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CRITIQUE:

First Person Invisibility

This is the first Auster novel I've read since I finished "Man in the Dark", which left me vaguely disappointed.

In contrast, this novel excited me from the first page to the last.

"Man in the Dark" was a stylistic experiment in the juxtaposition of two stories. From a structural point of view, "Invisible" is more concerned with the perspective, style and stages of story-telling:

* Part I is an apparently non-fictional memoir about various events in 1967 surrounding Rudolf Born related by the principal protagonist (Adam Walker) in the first person singular.

* Part II purports to be a rewrite by Walker of text that he had originally written in the first person, but felt didn't work. His college friend, James (Jim) Freeman, now, in 2007, a successful writer, suggests that he change the perspective of the narrator, and it solves his writer's block, even though Walker uses the second person, rather than the third person perspective. Walker's text is framed by text purportedly written by Jim from his own point of view.

* Part III is again framed by text written by Jim, but contains incomplete notes written by Walker before his death. Jim tells us that, in the final version, he fleshed out Walker's notes.

* Part IV is also framed by Jim's perspective, but contains diary entries by a relatively minor, but Lolita-like, character, Cecile, which describe her interaction in 2007 with Rudolf Born after her mother, Helene's, death (when he reveals the real reason he had wanted to marry Helene and become Cecile's step-father).

Walker's identity has been segmented, and then reconstituted from different perspectives. Thus, it seems that identity is not just the product of the one protagonist or narrator, but an amalgam of the points of view of different characters/ narrators.

In Part II, Jim explains his own experience of a writer's block, which he overcame by a change of narrative perspective:

"My approach had been wrong, I realised. By writing about myself in the first person, I had smothered myself and made myself invisible, had made it impossible for me to find the thing I was looking for. I needed to separate myself from myself, to step back and carve out some space between myself and my subject (which was myself), and therefore I returned to the beginning...and began writing it in the third person."

Identity is a composite, which benefits from a little separation and distance. Too much first person proximity leads to the invisibility of the title.

A Monstrous, Nabokovian Transgression

Not only does this approach to narrative reflect Nabokov's interest in identity and narrative structure, but much of the subject matter recalls Nabokov's "Lolita" and "Ada".

Part II describes a sexual relationship, of a type that is widely regarded as transgressive ("rather brutal stuff, I'm afraid. Ugly things I haven't had the heart or the will to look at in years..."). It commences as a "grand experiment", an "adolescent frolic" on a one off basis in 1961, when the participants are fifteen (the female, Gwyn) and fourteen (the male, Adam).

Despite the mutual compact between them, the participants indulge in the same activity (an "incestuous rampage", an "unholy matrimony") over a period of 34 days in 1967 before Walker flies out to Paris. They're "trapped in the throes of constant, overpowering lust - sex beasts, lovers, best friends: the last two people left in the universe."

Gwyn is on the pill, so it's assumed that she can't fall pregnant.

They're both aware that society defines their relationship as a "monumental transgression, a dark and iniquitous thing according to the laws of man and God."

Yet, they justify the relationship as "real love":

"You tell yourself that love is not a moral issue, desire is not a moral issue, and as long as you cause no harm to each other or anyone else, you will not be breaking your vow [to live your life as an ethical human being]."

"Pure Make-Believe"

When, 40 years later, Gwyn is shown a copy of Part II of the book, she responds that the relationship was a fantasy of Adam's, "a [salacious] dream of what he wished had happened but never did".

Even if they might both have wished for it to occur, Gwtn says it never eventuated:

"What Adam wrote was pure make-believe."

Fantasy and/or Reality

This raises a question about the relationship between fact and fiction in literary fiction.

If 75% of a novel is written in a realistic, non-fictional style (which we assume to be "true") and 25% is written in the style of fiction or fantasy, is it tempting to assume that the other 25% is also true?

Is this the premise upon which both Nabokov and Auster play their narratological games with us readers?


SOUNDTRACK:

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Big Star - "Thirteen" [Alternate Mix]



David McComb - "Lover Sister #1"



Oasis - "My Sister Lover"



Steely Dan - "Do It Again"



Jenny Lewis - "Psychos"



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