Ghosts by Paul Auster
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Took me three days to read this novel. Blame it on the weekend—I’m busier on weekends. Blame video games, football games, other distractions. Blame City of Glass, which impressed me in no way. Blame mostly this so-called existentialism. I guess I just don’t get it. I take no pride in that ignorance, you know. Ghosts is sixty pages of I don’t know what. (Is that even a novel. Is that even a novelette. Should I not be reviewing these titles individually).
All of the characters have colors for names. Real names are reserved for referenced movie stars and the characters they play, or for the disguises main character Blue dons. So what? Yeah, so what.
I said existentialism (cause that’s what it says on the ironic “pulp” style cover of the novel: “A Penguin Existential Mystery.” But all the critics say “post-modern.” Here. I think “post-modern” means “A writer who’s been published before has been published again and since other folks said what he wrote was good this must be good too but we don’t get it at all but we still have to say we do or we look like idiots.”
Apparently, we have entered the post-post-modern age, thank goodness. Nevertheless, on for me to the next one in this Trilogy. I wonder if it will also have a guy watching a guy and losing himself.