Word: novelness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...protagonist of “Invisible,” Adam Walker, does just this; he looks for himself in Paris and looks at himself in letters. His quest is one of identity, but strangely, Auster’s almost simplistic prose leaves Walker as effervescent and fleeting as the novel itself...
...first time I had dressed up in months, and there I was, Mr. Important himself, walking across the Columbia campus with an enormous bouquet of flowers in my right hand, on my way to eat and talk business with my publisher.” This first part of the novel, we later learn, is a manuscript mailed to the second narrator: James Freeman, Walker’s college friend. This flourish of ‘infinite regress’ emphasizes Walker’s quest, 40 years later, to find who he was and who he is in paper...
...second and third parts of the novel, entitled “Summer” and “Fall” respectively, are written by Walker himself and edited by Freeman. It’s here that the narrative person-shifts take place; Walker, after finding himself stuck, follows Freeman’s advice: “By writing about myself in the first person, I had smothered myself and made myself invisible, had made it impossible for me to find the thing I was looking for. I needed to separate myself from myself.” Walker?...
...taught me not to be afraid of myself anymore” leave Walker and his fellow characters trapped in two dimensions. This stands in opposition, however, to the time and space Walker traverses—in such a multilayered, diligently designed novel, clichés seem strangely out of place. Perhaps, then, their presence is meant to highlight the futility of Walker’s quest for identity: can words and letters encompass the self? The soul? “Invisible” seems to suggest that they cannot, for at the novel’s end, Walker is flat...
More than that, however, the novel remains plot-oriented; words are at the service of furthering the plot and not artistry. Vladimir Nabokov once wrote that a major writer is simultaneously a storyteller, teacher, and enchanter, and though Auster has the first two mastered— Auster can weave intricate tales that span decades and miles—he is only halfway to enchantment in “Invisible.” His fascinating dance between past and present helps him approach this ideal, but “Invisible” has no moments of literary magic...