Oracle Night

Paul Auster writes music, symphonies even, but he uses words.  is not so much a story about a writer as it is a flurry of words, themes, textures and emotions. It’s a sea change, a tightly-wound knot of mirror experiences.

I like roller coasters. One of my favourite roller coasters is the original Space Mountain in Disneyland. It’s an indoor coaster, relying more on wind effects and rapid turns than anything else for its thrills – for it happens completely in the dark. I saw it once with the lights on, the Disney people were repairing it, and I managed to peek in a window. It filled every square metre of a smallish room, twisting and turning over, under, and through itself. If nothing else, one has to respect the engineering involved in that.

John Hench, one of the Disney people responsible for conceiving Space Mountain, said:

“When Space Mountain opened in 1975, I waited for the first group to get off because I wanted to see their responses. One woman kissed the carpet, and then her companions spontaneously burst into laughter. I realised at that moment that we make people feel alive.”

made me feel alive. Strike that. It made me feel . I wrote about music above – the book reads like a symphony. That’s more to do with feelings than the actual prose. There’s quick and slow pieces, overarching themes, even a kind of rhythm.

The narrator talks about feeling more alive than ever, as if he’s come through a dark tunnel to emerge better than ever, and that feeling is passed on to the reader. Auster is a cunning storyteller, making the ordinary seem extraordinary, building crescendos from minute details, and providing vivid background colour to scenes that could be from anyone’s life.