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A review by scarlet_begonia21
Leviathan by Paul Auster
5.0
I love Paul Auster novels and his are quite simply always my most favorite books to read. I can’t explain it other than by saying that I can sit down and read a large portion of his books at once. The words travel effortlessly from the page to my brain and I just love everything about how his novels are crafted from the characters to the pacing and word choice... everything.
“No one can say where a book comes from, least of all the person who writes it. Books are born of ignorance, and if they go on living after they are written it’s only to the degree that they cannot be understood.”
This novel, Leviathan, was fantastically quirky and had all the Austerian elements: a Paul Auster-like character, unusual coincidences and puzzling contradictions, a story-within-a-story, and all kinds of twists, distortions, and mysteries. Peter Aaron (same initials as our author) is also an author, divorced from a woman named Delia (real life first wife Lydia) and married to Iris (real life current wife Siri, or Iris backwards) with two children David and Sonia (real life David and Sophie). Just as Paul Auster is the writer of the book titled Leviathan that we hold in our hands, Peter Aaron is the author/narrator of a piece we are reading within the book called “Leviathan” as well. Even deeper than that is a third manuscript called Leviathan.
Our main characters are the author Peter and his best friend, also an author, Benjamin Sachs (Benjamin is Auster’s middle name). Peter and Ben first meet each other at a bar for a canceled book reading they were both going to speak at and begin drinking and getting to become fast friends. At the end of their meet-cute, Aaron feels delirious and thinks he’s seeing double, and I couldn’t help but wonder after all these weird coincidences of their meeting if this Ben character is another analogue for Paul Auster; as if both Ben and Peter are types of Paul-like characters. Or perhaps Ben represents another famous postmodern writer? At one point Peter is talking about Ben’s first novel in which as the author he “continuously throws the reader off guard mixing so many genres and styles to tell his story that the book begins to resemble a pinball machine, a fabulous contraption with blinking lights and ninety-eight different sound effects.” This sounds a lot like real-life Paul Auster’s masterpiece novel City of Glass (part of the New York Trilogy, a MUST READ).
I love when Auster makes self-referential characters and devises plots that lead the audience on a cryptic journey. One part I liked the most of this book was when Maria found an address book and was going to visit every person in the book until she could figure out who it belonged to. But her plan, which involved traveling all throughout the city to catalogue these people in the book, involved discovering the mystery owner “in absentia” — basically trying to determine who the owner was based on who he/she was not. Maria also later follows and catalogues Ben during his aimless wandering around the city. Both of these scenes together (the wandering and of filling out a puzzle backwards) reminded me of City of Glass when Daniel believes someone is leaving messages based on the paths they are walking around New York City; the idea to make something out of nothing - is it creative, or paranoid? Peter even mentions at one point, “Knowing what I know now, I can see how little I really understood. I was drawing conclusions from what amounted to partial evidence, basing my response in a cluster of random, observable facts that told only a small piece of the story.”
So what is this novel about? Leviathan is layered with intrigue, betrayal, friendship, love, and misery all in one. It also discusses anarchism, left-wing government protest, identity crises, extramarital affairs, traumatic experiences (several), and murder. There is sadness and giddiness and overall great wonderment in how the pieces of this story fell together. There was much more finality (or was there?) than some of his other novels, such as City of Glass, but because it was a little more straightforward it wasn’t as exciting for me personally. I had no idea what to expect, so I was still captured by the prospect of the mystery. Although it wasn’t my absolute favorite (that would be City of Glass or Moon Palace), it remains an excellent story that I loved and hope to read again one day with a fresh perspective. And since this book was dedicated to Don DeLillo, it made me find some old books I need to re-read again and reminded me of books I need to start reading!
Definitely recommended if you are a fan or have read 1-2 of his books before. But honestly, no prior Auster knowledge is required to really enjoy the book, but knowing the self-references is part of the fun.
“No one can say where a book comes from, least of all the person who writes it. Books are born of ignorance, and if they go on living after they are written it’s only to the degree that they cannot be understood.”
This novel, Leviathan, was fantastically quirky and had all the Austerian elements: a Paul Auster-like character, unusual coincidences and puzzling contradictions, a story-within-a-story, and all kinds of twists, distortions, and mysteries. Peter Aaron (same initials as our author) is also an author, divorced from a woman named Delia (real life first wife Lydia) and married to Iris (real life current wife Siri, or Iris backwards) with two children David and Sonia (real life David and Sophie). Just as Paul Auster is the writer of the book titled Leviathan that we hold in our hands, Peter Aaron is the author/narrator of a piece we are reading within the book called “Leviathan” as well. Even deeper than that is a third manuscript called Leviathan.
Our main characters are the author Peter and his best friend, also an author, Benjamin Sachs (Benjamin is Auster’s middle name). Peter and Ben first meet each other at a bar for a canceled book reading they were both going to speak at and begin drinking and getting to become fast friends. At the end of their meet-cute, Aaron feels delirious and thinks he’s seeing double, and I couldn’t help but wonder after all these weird coincidences of their meeting if this Ben character is another analogue for Paul Auster; as if both Ben and Peter are types of Paul-like characters. Or perhaps Ben represents another famous postmodern writer? At one point Peter is talking about Ben’s first novel in which as the author he “continuously throws the reader off guard mixing so many genres and styles to tell his story that the book begins to resemble a pinball machine, a fabulous contraption with blinking lights and ninety-eight different sound effects.” This sounds a lot like real-life Paul Auster’s masterpiece novel City of Glass (part of the New York Trilogy, a MUST READ).
I love when Auster makes self-referential characters and devises plots that lead the audience on a cryptic journey. One part I liked the most of this book was when Maria found an address book and was going to visit every person in the book until she could figure out who it belonged to. But her plan, which involved traveling all throughout the city to catalogue these people in the book, involved discovering the mystery owner “in absentia” — basically trying to determine who the owner was based on who he/she was not. Maria also later follows and catalogues Ben during his aimless wandering around the city. Both of these scenes together (the wandering and of filling out a puzzle backwards) reminded me of City of Glass when Daniel believes someone is leaving messages based on the paths they are walking around New York City; the idea to make something out of nothing - is it creative, or paranoid? Peter even mentions at one point, “Knowing what I know now, I can see how little I really understood. I was drawing conclusions from what amounted to partial evidence, basing my response in a cluster of random, observable facts that told only a small piece of the story.”
So what is this novel about? Leviathan is layered with intrigue, betrayal, friendship, love, and misery all in one. It also discusses anarchism, left-wing government protest, identity crises, extramarital affairs, traumatic experiences (several), and murder. There is sadness and giddiness and overall great wonderment in how the pieces of this story fell together. There was much more finality (or was there?) than some of his other novels, such as City of Glass, but because it was a little more straightforward it wasn’t as exciting for me personally. I had no idea what to expect, so I was still captured by the prospect of the mystery. Although it wasn’t my absolute favorite (that would be City of Glass or Moon Palace), it remains an excellent story that I loved and hope to read again one day with a fresh perspective. And since this book was dedicated to Don DeLillo, it made me find some old books I need to re-read again and reminded me of books I need to start reading!
Definitely recommended if you are a fan or have read 1-2 of his books before. But honestly, no prior Auster knowledge is required to really enjoy the book, but knowing the self-references is part of the fun.