Paul Auster

Tombuctú
Paul Auster
Publicado: 1999 | 129 páginas
Relato Drama

Míster Bones es un perro de raza indefinida, pero de una inteligencia muy precisa. No habla inglés —quizá porque se lo impide la forma de sus fauces—, pero tantos años escuchando el incesante torrente verbal de su amo han hecho que lo comprenda a la perfección, y que pueda pensar e interpretar el mundo con una sensibilidad muy canina y una sintaxis muy humana. Porque Míster Bones tiene siete años y ha vivido desde que era un cachorro con William Gurevitch, más conocido como Willy Christmas desde que Santa Claus le habló desde el televisor, provocando en él una auténtica experiencia mística. Willy es un vagabundo, un poeta errante, un excéntrico superviviente de las revoluciones de los sesenta. En un principio, se asoció con Míster Bones en busca de protección, porque la vida en las calles es muy dura, pero lo que podría haber sido una mera alianza de conveniencia se convirtió en algo mucho más intenso, un mutuo descubrimiento (Willy hasta llegó a crear una sinfonía de olores, una obra de arte canino para deleitar a Míster Bones), un amor sin condiciones. Juntos han recorrido América, han sobrevivido a duros inviernos en Brooklyn y han vuelto a salir a la carretera con la llegada del buen tiempo. Y ahora están en Baltimore, viviendo la que quizá sea su última aventura en común: desde hace días Willy presiente que está llegando al final del camino, y antes de dirigirse a ese otro mundo que él y Míster Bones llaman Tombuctú quiere encontrar a Bea Swanson, la profesora del instituto que le abrió las altas puertas de la poesía, para confiarle lo único que le importa en la vida, sus setenta y cuatro cuadernos de poemas y el leal, inteligente, notable Míster Bones...… (more)

Baumgartner, the latest book by Paul Auster is difficult to read as it is so turned inwards. The work of Auster seems to have developed from a expressionism and surrealistic boundless optimism to introspection, increasingly delving for identity. While previously the search for identity remained general, looking for a connection with Jewishness, often, like other Jewish writers by looking at Prague, Auster delves deeper in Baumgartner by describing a journey, looking for answers that are not found, in Ukraine, in a village where many people are named "Auster". This story seems to be the mirroring point where reality is mirrored into fiction, and fiction in some way is the counterpart of reality.

Baumgartner also seems to be a very mature novel, in the sense that the author feels there is no need to clarify or be clear. The story is as it stands and it is up to the reader to delve in for meaning and significance. Baumgartner is clearly a novel that needs to be read twice, partially if not whole. Like the writer, the reader needs to decide how deep they are willing to delve. The novel suggests depth that may turn out to be a lead to deeper understanding or a decoy, such as the title of the book Baumgartner is writing, nl "The Mystery of the Wheel".

While on the one hand, Baumgartner seems to be a book about aging, and how aging affects the mind, it is also about how the mind works, the mind of a writer.… (more)

I fell for this book right away. I almost always like books by this author, and in this book I felt such an affinity with the main character right from the opening pages. Baumgartner is a 70-something philosophy professor, and while working in his study one morning he finds he needs a book which is downstairs. As he heads downstairs, he remembers he had promised to call his sister. He goes into the kitchen where the phone is and smells something burning--he had left the burner on under the pot in which he had earlier cooked his poached eggs. He turns off the burner and grabs the pot, thus burning his hand. He drops the pot on the floor and rushes to put his hand under cold water to prevent blistering. He is trying to remember what he came into the kitchen for when the phone rings. It is the meter man to tell him that he is on the way. He hangs up and remembers he is supposed to call his sister, when the doorbell rings. It's the UPS person--he has taken to ordering books he does want because he likes to chat with the UPS person. After their chat, he heads to the kitchen again to call his sister, but before he can pick the up the phone, it rings--a problem with the cleaning lady. He ends the call when the doorbell rings again. The meter man has arrived. As he is showing the meter reader down into the basement, he falls down the stairs and is briefly stunned--did you ever have a day like this??

Anyway, Baumgartner is still deeply mourning the death of his beloved wife Anna ten years before in a freak accident at the beach. "Ten years later Baumgartner marvels at how little has changed for him since those early months of near insanity." In the novel we backtrack from the present as Baumgartner thinks back on his past, "the lost world of then." We learn of his early life and of his life with Anna, including through some of Anna's biographical writings that Baumgartner has retained and reads over.

Arriving back at the present, Baumgartner contemplates moving on--what will that consist of, what does he want to do with the rest of his life? "Time is of the essence now, and he has no idea how much of it he has left. Not just how many years before he kicks the bucket but, more to the point, how many years of active productive life before his mind or his body or both begin to fail him and he is turned into a pain-racked, imbecilic, incompetent, unable to read or think or write, to remember what someone just said to him four seconds ago...."

I loved this book, which I think may be partly autobiographical, especially in its depiction of aging and the thoughts about the effects of aging. Highly recommended.

4 stars… (more)