About Paul Auster’s op-ed today in The New York Times. This is an “emperor’s new clothes” moment for me. I’ve admired the sheer stylishness of Auster’s writing for many years. But it’s difficult to see a sophisticated and careful writer behind the prose of this indulgent and sloppy “memory-piece.”
It’s hard to read, not because I thought Auster was terrific, but because I thought he was cool. Here’s an example of how cool people don’t start out articles, even nostalgic ones:
It was the year of years, the year of craziness, the year of fire, blood and death. I had just turned 21, and I was as crazy as everyone else.
Oh, boy.
As the article continues, we learn that Auster was “crazy” in 1968 because “being crazy struck me as a perfectly sane response to the hand I had been dealt” as a potential draftee who just wanted to drink beer and write poetry in New York. So, because he was “crazy, crazy with the poison of Vietnam in my lungs,” Auster went to a demonstration where people “vented their craziness” by demonstrating against a new gymnasium at Columbia. After getting fired up, this “a throng of crazy, shouting students” marched out to tear down a construction fence – “a crazy, destructive act.” A few days later Auster was both “crazy and proud” when a policeman stepped on his hand (ouchie!) in the course of an antiwar sit-in.
Of course, those crazy days are long gone. But fear not, says Auster: “I sit alone in this room with a pen in my hand, I realize that I am still crazy, perhaps crazier than ever.”
Sure.
Okay, I’m being a little nasty. I’ll let others measure the gravity of Auster’s symbolic political act. But let’s take a moment to marvel at how deeply embarrassing this prose feels: can anyone self-characterize as “wild and crazy” and not sound foolish? It’s a bit like trying to convince somebody that you were popular in high school – the more you try to prove it, the less likely it seems that you really were popular in high school.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly … ah … nuts.
