If you are looking for a quick yet thorough coverage of this topic then this is the book for you. It is a relatively short book, coming in at 167 pages (not including bibliography but including notes section), yet it covers the whole spectrum of the national music of the Dominican Republic.

Mr Austerlitz covers the beginnings of this music all the way through to its current state. It also spends time on Merengue's development during the Trujillo era (a particularly interesting topic to anyone who studies the Dominican Republic).

Mr Austerlitz also does a good job of addressing the sociological issues that arise from music and manages to blend well the merengue of the campo with that of the salon.

A good read and it even comes with a CD with some very good campo (country) merengue. If you are looking for merengue at its roots then this CD should please you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1.Introduction

PART 1: THE HISTORY OF MERENGUE 1854-1961. 2. Nineteenth-Century Caribbean Merengue. 3. Merengue Cibaeno, Cultural Nationalism, and Resistance. 4. Music and the State: Merengue during the Era of Trujillo, 1930-1961.

PART 2: The Contemporary Era, 1961-1995. 5. Merengue in the Transnational Community. 6. Innovation and Social Issues in Pop Merengue. 7. Merengue on the Global Stage. 8. Enduring Localism. 9. Conclusion

Let me know if you found this useful.

Up in Manhattan's Morningside Heights and its Dominican analogs all over the US, salsa is edged out by the magnificently manic beat of the merengue, whether stirred into Dominican rap and house (the most original as well as the least known versions of the genre) or in the tear-em-down accordion of Fefita La Grande. Austerlitz has all this and a lot more, all the way from the luckless Toma' back in the 1840s (read the book!)Austerlitz covers merengue from rural to hi-society in all its fierce joviality. Read this book and you'll know there's one good thing Trujillo did for the Dominican Republic!

John Storm Roberts

Enjoyed the insight into the history of Merengue and its cultural context. This book has a place on my bookshelf along with "The Latin Tinge" and "The Brazilian Sound."

Unfortunately, Paul Auster's unique work, "The New York Trilogy," is one of those books usually purchased because of word-of-mouth advertising than off-the-shelf interest. The problem with people telling you about this little collection is that you often build a preconceived notion about what to expect from the work, either good, bad, or strange. If a book ever existed that should be read without any prior knowledge of it whatsoever, The New York Trilogy is it.

The book - really a collection of three novellas, originally published separately - follows the adventures of three different men on three different pulp-novel-style investigative cases. To give away more plot does the reader a disservice; after all, while one can describe a series of exhibits on a carnival's "Freak Row," recreating the emotions involved in walking down that alley defies the conventions of language. Language, and its employ, surrounds many of the events in these books. Auster plays with the reader, offering a mystery as engaging as the ones his characters attempt to solve. He scattered the clues throughout the book, but the responsibility of creating meaning from them - and, by extension, from the book - lies solely with the reader.

If that seems unfair of Auster to expect of a reader, and too intellectual and highbrow for people interested in a casual experience, "The New York Trilogy" contains plenty more to recommend it. The mystery of meaning (provided the postmodernists and their odiously pretentious "scholar"-lapdogs haven't ruined such fun things for you) is an optional part of enjoying this work, and those looking for a great read should not be turned away. Vivid, haunting descriptions of The City (by all means, read this book in New York if you have the chance) mingle with stories that show an obvious awe and respect for film-noir and pulp detective stories. Hopelessness, sorrow, happiness, luck and chance, double-crossing, and redemption all combine to form three solid stories that tickle the mind. One gets the impression that Auster wrote this work almost as a tribute to the noir-pulp style, while attempting to offer the reader another mystery, should the reader desire such a challenge.

The seeded subcontext in the book offers quite the literary experiment, and like all experiments it doesn't always work. It usually lies in the background, suggesting its presence, but occasionally comes forward and distracts - and detracts - from the main work itself. In addition, the content matter and strange circumstances might put off those with preconceived ideas (thus, my attempt to say much while revealing little). Auster's "Trilogy" certainly merits a read, although it may not immediately appeal to all sensibilities.

