Pennsylvania in the 80's. 33-y/o Jim Nashe is a bum newly divorced dad who inherited almost US$200,000 from his dead dad who he did not see for almost 30 years. He resigned from his work as a fireman, bought an expensive Saab (car), threw a couple of parties, left his 4-y/o daughter Juliette to his sister Donna and drove around aimlessly across the USA. He likes music (he plays the piano) so he has lots of cassette tapes (this is in the 80s) in the car. The long drives while the music is on seem to bring him to another world. See the cover: it captures everything a child - because that really what he seems to be being a bum and aimless - driving a red sports car. Read the title: The Music of Chance. Music forms the integral mood in this novel. Auster made use of classical music and sounds to heighten emotions to important scenes in this book. We know that books, unless they are audiobooks, cannot have songs or music. The way Mr. Auster does this is he mentions a song, tune or artist in a particular scene with the character probably listening to it. As I reader, if you are familiar with the song, tune or artist you recall it and as you read, it is as if you are with the character (or maybe you become that character) experiencing the sight and sound of the scene. It is what I then call the magic of literature: being transported straight to a literary fictional world while in reality you are just sitting on the armchair or lying in bed. With music, it is like being in the movie. It is just wonderful.This is my 3rd book by Paul Auster. Early last year, I read his The New York Trilogy a.k.a. NYT and I was struck by his brilliance in interrelating his characters and plots in those three well-written stories. It was my first time to read a book like that so I gave it a 5-star rating and promised myself to re-read it in the future. A couple of months back, I read his Invisible as it is a newly added book in the 2010 edition of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. The distinctive Auster style is still there: straightforward, no-frills, no-pretentions, no-philosophical agenda writing is still there but the plot is different from NYT as it deals with incest. So, I have to give it another 5-star rating. Using "3-novel rule": you can tell a writer if he is formulaic by reading 3 of his works. For Auster, he is definitely not formulaic. Music does not have the mistaken identity plot in NYT, no incest plot in Invisible. The same distinctive writing style is there. But the theme, plot and characters are totally different. His work does not have any of those stream-of-consciousness, roman-a-clef or other literary terminologies. His characters cannot talk to cats, cannot fly, cannot smell all the odors in his surroundings. He does not use big words that will prompt you to open a nearby dictionary in the middle of the night. He does not surprise you with big quotation that will prompt you to fold the corner of the page. He does not make you cry. He does not make you laugh.Auster is just straightforward storyteller. His characters can be you or me. Easy read but his vivid imagination and believable plot do the trick. You will cry or laugh but you will perhaps dream. No wonder that this 1001 book is also in the 100 Must Read Book for Men.If there is a new author whose work you may want to sample soon, try Auster. Chances are, you will love him.
Another enmeshing, enticing, and enigmatic novel from Paul Auster, and one that features yet again a gent infected with the peregrine spirit, unconcerned about such typically weighty matters as steady employment, pursuing a family life, establishing communal roots, etc. This time the narrator, one Jim Nashe—a man who, upon receiving an unexpected inheritance, opts to abandon his young family in order to aimlessly meander about the young country in the purpose of blowing the entirety of his stack—hooks up with an inveterate gambler, Jack Pozzi, and is persuaded to back him with the remains of his windfall in a poker play against a pair of old duffers whose didactic skills are held to be no match for this Hustler et ami. Alas, fate has played cruelly with these chumps who have dared to test her moods, and Jack and Jim shortly find themselves paying off their sizable gambling loss by means of labouring to build a stone wall across the breadth of the estate of the triumphant, and modestly triumphal, geezers. This is not merely a debt of money, but one of human honour, and there are strict observances and reparations that are expected ere it will be satisfactorily discharged. The loser duo aren't long in discovering the backbreaking requirements of the wall's construction, one that, paired with their room and board expenses, have stretched the debt's termination point unto a despairingly distant horizon. Pozzi chafes under the bonds of indenturement, while Nashe finds himself seeing