Book Report: Travels in the Scriptorum by Paul Auster

Travels in the Scriptorum: Torgo disapproves

Paul Auster books are sometimes fascinating (The Music of Chance). He's a postmodernist in the worst sense of the word, always hyperaware of the story within a story, metafiction, and his own apparent awesomeness.

Why did I finish this book? I put down Kafka's the Castle, realizing it was more of a boring allegory than anything else. But Auster to me is like a familiar dinner recipe that isn't very good, but I know how to make it and it's comforting, though tedious.

I start an Auster book hoping to think words like brilliant and clever. I finished this one thinking words like jerk, loser and piss poor.

Ok, so what's it all about? Mr. Blank wakes up in a windowless room and he doesn't know who he is. Stop if you're already bored.

Turns out he's a character, sort of, visited by characters from Auster's other books. Speaking of metafiction -- Bret Easton Ellis's last book was like this -- though I found Glamorama and American Psycho captivating --and awful-- I couldn't bring myself to read it.

I'm officially done with metafiction. I've written poems and stories where the narrator is self-aware. Enough of that. I can't stand to read it anymore so I won't write it anymore. It's a cheap narrative device. It lacks soul, integrity, vitality. Why write just to write about you writing what you're writing about? It's like a commercial for a commercial for a product you don't need or want.

(Go here for a similarly-worded but professionally-assembled review that I read just to be sure my suspicions about the characters were correct.)