Now that the academic and critic types have found Paul Auster, I guess he'll be lifted out of the general readership and stashed with the rest of the classics on some hoity-toity shelf. Once that "postmodern" labelling starts, it's goodbye accessibility, hello pretension.... Anyway: City of Glass is one of the best constructed stories I've ever read. There is an incredibly complex concentric circle of narrators: there's the author, then the narrator, then his pen name, then his detective character, then his pose as Paul Auster. Then there's the real Paul Auster he meets, not to be confused with the one who's writing the book. Kind of spooky.

Also, an English woman once showed me more disturbing information about City of Glass. If you take a city map of New York and mark out the well-described twisting journey of the characters, a picture emerges. What does it mean? With so much description of the streets they travelled, it can't be accidental. I was actually spooked.

Unfortunately, I think everything Auster's written since this trilogy has been sliding downhill in quality, and this opinion seems to be shared by friends all around.

Paul Auster's "New York Trilogy" consists of three seemingly unconnected novellas which though complete in themselves should be read as integral parts of a total literary experience. Unlike a conventional mystery thriller which focuses on the "who done what to whom" aspect of the storyline, Auster turns the table on the reader by taking him on a journey of self discovery past a hall of mirrors which reflect and expose by stages the psyche of the pursuer, not the pursued. The effect is so spooky you want to scream in your head as you encounter the next slice of reality about yourself. Readers familiar with the music of rock star David Bowie will find the reading experience similar to that of listening to his 1977 album "Low", a dark and creepy introspective piece of work. All three vignettes deal with questions of identity, reality and illusion, the meaning of words and language and explores the fine line between commitment and obsession. Both Quinn in "City of Glass" and the anonymous narrator in "Ghosts" are trapped in their own circumstances and forced to make human choices which lead to their mental breakdown. There is also a noir-like cinematic feel about the trilogy that just begs for this masterful piece of work to be brought to the screen. Auster has produced a highly original post-modern thriller that will mesmerise and enthrall readers for years to come. It is simply superb and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This selection of Miro's writing provides an interesting view into the intentions, beliefs, and personality of a very engaging and seminal Catalan artist. The book covers the great majority of his life and thoughts, dealing with his early fondness for Dada, his relationship with painters such as Masson, his exilic time in France, plus musings on Catalan nationalism, the surrealist movement, and poetry.

For those die-hard Paul Auster fans (Auster translates the french writings in this text), this book is a worthy read and insight into an artist who Auster devotes time to translating, and in doing so illuminates sympathies between the two: a nostolgic and essentialist notion of art as process that somehow remains endearing in the contemporary world, and somehow demands the respect and admiration that such force and sincerity manifests.

A fascinating read, both as a historical document, and an artistic biography: it provides an interesting glance into one of the most influencial modern painters of Europe whose life was centered in the intellectual and historical complexities of late modernism.

For those who only know Miro as a painter of "abstract" or "childlike" pictures, Joan Miro : Selected Writings and Interviews reveals the true radicalism of his thought, a radicalism which, in the realm of visual art, equals that of Lenin in politics. Unlike other works, which ignore his theories about, for example, the "murder of painting," or acknowledge them only to distort their true meaning, here, "the most surrealist of us all" speaks in his own voice, enabling one to track the evolution of his thought from schoolyard days, through the frustration of his time in the army, to the development of ideas about the pen and brush which challenged the very world as it exists. The man who challenged his father by declaring the sky was purple was an intractable enemy of consensus reality. Yet in his ruthless charge towards the future, he did not cease from being a maker of pictures existing in all time and even outside of time. This work's precious insight provides little comfort for those who, as a defense mechanism or out of studied denial, belittle Miro's connection to surrealism, or the importance of his revolutionary role.

A number of writers have written about the experience of being a starving artist. Off the top of my head, I can think of William Saroyan, George Orwell and Jack London. Back when I was a starving artist, I read them all. It was research. I had to know how to live, and what not to do. It was serious business.

