Does a fact have to be true for us to accept it as true, or does faith in the veracity of a fact make it true, even if what is supposed to have happened did not happen? And what happens if, despite our attempts to find out whether the event happened or not, we come to a dead end full of uncertainty and we cannot be sure whether the story that someone told us on the terrace of a cafe in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk, in western Ukraine, was based on a little-known but verifiable historical fact, or was a legend, or a bragging, or a baseless rumor that had been passed from father to son? (Paul Auster in “The Wolves of Stanislav”, story written for Babelia in May 2020.)
Paul Auster He is a master of storytelling. Nothing too transcendent happens in his novels or stories. However, he intoxicates us with the descriptions of apparently unimportant events but that lead to an endless number of events that, in turn and despite their insignificance, trigger great consequences and changes in the lives of the characters.
If we think for example of 4,3,2,1, the life of the main character -Ferguson- is told in four possible worlds and the tiny events trigger absolutely different lives. Auster shoots four versions of this character’s life based on situations such as an accident, arriving at a place sooner or later, a misinterpreted word or parents in childhood. In all four, with complete unanimity, Ferguson wants to kiss Amy. Paul Auster is interested in love, desire and the overwhelmingness of the absence of the object of that same desire.
In Baumgartnerhis brand new novel written from the territory that his wife, the writer Siri Husveldtcalled “Cancerland”, Auster gives us the best of himself. Baumgartner He is one of the possible Fergusons, a late one. A man of almost 70 years who was widowed 10 years ago. tragic death of his wife, unexpected, in a context of love and sea, has left him psychologically amputated. Memory, the story of life, the strangeness of everyday events and the ghost of the past, all Austerian themes, come together in a novel of a quality and warmth that takes your breath away and restores faith in good literature.
With many nods to previous works, a hilarious humor and a great ability to laugh at himself, Auster gives us an endearing, complex and current character. The first scenes of the novel show us Baumgartner who is going through his old age, not with much dignity.
On the same morning he forgets a frying pan that accompanied his entire marriage in the fire and takes it with his hand and it burns. Several times she remembers and forgets to phone her sister, she receives a call from the employee’s daughter who tells her that her father, a bricklayer, has cut two fingers, and she spends ten minutes comforting the poor girl. She anxiously awaits the bell that announces the arrival, like every morning, of Judith, her purse, who stops by to leave him a book that she will not read and that he buys precisely to see Judith leave with a smile. He receives a visit from an employee of the electricity company who must take the data from the meter in the basement and, when going down to show him, Baumgartner falls and hurts his knee.
In this first chapter the reader imagines a senile man, who is losing his memory and the idea of his place in the world. However, there is nothing further from reality: Baumgartner is full of life and metaphors. Each of the unfortunate events of that morning trigger memories, reflections, stories that open into branching paths.
In a nod to The New York Trilogythere is a red telephone that, disconnected and all, rings: it is his wife’s voice telling him that the living keep the dead in limbo when they can’t stop thinking about them. And, based on this, Baumgartner reviews events from his past in the following pages.
Each chapter immerses Baumgartner in a new adventure that is also a small postmodern odyssey. When it seems like nothing else can happen, he has a love story. And then a student from Michigan writes to tell him that he needs access to the writing archive of his wife Anne, who had been a translator but above all a poet. Each new character fills Baumgartner’s day with life, as he finds himself tangled in getting someone to tidy up the room where the student will live or in organizing his wife’s papers. Procedures, delivery of writings, projects for the university, unexpected visits, Baumgartner’s life is changing, unexpected and vital.
To give the student his wife’s ordered texts, Baumgartner prepares to read them for the first time. We then attended the reading of Anna’s manuscripts: her diary, a story, a poem. Plot within plot, genre within genre. Auster walks through the chronicle, the memoirthe short story and the intimate diary to narrate life and its decline, but also writing as an opportunity, as one of the most complete ways to celebrate each day.
His wife’s autobiographical writings allow us to give a twist. We already know the story of how they met from Baumgartner and now Auster gives us the version of Anna, his wife. And she looks similar, but she’s not exactly the same. Auster gives complexity to the character of Anna, who not only tells the love story with Baumgartner but also tells us about other loves, other passions, dreams and failures. And we witness a beautiful and impossible dialogue between a Baumgartner moved by the writings of his wife to whom he asks and to whom he also answers.
In a fascinating detour in the narrative, we join Baumgartner on his expedition to Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukrainein 2017. The story “The Wolves of Stanislav” was initially published by Auster in Babelia, in 2020. In this text that is included in the novel, Auster and Baumgartner describe a trip to Eastern Europe as a kind of pilgrimage what they call “counterfeit nostalgia” to the birthplace of their grandfather, a man neither of them ever met.
And in this wonderful passage of the novel in which verisimilitude, the idea of truth and faith in memory as the only reservoir of identity are questioned, we witness one of the most eloquent and beautiful moments of the book. The question of why we remember and – more importantly – whether memories form us or we form them, or both or neither. The only thing that matters is narrating.
The end of the novel invites a saga. One turns the final page expecting to find the development of a new odyssey. This time Baumgartner goes out with his car in a storm and stays in the middle of nowhere on a road that cannot be distinguished because it is covered in snow and decides – against all reasonable predictions – to get out of the car and walk. We need to know what will happen this time and zaz! Auster tells us: this doesn’t end here, this daily Baumgartner odyssey, which is yours and mine, does not end here. You’re going to have to wait for a second part, maybe even a third, because if we walk the forking paths and choose the path less traveled, that makes all the difference.
I only dream of a world in “Cancerland” in which Auter is writing Baumgartner’s odyssey in the snow.
*This review was originally published in March 2024, when Baumgartner appeared in Spanish.
