelhouse, not my interest list, not for me. And yet. Somehow, I am completely and utterly in love with this behemoth of a story about the four lives of Archie Ferguson.

I think tackling this on audiobook was the way to go - I'm sure I would have bailed trying to get through the print version. But somehow, against the odds, I found myself sucked in to Archie's world - Archie's FOUR worlds, to be exact, and the tiny decisions that completely altered the trajectory of his lives.

AND - let's be honest - Rose Ferguson and Amy Schneiderman are a couple of FAN-freaking-TASTIC female characters. Good job, Auster, for giving readers these two complex and important women to impact Archie's life.

I am 100% sure this book is not for everyone - but good gracious, am I glad I gave it a chance.

Paul Auster's 4 3 2 1 is the Goliath nominee of this year's Man Booker Prize. At nearly 900 pages, it is not only long, it is unnecessarily long. Though Auster has quite a lustrous career behind him, he takes this opportunity to write a novel that sounds like an undergraduate's wet dream project: a “what if” in the life of a young man; four tellings of the same protagonist in the same setting, but with four different outcomes. It's an ambitious project and though its premise sounds a bit juvenile, I think it could've been done well if done differently. Surely, Auster's skill with weaving words has lifted 4 3 2 1 far above being a mere adolescent traipse through history. Sadly, though written with love and precision, it doesn't rise far above this status.

Contrary to what one might expect, there are no catalysts for the detours in young Archie Ferguson's lives. In the opening passages, I was looking for one and was sort of disappointed to miss it. The fact is, the world is simply different for Archie. In one world he lives with his mother and father, in another he's with his mother and step-father. These differences are not presented as being the outcome of choices a young Ferguson made, they just are. And so, one might assume, there are differences in each of the worlds surrounding the four Fergusons, but no the only difference is Ferguson and those he touches. It's as though the world revolves around Ferguson. That's a lot of pressure on a young man. And so, the 1950s and, to a larger extent, the 1960s roll by one time, two times, three times, and four, all without hitch or pause. Though Archie's life has changed drastically, nothing else has: Korea, Kennedy, Vietnam, Nixon, King. Ironically, despite the four different paths that vary, Ferguson ends up okay in each one. I mean, you'd expect one of the Archie's to be a raging racist or something, but no, Ferguson always has the foresight to be a proponent of civil rights and that makes him swell. If you can't tell, I guess I'm not that big of a fan of Ferguson. I mean, I spent 900 pages with Archie-Alpha, -Beta, -Gamma, and -Delta—you'd think I'd like the guy a bit more. But Ferguson didn't challenge me or evoke any feeling from me. He was sort of a whiny, privileged kid (even when he wasn't so privileged).

The writing was fine. Before I started to feel bitter about the novel, I felt pulled in to the presentation. I could see myself enjoying a shorter, more focused Auster novel. But at some point, I began to realize this was more of a meandering mess than I cared to wrap myself in. There's so much detail about the lives of the four Fergusons. One begins to wonder if it isn't a bit much, especially when Auster goes on a twelve-page summary of fourteen-year-old Ferguson's short story about talking shoes called “Sole Mates.” Was the story important to 4 3 2 1? Yes. Did we need a full summary of the story? Absolutely not. A standard sized paragraph would've been more than was needed. But twelve long pages? Later, Ferguson ponders British actors that starred in Hollywood films. He makes a list in his notebook. And we're blessed with the complete list, all seventy names. These are the sort of things that make this book 900 pages and there was absolutely no need for it.

It may sound like I hated this book and wish to destroy its happiness. I didn't hate it. 4 3 2 1 is a competent epic and it surely has an audience. Personally, I tend to love large books because of the complete stories they often tell. But 4 3 2 1 doesn't tell a complete story. Most of the novel covers the lives of the Fergusons in the sixties. And when you divide this by four storylines, you're really only getting four average sized novels rehashing the same decade. And really, what was the point of it all? You expect there to be a catalyst or some revelation in the end that ties the four lines together. But no. JFK is still shot. Students are still murdered on college campuses. But Archie Ferguson gets to decide if he wants to climb a tree or not.

Sadly, the longer this novel went on, the less I liked it. I just didn't buy Ferguson's lack of freewill. It's obvious that his social and political stances are being shaped by the author. Despite leading four very different lives, young Ferguson can choose who he wants to fall in love with, but doesn't get to choose which side of politics to be on.

Recently, Auster admitted that he struggles with ideas these days: “I used to have a backlog of stories, but a few years ago I found the drawers were empty. I guess I'm getting to the point where I tell myself if I can't write another book it's not a tragedy.” I think he was grasping for an idea with this one. And though it obviously caught the attention of the Man Booker judges, I was not impressed. That said, my interest in Auster has been piqued and I definitely would love to read some of his earlier, shorter works. Just think, perhaps in another life I thought this was the greatest book ever written.


Man Booker Prize 2017:
I'll be a little surprised if this one makes it to the shortlist. It's not particularly relevant right now. It's not enjoyable to a mainstream audience. It's not all that original or brilliant. It's competent and capable, which is why I think it was fine to be included on the longlist, but it doesn't strike me as an eventual winner. Frankly, it feels a bit too much like the old, east coast white male perspective that has dominated literature for decades. I hope these authors continue to write their stories and that we continue to read and enjoy them, but their time of being celebrated as “the best” has come to a close. It's time to honor fresh ideas, styles, and perspectives.

Really conflicted about this book. I think it started off well and I could get on board with the premise, but ultimately it felt over-stuffed. It was way too long, I think that the author tried to do far too much and the second half just trailed off. I don't have a problem at all with long books, but this didn't really managed to sustain the storyline and it got a bit confusing. Due to the focus being on the first half of the protagonist's (plural) lives, and having to avoid making the book even longer, Archie ended up a quite insufferable child prodigy at times, and world events and cultural references ended up as large lists of books that he read, women he slept with or things that happened. I would've given it four stars but I HATED the ending, it was just too smugly clever for it's own good (much like the protagonist I suppose).