I came upon Hunger by Hamsun in the stacks of the library where I went to art school. I loved the book because I was living it. I was so used to being hungry that I lived in a continual state of dizziness and visions. People were always asking me if I was anorexic but the truth was the work I found just didn't pay me enough to pay for rent, transportation, and food. The rent and transportation were constants, so I skimped on the food.

What struck me when I was reading all these writers -- Hamsun included -- is that these poverty-stricken writers were all eating steak. When they ate, they ate steak. So for them, either they could eat steak, or they couldn't eat at all.

And most of them only ate in restaurants. Hamsun's character only ate in restaurants. Unbelievable, his hair is falling out because he is starving, and his idea of a meal is eating steak in a restaurant.

What the hell kind of survival skill is this?

Hunger taught me to become a vegetarian and to learn to cook. I could live off a $.79 bag of lentils for two weeks. I lived off a Halloween pumpkin for another two weeks. When I was flush, dinner was a yam. I ate the parts of vegetables other people throw out. When you're hungry, you learn to be inventive. You learn to make do. You learn humility and patience and resourcefulness. You learn to put up with things that you would consider a real drag or beneath you when you were well-fed.

This is not something you see in the books. These guys are dying because they don't learn from their poverty. They're inflexible; they're dying because they can only feed themselves with their art, they can't take day jobs, they can't invent a way to make art and still eat.

Hamsun's book is a morality tale about inflexibility. I don't think he means it as that, but it's what I learned from it. Hamsun's Hunger changed my life. It taught me, you have to learn to invent, or you'll die. And learning to invent is what being an artist is all about.

Here we find the birth of the anti-hero -- Hamsun's protaganist of "Hunger" -- a brilliant and scarcely recognized book. But make no mistake, he is not the anti-hero proudly glorifying his underdog status in the world as we've seen repeatedly throughout the last two centuries. He is not a martyr for the misunderstood eccentric artists of the world. He does not suffer over the far reaching philosophical questions of existence itself. He simply exists in a world that we can relate to. I would contend that men like this really exist; men like Raskolnikov do not. While Dostoevsky feeds on the desire of his reader to project an answer, Hamsun merely mirrors his own experience with honesty and innocence. I am not debating the merit of Dost. at all (he is the superior writer), but expanding upon the hidden attachement we have to characters like these. It's just not an issue for the "Hunger's" protaganist. Here is a man with gifted intelligence for reasoning and the ability to fully comprehend the life he *must* live, but is too shy and bashful to dramatize and romanticize it. He is completely human, living in a world entirely of himself. It is clear that he could make friends and earn a good wage if he chose to. But he does not, not out of the vile contempt for man's vices, but on his own acceptance that this is the man he is. Guilt is the essential problem, not hunger. At over a century old, the novel is a refreshing pleasure to read. The prose is quick without being terse. It is essential reading for anyone interested in a segway into the modernist and avant-garde movement. Not for what Hamsun represents, but for what he doesn't.

exciting, youthful, rebellious - these are the adjectives swimming around in my head when i think of Hunger. If you're a disaffected teenager, read this as a tonic - there is hope, others have been more disaffected before. If you're a disaffected parent, read this as a tonic too - there is hope, others have been more disaffected than your wayward kid.

Underneath the irresistible depression cycle of the hero here is a seriously unnerving compulsion to self-harm and mental instability. It is a novel that demonstrates an incredible ability on the part of the author to invent an original literary device - the loner monologue in this case - and carry it through with utter confidence. Hunger is a very selfish book. It obsesses about its narrator. It is no great piece of literature-as-therapy. It offers no answers to big life questions for the hungry reader, in fact, it is more likely to make you ask questions: about the mind, the "system", capitalism, social boundaries and taboos and, lastly, creativity. This is a debut to be reckoned with.

