meta fiction paul auster

3/6/2008 – and this morning i finished paul auster’s book of illusions. it’s an interesting story, and i understand that it explores the meaning of creativity and art and ‘story.’ but you’ve got to wonder. why is it so well-received? i think the whole thing happened in the crazy head of author. it’s a wheel inside a wheel. which i hadn’t thought about until now. there’s a story inside a story inside a story. it’s kind of clever that way. the protagonist, david, is fucking nuts. alma never came to his house. he never went to new mexico. that’s the joke. there’s got to be a hint of this somewhere in the text. a woman with a gun comes to his house? it doesn’t make sense. there was no alma. there was no frieda. nothing that happened after makes any sense, it’s too incredible. he wrote a book about a guy who made movies. that’s the only ‘truth’ in the novel. auster is exploring the limits of what we will believe within what an author creates within a story ‘reality.’ it’s a trick in a sense. horace mann existed, but he didn’t go to spokane or sandusky or new mexico. he did something else. and we don’t know what. and neither does david. and neither does paul auster. i like it more now, writing this thing than i did when i was reading it.