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Loading... Travels in the Scriptorium (original 2006; edition 2007)by Paul Auster (Author)
Work InformationTravels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster (2006)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Dull, but mercifully short. ( ) Hmm. I failed to rush over to Goodreads and post a review about this book when I finished it over a week ago. That tells you a little something about how much it failed to really stir up any emotions or erudite observations on the nature of life. It was, um...odd and oddly entertaining and I think I kinda 'get' it...but in the end the most I can say is that I am glad I did not spend a whole lot of time on it. Just not my thing, I guess. between 1 and 1.5 stars. i haven't read much auster and nothing that i can remember in a long while. what i do remember from before, though, is not really understanding him, and that still holds. i don't get this. it helps to know that, from other reviews, apparently all of the people that feature in this book - well, maybe not mr blank? - are from his other books, and that even the title of this book is from something within another book of his. i don't know if knowing that helps to understand what he's doing or saying here, or if knowing those characters in other books helps to know them here. (because we don't really know anything here, in this book. it's all a mystery and a question of what is happening/who are these people and what are they doing/where are they/why/why/why.) i don't know if we're supposed to be puzzling out who mr blank is and what he may have done. if we're supposed to suspect that he is the author trause. or if that even matters. maybe what auster is saying is more about what story and writing mean? (i'm not sure what he's saying they mean, but i think that's what he's getting at.) maybe also about who story belongs to? if mr blank isn't also trause, then can they both write the story? can anyone write the story? i don't know. i don't get auster, i think. but at least this was mildly entertaining, in a perplexing but not frustrating way, and a quick read at that. it did, though, until close to the end, feel quite a bit like this was literary fiction for the sake of itself, and i didn't like that feeling. Okay, I didn't know I had this book and now I'm not quite sure if I'm keeping it. It's an easy, quick read. I had read Auster before and I loved it, even if I didn't quite get it. I got this even less, until I read some other people's reviews. I now kind of understand and it kind of made me chuckle. It's a good writing style and if you were ever planning to read stuff by Auster, read this one at the end; it'll make the most sense then. Belongs to Publisher SeriesAwards
An old man awakens, disoriented, in an unfamiliar chamber. With no memory of who he is or how he has arrived there, he pores over the relics on the desk, examining the circumstances of his confinement and searching his own hazy mind for clues. Determining that he is locked in, the man--identified only as Mr. Blank--begins reading a manuscript he finds on the desk, the story of another prisoner, set in an alternate world the man doesn't recognize. Nevertheless, the pages seem to have been left for him, along with a haunting set of photographs. As the day passes, various characters call on the man in his cell--vaguely familiar people, some who seem to resent him for crimes he can't remember--and each brings frustrating hints of his identity and his past. All the while an overhead camera clicks and clicks, recording his movements, and a microphone records every sound in the room. Someone is watching. Both chilling and poignant, Travels in the Scriptorium is vintage Paul Auster: mysterious texts, fluid identities, a hidden past, and, somewhere, an obscure tormentor. And yet, as we discover during one day in the life of Mr. Blank, his world is not so different from our own. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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