Leviathan is a fascinating book, and it clips along at a very quick pace - I read it over the course of a couple of study halls. It cannot, however, hold a candle to a book such as The New York Trilogy (my favorite Auster novel, and the standard to which all others are compared). Leviathan is complex, but ends up feeling rushed, particularly the second half. The characters are well crafted, but are too frequently cast aside as the plot rushes forward. Auster needed to trim the book down, or expand upon it.

Despite the hurried feeling, Levithan is nonetheless a very interesting novel, and does a wonderful job of bringing up questions about America and the American citizen's identity within America. It is fitting that the book is dedicated to Don DeLillo, a writer who frequently confronts this sort of question in his work.

All in all, an excellent read. Despite the adrenaline rush, Leviathan is steeped in a sense of philosophical melancholy. Whether or not there is hope for America, Paul Auster proves there is hope for American literature.

Paul Auster is a blatantly theoretical novelist. He dissects and deconstructs literary genres and trends with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker. But some accuse him of abandoning the delight of a story for a view from the ivory tower. I tend to disagree, for the most part, but offer up "Leviathan" as an example of an Auster book that's both a page-turner and a think-piece.

For po-mo lit-lovers, Auster is in fine form. His modus operandi of casting himself as the literary quasi-detective is in full effect here. Narrator Peter Aaron (check those initials) is married to lovely Iris (Auster is married to novelist *Siri* Hustvedt). He is a writer by trade. "My books are published... people read them, and I don't have any idea who they are... as long as they have my book in their hands, my words are the only reality that exists for them," he says, defensively.

The book he is currently writing -- and the book "you" are currently holding -- is an examination of his recently deceased friend, Benjamin Sachs ("Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of the road in Northern Wisconsin," reads the novel's enticing opening line). Sachs has enough vaguely roguish qualities to make "Leviathan" a fascinating picaresque. But he's also an idealist, and fiercely intelligent. He's a writer manque, whose first novel blew the critics away but was a failure with readers. Sachs is a character who exists mostly in absentia, periodically jumping back into Aaron's life to offer up enough details to tantalize his friend, and keep the reader off-balance. "Even though Sachs confided a great deal to me over the years of our friendship," Aaron says. "I don't claim to have more than a partial understanding of who he was. I can't dismiss the possibility that... the truth is quite different from what I imagine it to be." This is Auster playing with the concept of the unreliable narrator, only here the narrator is aware that he's unreliable. An interesting concept, that.

But "Leviathan" is not just conceptual. It's loaded with intriguing personalities, and a lot of implicit suspense. And Auster's habit of digressing from the story to discuss an interesting tangent yields at least one fascinating sequence. Sachs' novel, entitled "The New Colossus", is summarized by Aaron. Auster spares no expense, creating an appealing advertisement for a historical page-turner that doesn't exist. But within that summary he also explicates some of his own novel's grander themes.

The main one, and it's all over the place here, is America as a place of infinite possibilities for freedom but a failure in terms of realizing those possibilities. "America has lost its way," Aaron writes, when talking about the message of Sachs' book. "Thoreau was the one man who could read the compass for us, and now that he is gone, we have no hope of finding ourselves again." Further examination reveals that the Statue of Liberty, as an icon or just a concept, is "Leviathan's" dominant motif. It appears in Sachs' book and in a poignant memory from his childhood. The occasion of her hundredth birthday forms the background for the novel's great turning point. And if not for the Lady's presence, the climax of the book would be hokey and overwrought. As it is, she lends it dignity and class, amplifying its intensity and greatness.

Using spare but consequential prose, Auster has written another novel that straddles the line between pulp and intricate fiction. It never panders to the unintellectual audience, but also never dumbs itself down. And it reaches that fine balance with seemingly relative ease, a trademark of Auster's other works. Try this one first before jumping to "The New York Trilogy" or "The Music of Chance". I dare say you won't be disappointed.

