'Oracle Night' author's newest novel

By Amy Staples

Paul Auster’s latest novel, “The Brooklyn Follies,” is a story of a man who begins by telling us he’s looking for a place to die, but in fact finds a place to begin living.

Auster, a poet, novelist, essayist, translator, and all-around prolific authorial hat-wearer, brings us a new tale of a man seeking, “a silent end to [his] sad and ridiculous life.”

It’s about a man who regrets the rift he has created between himself and his daughter and is trying to make amends. Nathan Glass is a man who finds, in a place he thought held death, a life he finds himself clinging to in the last pages.

The narrator insists he is not the hero of the novel, but he, in fact, is. Glass gives us an affectionate view of his family and himself that has the wisdom of age and experience and keeps the characters true, aside from occasional sentimentality.

Glass tells us the true hero of the story is his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, who he meets in a bookstore in Brooklyn after a years-long separation.

They pick up where they had left off, with the camaraderie they had shared when Wood was in graduate school, and the adventures they embark on begin almost immediately, with the introduction of Wood’s employer, Harry Brightman, and Woods’ niece Lucy.The people Glass meets in “The Brooklyn Follies” expands his family and enrich his life, and the reader’s.

In a Tuesday evening appearance at the First Congretional Church in Portland, Auster referred to the book as a comedy, in the same way Shakespeare’s comedies end with everyone getting married in the end.

There aren’t any Three Stooges moments in the book, no pies in the face or beer bottles over the head, but there are, however, follies. Moments of foolishness, moments that lack good sense, but nevertheless are not altogether comedic.

A weekend trip to Vermont turns out better than expected when car trouble brings it to a premature end. Car problems are usually seen as a crisis, a tragedy in automotive repair, but when the tallies are added, Glass shows us what good a perfectly timed “disaster” can do.

In the last page of the book, Auster brings us back to reality with a revelation that reminds us of the fagility of our existence. The reader and the narrator have the gift of hindsight to appreciate the events in the book with a different perspective, because of recent events in American history that changed the way people look at New York and the United States.