Review: The Brooklyn Follies

The Brooklyn Follies
by Paul Auster
Henry Holt and Company, New York (2005)
and
HarperAudio (2006), Audio CD


From Austen to Auster.

The characters: Nathan Glass, tha main character and the mirror of the others; Tom Wood, his nephew, from whom tree born a little brunch: Lucy (Tom's niece, 9-year-old); Harry Brightman, who (without knowing) lights new paths to follow.

Nathan has come to Brooklyn to die, in this city of follies he met Tom, who's working in a library owned by Harry. Others threads (people) run in this book crossing each other. From a background without hope and lives at the end of their days, give birth to a new order (a natural order).

Almost at the beginning Auster writes: 'All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.' p.125

From old Europe Auster takes the idea that there must be something beyond all the symbolic order we live in. The problem is we cannot translate this order like a project in our life. 'Aeschylus, Homer, Sophocles, Plato, the whole lot of them. Invented by some clever Italian poets during the Renaissance.' p. 128
Auster specially quotes just Casey Stengel, a baseball player.

So the new America helps Auster: a full back to the natural order. This natural order appears with the child Lucy: she prefers no to talk, we have already said all the words. Lucy is the cause of the not planned stop in Vermont's woods. Auster writes: 'I want to talk about happiness and well-being, about those rare, unexpected moments when the voice in your head goes silent and you feel at one with the world.' p. 167

Eventually Harry said: 'one of my dreams was to publish an encyclopedia in which all the information was false.' p. 127