Leviathan is the story of Benjamin Sachs, a writer and an ideologist, as told by his long time friend and fellow writer, Peter Aaron. As is revealed in the first few pages of the book, the story follows Sachs from the peak of his success, through a long decline and to his eventual untimely death. Like most of Paul Auster's other novels, "Leviathan" tells an intricate, convoluted and incredibly addictive story.

Paul Auster is a master writer. The book is both entertaining and thought provoking. The characters are deep, complex and well crafted. Auster is able to maintain a credible plot even while introducing some tenuous twists into it. Like many of Auster's other novels, "Leviathan" explores the impact of chance and of seemingly random events on the course of human life. Auster's recurring themes: doubt, desperation and the frailty of the human condition are a central topic of this book.

This is yet another masterpiece from one of the greatest writers of our time.

"The world was full of holes, tiny apertures of meaninglessness, microscopic rifts that the mind could walk through, and once you were on the other side of one of those holes, you were free of yourself, free of your life, free of your death, free of everything that belonged to you." These are author Paul Auster's words in the mind of protagonist/narrator David Zimmer in Auster's new novel, THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS. These ideas occur to Zimmer while having a revolver aimed at his chest by a woman who, in her own uniquely persuasive manner, has come to liberate him from his Vermont home and an absurdly tragic life and send them both off to the New Mexican desert on a very strange mission. Her name is Alma Grund, daughter of an obscure silent movie cameraman; she has a fist-sized birthmark on the left side of her face, and she promises to introduce Zimmer to a silent film star named Hector Mann who mysteriously fell off the map many years before and whose films Zimmer has written a book about, as well as show him a number of private films Mann made at his ranch, meaning never to show them and willing them to be destroyed upon his death. Paradox being, of course, if a movie is never shown, is it still a movie? If not, then what? Auster's answer: it's an illusion. Everything is illusory in any case; all of existence is a frustrating mirage in which any truly substantive communication between people is absolutely hopeless.

In the final analysis, ILLUSIONS comes across as a particularly clever work of postmodernism, suffering perhaps from a bit of bulge around the middle, a few too many redundancies, and metafictional coincidences. One element I found particularly annoying was the author's cavalier attitude toward his character's finances. Any time the question of funds is raised, Auster invents a quick means to make them wealthy enough not to worry over something so pedestrian and potentially polluting to his plot. Perhaps this was a ploy intended to strike a contrast between real suffering and the illusion of money, but I found it a dull solution for what is, ultimately, at the hollow heart of the vast majority of humankind's daily grind.

This is an easier book to fall into than get out of. Auster asks us to ponder something usually rather done on a subconscious level: what of ourselves survives when we are finally gone? And who or what are the caretakers of that memory? There is a powerful, moving ending here, one that resonated in me long after the final sentence.

Paul Auster--writer, director, and one-time actor (look for his cameo in The Music of Chance)--has written another masterpiece with The Book of Illusions. For years, Auster has been plying audiences with the tricks of the postmodern trade: metafiction, hypertextual references, self-referentiality. Instead of encouraging the reader to lose him/herself in the text, his novels never let you forget that you are reading a work of fiction. In the hands of a lesser writer, this would make for a miserable reading experience, but Auster uses postmodernism as a tool to find deeper meaning, not merely as the literary equivalent of pyrotechnics.

It is hard to say much about The Book of Illusions without revealing too much, but on the surface the book is about a college professor who has lost his entire family to a plane crash, and in order to escape his thoughts of suicide he immerses himself in an in-depth study of Hector Mann, an old silent-film comedian who has not been seen or heard from in well over half a century. But when he turns the fruits of his depression into a book about Mann's films and gets an invitation to meet this virtuoso of the silver screen, he realizes that things--and people--are not always what they appear to be.

This engrossing story is brimming with wit, and leaves you with the feeling that you've read something more like a testimony than a novel. What Auster has done here is to create what all novelists strive for: a story that is extremely specific but never obscure, universal in theme but never cliche.

If you liked The Book of Illusions, try Auster's City of Glass.

