Nathan Glass is
our white 60-year-old hero, a deeply liberal Democrat retiree from the
insurance business, who suffers from lung cancer in remission. After his
divorce, he returns to Brooklyn, “looking for a quiet place to die”. And before
checking out, he intends to write The
Book of Human Folly, a personalized account of every stupid, wrong move he
had committed during his “long and checkered career as a man”.
Nevertheless, as
the novel goes on he meets characters from the Park Slope neighborhood, who will
interrupt our wan protagonist’s solitude and spin him around, so life takes
over instead, and his despair is swept away as he gets himself implicated in
other people´s life.
Everything
starts to turn on when Nathan accidentally gets together with his long-lost
nephew, Tom, who has seemingly given up on life. After dropping out of
University, he has resigned himself to a string of meaningless jobs. Both characters
mix enthusiasm and desperation; “you love life, Tom, but you don´t believe in
it. And neither do I”.
From a doomed
atmosphere to the lively neighborhoods, Nathan discovered, Brooklynites
are less reluctant to talk to strangers than any tribe, they butt into one
another´s business at will.
Nathan acquaints with Marina, a beautiful
married waitress. He also befriends Harry Brightman a shady, likable, gay,
owner of a bookstore. And it is when Lucy, nine-year-old Tom´s niece, who
refuses to speak and reveal the whereabouts of her mother, Aurora, comes into
their lives, that she suddenly opens a bridge between their past and their
future, and gives some form of redemption to the characters.
The novel seems
to go nowhere. The Hotel Existence in Vermont represents the promise of a better
world. Harry dies after an extortion episode and leaves all his wealth to Tom
and to his mate Rufus, a travesty known as Tina. Nancy, a jewellery designer,
gets in love with Aurora, Nathan with her mother, Tom married Honey, and
Raquel, Nathan´s beloved daughter gets in touch after some time of cold
distance, and tells Nathan he soon will be grandfather and they will be close
from then on. And so on the novel
gathers the characters in a big family. Paul Auster tends to show his
liberal Democrat point of view. On the contrary, Lucy´s bad family situation is
blamed on her Fundamentalist evangelical southern father.
The book ends up
just forty-six minutes before the first plane crashed into the North tower of the
World Trade Center, on 11 September, 2001. An incredibly loud finale, just
before the smoke covered N.Y. with human pain and sorrow.
Under my
personal point of view, Auster focuses the interest on happiness of ordinary
human life, Brooklyn Follies is a book about survival, written for those who
have suffered an unfortunate reversal, and wait for fate to turn direction.
Mercedes Martín Panero. Advanced level. Year 2
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