deep channels carved in this lesson in fiduciary and existential mindfulness. When the tensions mount to the breaking point, not the least observant of readers will be surprised to discover that bad things are going to happen.An absorbing and thoughtful read, if a touch elliptic whenever Auster slips too sartorially into the seamed passions of his postmodern graces. This microcosmic morality play examines the macrocosm that is the capitalist system—one whose constructs have so often been compared to that of a thinly-veiled slavery, and whose memes of debt, with all of the numerical explosiveness of compounded interest and back-burnered principal, chew-up temporally-alloted life in massive, grinding bites—as well as the costs and obligations that are paid-out and amassed in the pursuit of a freedom that can so often prove anything but; not least in the moral morass one can founder within when the question concerns the shirking of one's duties, the breaking of one's word, the strict observance of the law with no recourse to human feeling, pity, or generosity—whether one does indeed spoil the child when the rod has been spared—and how victories won and freedoms gained can pale in the chanced stopwatch measuring of an unmoved world. It was many years ago that I read this, and after I had seen the movie with James Spader and Mandy Patinkin, and I'm not certain that I could honestly state which one I preferred more. It was also my second Auster, In the Country of Last Things having been the gateway for me into his own sparse and abstracted and, post The Book of Illusions, overplayed and underperforming literary theatre.
What do You think about The Music Of Chance (2001)?
It is difficult for me to read anything by Paul Auster and not feeling a complete sense of impending doom. Even when things appear to be going well, you know some random tragic unfortunate event is just around the corner. That being said, I think he's an incredible writer and I hope someday to have read all of his novels. In The Music of Chance, the main character Nashe inherits a bunch of money from his estranged father. He uses it to travel aimlessly around the country (reminded me of On the Road) when he comes across a young hitchhiker named Pozzi. Pozzi, a self-professed card shark needs some cash to take on a couple of millionaires in the game of a lifetime. Nashe must decide whether to help the kid out and ultimately deal with the fateful consequences that come as a result of his decision. Auster's books are often classified as "absurdist fiction" - the study of human behavior under highly unusual circumstances. This book certainly fits the bill. I also recommend The Book of Illusions and The New York Trilogy. His writing is haunting and these definitely aren't feel-good stories, but if you enjoy adding a little dread to your life (kind of like reading Edgar Allan Poe), definitely check Auster out.
—Anne
This is not the kind of book I'm used to reading, and I went back and forth with it throughout, often disliking it; finding the characterizations and dialogue thin and unconvincing, but still being drawn in by the hopelessness and futility; the irony of the protagonist's relentless pursuit of freedom, squandering his one means to it, only to end up as a slave through his own reckless and incomprehensibly stupid actions. That's what compelled me towards the end, though I thought parts of the narrative, on the surface, read like some lowbrow airport bestseller. These characters are not drawn as fully dimensional human beings; there's little sense of who Nashe and Pozzi are, their pasts, why they're driven towards these risky decisions or why they like each other. They seem primarily to manifest the cycle of a purposeless, Sisyphean, Sartre-eque, rewardless emptiness.This is my second experience with Paul Auster. Having been swept away by the tender, poignant language and honesty of 'Winter Journal', I was less enamored by the mainstream narrative voice and cadence of "The Music of Chance", though thematically - especially for anybody who feels trapped in a bad job - it stays with you in a troubling way.
—Jim
This book left with so much thinking to do and had so many philosophical metaphors that I ended up pushing it on my friends, fully thinking that I had their best interest in mind. But when I actually, thought about it I realized that what I really wanted was someone to discuss the book with. I wanted to talk about the characters and the metaphor and what it was all really trying to say. Yeah, this is a fabulous book. It deals with existentialism, freedom and captivity, chance and coincidence and obsession. Most of all I feel this book deals with how one should live one's life. Whether to except things as they come or to struggle for what you want. Man, there's so much to this book. I'm just going to stop here, but don't miss this one.
—Craven
