Paul Auster’s Oracle Night

It’s been a while since I read Paul Auster. I remember few details of the ones I’ve read. I remember being sick while reading The New York Trilogy (1987), lying in bath and turning pages. But from the other two, Leviathan (1992) and The Music of Chance (1990), I remember almost nothing. One of his books I’ve reread two or more times, The Red Notebook (1992), mostly because it’s so short and it has very short stories. And one of them (which I thought was his debut but which came after Trilogy), In the Country of Last Things (1987), I’ve started reading at two occasions, but put down.

The one I’ve just read is falling apart; Oracle Night (2003). I dozed off while taking a bath, and woke up as I dropped it in the water. This eventually lead to the front page coming off, so I had to tape it back on. I like it when books look read.

I can’t help but feel that Oracle Night is Auster’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (1979). Like Italo Calvino’s book, it’s about books. Whereas his was primarily about the experience of reading them, Auster’s deals with the metaphysics of writing. Both books have several ‘stories within the story,’ but there’s something beyond that which gives me this feeling. I can’t put my finger on what. Perhaps I’m reading this into it.

I loved Oracle Night. His previous one, The Book of Illusions (2002) is in the mail. And now I’m thinking I should reread the others in English. I’ve only read him translated, which is something I don’t mind generally. I should have to get new copies of two of them though, as they are falling apart as well and wouldn’t stand a reread, and I don’t know where my copy of Trilogy is, so I might as well get them in English.