Auster is an extraordinary writer -- his prose spare and elegant, his focus the shifting shadows between reality and illusion. Never was a book more appropriately titled.

The protagonist, academic David Zimmer, has suffered the nearly unimaginable, but quite credible tragedy of losing his family in an air crash. His response is to drink, to shut himself away, and, when briefly re-introduced to his former life, to be appallingly obnoxious.

His chosen therapy is to write a book about a forgotten (and as it turns out, disappeared) silent film star. The publication of this study produces the remarkable news that his subject is still alive. The story of his subject Hector's life post-Hollywood mirrors the escape Zimmer himself is trying to make from the awful reality of his own tragedy. The parallels between Zimmer as author and Hector as subject are striking.

The resolution of this marvellous novel is both sad and shocking, and yet, as with all Auster's work, there is a note of hope at the end, coupled with the sense that what is real, and what is not, is divided by the thinnest possible line.

If this book were judged only on its evocation of the end of the silent movie period, it would be a complete success. Containing, as it does, many layers of complexity built around what we know to be real, imagine to be real, and imagine to be imagined, seen against the backdrop of unforgettable characters whose own reality is compelling, this is an extraodinary novel by a writer at the height of his powers. Read it more than once -- it will repay you many times over.

Based on the sample stories recited as a monthly feature on NPR, I purchased this book ro read while on a couple of long plane rides, thinking the short stories would be well suited to the task of keeping the mind entertained among the numerous waits and between the various interuptions becoming a standard of airline flight. For the first several stories, I felt I was on the right track. But my initial enthusiasm soon waned, as the repeated themes and predictability of outcome of most of the stories became more apparent.

Surely, there are some real gems in this catalog of American life, but other efforts range from the plain to the rediculous. I'm sure that Paul Auster had a difficult task in selecting among the many entries submitted, but eliminating a few of the "miracle" tales would surely have made it a better read.

The organization of the book unfortunately emphasizes the sameness of many of the stories by grouping essays about objects, or war, or whatever, one after another. I suggest that an interested reader pick stories at random, to keep the topics fresh...

This book is filled with hundreds of vignettes--some funny and some moving, but almost every one interesting (and NOT saccharine as I sort of expected them to be). I pick it up when I walk by it, read one, and feel re-connected and less numb. Give this to someone you know who's tired (it's easy reading) or sad or disconnected from daily reading or daily life. It revives the reader. Great stories. I hope NPR does another one.

This book is exceptional. I have read many books by Paul Auster and this one, although not technically written by Auster is true to this author's fascination with life's mysterious twists of fate. The stories assembled here are captivating, often deeply moving and sometimes hilarious.

The fact that these are all real stories makes the reader relates strongly to the people involved. These are rich with familiar characters (the grumpy neighbor who hates kids in the title story, the soft spoken grandfather who does not dare confront his wife in "Revenge", etc.) I could not put the book down.

In this day and age where so much attention is given to shallow story lines and pre-packaged entertainment, how refreshing it is to come across these incredible, yet so believable, stories that have happened to ordinary people.

The French version of the book has been published before the American version. This is how I got advanced reading of this wonderful collection of stories. Tip: Most of them make great bedtime stories as well. My 7 year old daughter really enjoys it.

I got the book from my public library but I want to buy it so I can go back to it again and again.

Before you get too excited from reading the other reviews, I will offer some words of caution.

The ending is weak. It is that simple. (Ending defined as the last chapter or two.)

Auster offers beautiful prose and the book reads quickly. It is intriguing, but when I finished it was as though Auster had written himself into a corner. All his brilliant questions could not be solved.

A novel does not need to answer everything. Leaving the reader to think is good, but Auster at second glance seems to lead the reader on knowing he cannot fulfil the experience with a proper ending. Yet, in some ways that is his point.

The book is worth reading if you have never encountered Auster before or read any existentialistic novels because then the book will be unique. Yes, unlike anything you have ever read before.

