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The Invention of Solitude
 
 
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The Invention of Solitude (Paperback)

by Paul Auster (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Faber and Faber (24 Oct 1988)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 057115414X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0571154142
  • Product Dimensions: 19 x 12.6 x 1.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 89,239 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #15 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > A > Auster, Paul
    #58 in  Books > Biography > Social & Health Issues > Family & Marriage
    #74 in  Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Sociology > Family & Social Groups > Marriage & Family

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Product Description

Review
In an interview published in Auster's Red Notebook, the author quotes a friend of his. 'Children are wonderful. If I didn't have kids, I'd walk around thinking I was Rimbaud all the time.' The Invention of Solitude is Auster's meditation on parenthood and writing. This is not exactly a novel but rather an account of Auster's relationship with his late father and with his son. Yet often it reads like a novel. The book is peppered with incredible chance happenings - exactly what we'd expect from Auster's fiction. And his father is the most astonishing literary creation: a man devoid of passion. Most of all, the book treats us to Auster's views about writing. 'Every book is an image of solitude. It is a tangible object that one can pick up, put down, open, and close, and its words represent many months, if not many years, of one man's solitude.' (Kirkus UK)

Product Description
A work of fiction which represents the author's personal meditation on fatherhood. The first section reveals his memories and feelings after the death of his father, and in the second the perspective shifts to Auster's own role as a father.
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Master's piece on Solitude., 28 Mar 2004
By Michael Murphy (Glasgow, Scotland.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
In "Portrait of an Invisible Man", the first part of Paul Auster's fascinating memoir "Invention of Solitude", Auster writes about his father's life as a means of helping himself come to terms with his father's death. Auster remembers his father as an elusive figure in his life, emotionally detached and disconnected from family and life itself ("he had managed to keep himself at a distance from life"). To Auster, it seemed that the world's attempts to embrace his father simply bounced off him without ever making a breakthrough - it was impossible to enter his solitude. The theme of Solitude runs powerfully through this disturbing, mesmerising memoir.

Auster is conscious of how little knowledge he actually has of his father's early childhood years, how unenlightened he is with regard to his father's inner life, how few clues he has to his father's character and how little understanding of the underlying reasons for his father's immunity from the world at large. Through an amazing co-incidence involving his cousin, Auster learns of a terrible secret buried deep in his father's childhood past - the story was splashed across old newspaper reports of the time, sixty years before - of a shocking family tragedy that shattered his father's childhood world and could have seriously affected his mental outlook during his formative years, accounting for the solitariness and elusiveness that characterised the "invisible man" of Auster's childhood. Excellent, compelling writing! Dramatic revelations from a grim, distant past finally brought to light. Highly recommended!

In the second part, "The Book of Memory", there is a marked shift of perspective (away from the point of view of Auster, as son, writing about his feelings and memories of his father's life, after his death) to an autobiographical account of Auster's own experience, now himself as father, writing about his son. More abstract in content and style than "Portrait of an Invisible Man", "The Book of Memory" comprises autobiographical segments interspersed with commentaries on the nature of chance interspersed with ruminations on Solitude and exploration of language. As an Auster-holic, my favourite book to-date is "Moon Palace".

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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A touching account of childhood and parenting, 26 Feb 2002
This is Auster's intimate and personal account of his own experiences as a child, attempting, and often failing to relate to his father, set alongside accounts of his own personal experience of being a father. At times moving, at times hilarious, this is vintage Auster, but with Auster allowing us closer to his own life than we have been allowed before. He walks the tightrope of genuine emotion and sentimentality, and impressively manages to avoid cliches and platitudes. There are experiences in this book to which we can all relate- either as children, or as parents. At times, the narrative is slow, but if you the reader are in no hurry, this book is full of both touching moments and thought provoking challenges as to what the true nature of family relationships might be. This is a book about family as only Auster could do it- experimental, but always heartfelt, eschewing sentimentality, but never emotionally cold. A must for both Auster fans and those new to his work.
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1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Good First Half Spoiled By Self-Indulgent Maundering, 7 Mar 2008
By S. Hartwell (England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Invention of Solitude (Paperback)
This one of very few books I gave up on. The first part, "Portrait of an Invisible Man" is Auster's excellent exploration of his emotionally detached father's background. He uncovers a murder within the family and it was the fall-out from this that shaped his father's nature. Yet small incidents of kindness towards strangers show what might have been had his father not been scarred by events in his childhood.

Unfortunately the second part ("The Book of Memory") is a scrapbook of disorganised waffle about interludes in European cities interspersed with musings about chance and quotes from other authors. This just does not hang together. The effect is disjointed and uninspiring maundering. It was unrewarding to the point where I lost interest in Auster's thoughts and experiences and gave up trying to plough through his ramblings. A great pity, because I have enjoyed so many of his books, but this one really lets him down.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars The Invention of Solitude
I am reading Paul Auster's books one after the other, magnetised by the books and by the author himself. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Pitsku

4.0 out of 5 stars Book of the dead
The third in a trilogy of books I've read by Paul Auster recently - following 'The Music of Chance' and 'Mr Vertigo' - 'The Invention of Solitude' is a markedly different work, an... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Demob Happy

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