4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Glazed Over

I had a personal interest in this book. I was born just three weeks before it's protagonist, Archie Ferguson, and nine days after his author, Paul Auster. I grew up in a similar suburb of New York City, and in similar economic and educational circumstances. So, to the extent that Ferguson was shaped by the cultural context of the day, perhaps I could detect unrecognised influences in my own life. Or, even more exciting, given that 4 3 2 1 is about alternative universes, I could explore the paths not taken in my own life. Not the most noble of motives, but certainly not the worst.
 
But there are certain literary problems with the premise of alternative lives that I don't think Auster has worked through thoroughly, at least not for my purposes. By now most educated readers know of Chaos Theory, the idea that even the smallest changes in initial conditions can generate immense consequences. This, one supposes, applies as much to relationships as to particle interactions. Therefore, who we meet, indeed who our parents or friends or their parents or friends have ever met, obviously have untold ramifications for any individual life. 

So, which relationships should the author choose to modify in alternative life-stories? Mother-father? Mother-aunt? Father-uncles? Among the in-laws? The possibilities are obviously endless, with no inherent rationality no matter which are selected. If there is any significance to the relationships Auster has chosen to use as narrative fulcra, they have escaped me. This annoys my aesthetic sensibilities; I have no way to relate to the method and therefore the characters are abstractions and unrelated to my life even though the frequent environmental references - Kennedy, Vietnam, New York City - are familiar.

The randomness of life also includes one's own genetic make-up, which may or may not be translated into any number of behaviours. Does watching a world-series game at age four create a seed of interest in playing baseball or merely following baseball? Does a loving auntie's fondness for literature create a capacity for literary taste or a distaste for oppressive direction in reading? Will a fascination for journalistic writing at a young age forestall development of athletic talent? 

Clearly the possibilities are uncountable and complex, a problem which doesn't arise if the story is a unitary narrative. But how does an author create four such stories with any cohesion? The bumps and nudges Auster introduces in each of Ferguson's lives are like random variables in a gigantic mathematical equation. But the equation, if it exists, is hidden throughout the text. I admit to an inability to solve the mathematical problem. In any case I don't see myself anywhere in it.

And, of course, life-paths bifurcate constantly. So, influential events and choices compound deviations. How can an author maintain control over the cascading possibilities in a way that still has some sort of narrative sense? How does the reader, for that matter, keep track of the partially congruent lives and the not-quite-the-same protagonists as they float through an interweaved existence? 

4 3 2 1 is a long book structured episodically. By the time of the protagonist's adolescence, it is unlikely anyone who isn't a member of Mensa would be able to remember which teenager descends from which toddler, whose father was the thrusting entrepreneur and whose the local shopkeeper, which girlfriend called Amy is in love (or not) with which version of Ferguson, and whose aunt lives in California and whose in Brooklyn. I failed the associative test, having to retreat to my bed with a migraine. An inadequate as well as unsympathetic reader therefore.

The continuities among the four lives are more interesting: Suburban, Jewish, Intellectual, Liberal. These are the axes around with everything else in 4 3 2 1 mutates and rotates. They are the sort of Kantian categories which shape the universe from which alternatives are selected. These, of course, are as arbitrary as the scenarios that Auster creates within them. But perhaps they are the only things that really matter.

In other words, it may be the continuities not the variations that constitute Auster's point. That, for example, the possibilities available within the universe bounded by these categories are not infinite. Or if they are, they are at least countable. And in a sense, they converge in a kind of fatalistic unity. This would constitute a rather sophisticated literary game. To say more risks giving the game away. 

I have real questions whether this game is worth playing though. Or, at least, that I have the talent to play it. I ended up like one of Auster's characters, with "the glazed-over look of a man unable to see anything but the thoughts inside his own head." Just where I started, I suppose.

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