I have read of all of Auster's novels - except Timuktu which is just out - and they all seem to have this problem except for Mr. Vertigo.

Go to Auster for fancy prose. He is great at it, but do not expect a fulfilling ending.

After reading several of the reviews on City of Glass, I felt a need to give my own opinion. This is a book of perception. One person could perceive it as some sort of [messed] up mystery novel, though if they read it expecting a detective story they will be sorely dissapointed. Another could perceive it as a book about morality, but even that seems cheap and weak. I believe that this is a book about perception and identity.

The main character is Daniel Quinn, who writes under the name William Wilson, about the charcter Max Work. At the beggining of the novel he identifies more with Max that with either of the other aspects of himself. Quinn receives a phone call from Peter Stillman for Detective Paul Auster (look familiar?) and chooses to claim his identity as well.

Then he interacts with Peter Stillman , son of Peter Stillman (who coincidently(?) has the name of Quinn's dead son). This is the gentleman whose case he is supposed to be working on, under the name of Paul Auster. Damaged as a result of a freakish childhood Peter Stillman is an anomolous character. He refers to himself as Peter Nobody, Anything, and Not Here. He claims that he is learning how to be Peter Stillman. Another case of identity confusion.

Quinn is sent on a mission to track Peter Stillman, father of Peter Stillman, an old man who, regardless of the number of times he meets Quinn can never recognize him. Thus Quinn pretends to be a different person each time they encounter eachother.

City of Glass is strange and disturbing and thought provoking. I haven't even meantioned Daniel Quinn the writer, pretending to be Paul Auster the detective, meeting Paul Auster the writer, and his son Daniel. Or how Don Quixote and Cervantes and Quinn and Paul Auster are all the same person!

So if your ready for something to screw with your mind, and make you wonder about the nature of life and literature, read the City of Glass. If you want to read a mystery novel pick up something by Sue Grafton.

From the first page, you're just sucked into the world of the main character, the detective Quinn. One of the best American writer today, Paul Auster's works are mainly based on his real life's experience. That is why his characters are so real. I disagree with the reader who said that his endings tend to be weak. It is very clear that Auster intended to avoid any closure in the endings of his stories. If you've read his other books, you'll realise that most of the time, his characters would just disappear or go on to lead another life, just like the character in Knut Hamsun's Hunger, who just decided to leave on a ship at the end of the novel without giving us any reason.

Someone gave me this book alonf with Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS, telling me that both were part of a group of talented young writers. Let me tell you, Paul Auster couldn't be Michael Cunningham's copy editor. There are more cliches in the first 5 pages of this book than you could find in a dime store mystery novel. The characters are flat, the story ludicrous. It tries hard to be some kind of masonic allegory but is so obvious it becomes aggravating. I read the NY Times review that praises the book for it's series of "ricocheting" coincidences, and I kept waiting for that to happen. IN fact, nothing ricochets. Everything thuds. IF you are a lover of language, don't bother with Auster.

I don't know if I necessarily enjoyed this book (or any Paul Auster book, for that matter). The enjoyment comes from the questions I ask myself after I've put the book down. It is not an enjoyable reading experience, but rather a contemplative one. In that regard, it is a highly successful piece of art.

The story appears to be relatively simple. One man goes driving. He meets another man on the road. The two of them meet some eccentric millionaires. The four men play poker. Then two men build a wall. It is almost nonsensical now that I look back on it. But the story's not really the thing (it never is in an Auster book). So don't go looking for closure, and don't expect easy answers. It's all just an excuse for some finely written meditations on the nature of fate and the restrictions of freedom.

Auster's writing style is enigmatic. There is a faux-coldness to it, appearing at first glance distant and reserved. Closer inspection, however, reveals much humanity and passion in his prose. I've always had suspicions that his surname is really an ingeniously calculated pseudonym, for any austerity in the writing is both sincere and ironic. That's a neat trick to pull off, and, to my mind, his greatest strength as a writer. In this example from his oeuvre, he gets the balance just right.

Auster has a way with a certain type of character-one who is both on the fringe of both society and sanity both. They are not often very likeable or sympathetic characters, but they always are engrossing characters.

Jim Nash's veneer of sanity breaks when an unexpected windfall from the father he hates kicks out what little emotional support kept him on the straight and narrow and converts him into a wandering, nomadic drifter with his own transportation. In the midst of his journeys he meets Jack Pozzi, also a wanderer-sans transportation. Pozzi suckers Nash into an questionable gambling adventure that backfires, leaving them with a debt that leaves then essentially in a state of indentured servitude. The bulk of the story centers on how they cope with that condition.

The fundamentals of the story, as is so often the case with Auster, are , on reflection, faintly ridiculous. However, it is mood, character and fate that concern Auster, and his-and our-immersion into those topics render the absurdities of the actual story irrelevant.

I've read several Auster books and can't really say I've like any of them particularly, but they do fascinate me. I keep going back for more. The bottom line is what Auster does is ask questions about life and fate-in such a way that you are forced to think about them in your own terms. Auster does not supply answers-heck, not one of his books I've read can really be said to have an ending or resolution of any meaningful sort-but the way the questions are posed will haunt you-and keep you coming back for more.

Nikola Ruzicic (davor_ruzicic@bluewin.ch) This one really upset me! Mr. Vertigo doesn't have the strength of the other Paul Auster novels (Moon Palace or Leviathan). As it might be considered "good" by some standards it is nonetheless mediocre or even bad in comparison to the real Paul Auster. The story by itself might be considered "Austerian" but the development certainly isn't. It is too conventional for Auster and still to abstract for anything else. The characters are certainly well described in the first part but they tend to lose their strength in the second. As he covers the first 18 years of the life of Walt (the main character) in about 2/3 of the book he shrinks the rest of it to a mere short story that might as well be sold separately. He does this in other books but there the shortness aquires a significance as part of something bigger whereas in Mr. Vertigo it even makes the whole a lot weaker. I hope this was the first and last of Auster's adventures into mediocrity and given his previous books I think we can forgive him, though ... Rating 5 because it is much better than many other books but ... it isn't worth Paul Auster.

The storyline of this novel reminds me of a possible Walt the Wonder Boy inspired aero-acrobatic feat itself - it climbs very high, very slowly, nearly divebombs - yet pulls itself up at the last minute for a perfect landing.

Caricatured Walt Rawley begins this novel as a sort of Holden Caulfield Lite, broken down over time by Master Yehudi, his mentor and father-figure. The reader really sees the progression in his character over the first two sections of the book, his brief (reading-time-wise) dip into madness (third section), and his final enlightenment (very short forth section). (For those who get bit disappointed in the middle, I think the last page wholly makes up for it.)

This book (of course as do other Auster books I've read) gives an excellent view into the trappings of an individual - internal/external conflicts, emotions, etc. I really think, however, that the clincher is the relationship between Walt and the master - definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The reader sees the relationship one-sidely through the experiences of Walt, but the effects on his personality are so pronounced.

Recommended.

I think I heard someone once refer to MR. VERTIGO as Auster-lite. And on a first reading, sure, it does seem like he's pulled back and gone for a lighter touch with this one.

A second reading revealed that, no, this was Auster, full-strength. But I don't see this a a Paul Auster novel. No, this is a Paul Auster tale. Walt and Master Yehudi are wonderful characters who come to life in a way that reminds me of stories i used to hear as a kid from older people. At time and place far removed and some truly incredible goings on.

This certainly isn't Auster's best, I'd say Leviathon (today anyway) has that honor. However, if you are a fan of his work, you need to read this book. And I'd suggest a couple of readings, actually. if you are just now coming to Auster, well, i'd suggest Moon Palace or The Music of Chance as the place to start. I would say the trilogy, but i've talked to some who were a little put off by it originally. I don't get that, but so be it.