Tuesday, November 7, 2017

'Everything could be different': 4-3-2-1 by Paul Auster (Review)

I’ve been meaning to read Paul Auster for a long time, so I was over the moon when I had the chance to review 4-3-2-1*. I know it’s very much a different beast to his other books, firstly, in terms of scale and narrative ambition, but it was well worth persevering with. It’s not one to be rushed, it took me probably 3-4 weeks of my commute but I have missed it since finishing it. It’s an extraordinarily layered coming-of-age tale (x4) – playful, tragic, philosophical and wise. But it’s not so much a character study as the study of an idea and it’s the wit and wisdom and tragedy with which Auster’s omniscient narrator explores this idea that the book really impacts lastingly. There will be a few spoilers in the following paragraphs so it may be best to read this after the book itself.

‘Such an interesting thought, Ferguson said to himself: to imagine how things could be different for him even though he was the same. The same boy in a different house with a different tree. The same boy with different parents. The same boy with the same parents who didn’t do the same things they did now… Yes, anything was possible, and just because things happened in one way didn’t mean they couldn’t happen in another. Everything could be different’ - 1.2

The story begins with Ferguson’s father initially emigrating to the U.S.A – and the comic moment where he forgets the America surname he’d devised, and his German ‘vergessen’ is mistaken for ‘Ferguson’. After the precedent for accident and irony have been set, the story begins with young Archibald Ferguson’s entry into the world, and the narratives divide into four. They have the same biology, the same DNA, they are all born in the same hospital at the same time but then all move to different suburban towns, and the fate of Ferguson’s father is different for each. They ultimately all choose different kinds of writing as their calling and, depending on events within their lives, become political to some degree and foster different relationships, though the relationship with Ferguson’s cousin Amy is fairly consistent with each.

While talking to Granta (https://granta.com/paul-auster-conversation/), Auster laid out these themes and talked about how he wrote the book in a fever, ‘possessed’. He wanted to convey the idea that the ‘world is very precarious’, ‘life becomes death in a flash’ and ultimately, ‘we are all accidents’. The death in a flash reference is quite literal for one of the young Ferguson’s – who is killed by a tree struck by lightning. This is actually based on a real event which has haunted Auster from his childhood, when a boy was electrocuted by lightning next to him. Indeed the Fergusons all encounter random accidents, and three meet unexpected premature ends at different stages of their young lives. Each time is tragic as the omniscient narrator really elucidates the accidental and random misfortune of the moment, yet you’ve been so enmeshed with each Ferguson’s history and prospects and unique relationships, that each one weighs heavily.
Paul Auster


With 4 different narratives marking that coming-of-age experience, there are perhaps moments when things can feel repetitive. As puberty kicks in, you experience Ferguson’s first sexual cravings four times, and these are told in great detail. But Auster is nothing if not thorough in his mission and that is something to be admired ultimately.

Auster is so good at drawing out that human experience and those first realisations about the world as you grow up. I particularly loved the moment that one young Ferguson realises that adults are just as scared as children – something that’s intensely recognisable:

‘His mother looked agitated, more confused and distraught than Ferguson had ever seen her, no longer acting as the rock of composure and wisdom he had always thought she was but someone just like himself, a fragile being prey to sadness and tears and hopefulness, and when she put her arms around him he felt frightened, not just because his father’s store had burned down and there would be no more money for them to live on. But the truly frightening thing was to learn that his mother was no stronger than he was, that the blows of the world hurt her just as much as they hurt him and that except for the fact that she was older, there was no difference between them’ - 1.2

So much of the book is about the fragility and absurdity of existence, but also about living anyway – and not succumbing to the accompanying fear. Often there are brilliant, standalone sentences of the fates/universe/gods responding to events in this small individual’s existence:

‘The gods looked down from their mountain and shrugged.’ 6.3

The indifferent universe is something that I’ve always found intensely interesting in books I’ve read (I am a big Camus fan and fan of post-war existentialism in general) and it’s very much present here. In some ways it makes every action more poignant and important, it’s frustrating and tragic, but it’s also freeing. There’s something grimly satisfying about reading a line like that. 

There are some reviews which have called Auster self-indulgent in this novel, and perhaps that’s true to a degree, but I wouldn’t necessarily say it as a negative. I am fine with writers like Auster, Gaiman, Atwood and indeed any writer being ‘self-indulgent’ so long as what they’re writing stimulates thought and challenges a reader in a productive way – ie. when a reader can reflect on it and draw multiple conclusions. They very premise of 4-3-2-1 is by its nature indulgent, and it’s open about that. Wouldn’t it be indulgent if we had four separate lives we could live and dip into?

‘Ferguson understood that the world was made of stories, so many different stories that if they were all gathered together and put into a book, the book would be nine hundred million pages long.’ 4.4

We should always try to read things which challenge us, and maybe even make us a little uncomfortable at times.

‘No, Ferguson replied, when Artie’s parents asked if he agreed with this boy, but that was what made their conversations so instructive, he said, because every time Mike challenged him he would have to think harder about what he believed in himself, and how could you ever learn anything if you only talked to people who thought exactly as you did’? 4.4

Auster explores sexuality (specifically pansexuality), political feeling, art, love, death and loss and so many of the colours on these spectrums. The reflection sexuality on love and ‘choice’ are poignant. All of the Ferguson’s follow wherever their feelings take them when it comes to love and sex – they very much fall in love with the person.

‘She still didn’t think of herself as a lesbian, she was simply a person in love with another person, and because that other person was beautiful and entrancing and unlike anyone else in the world, what difference did it make if she was in love with a man or a woman 4.3

‘Why did a person have to choose between one or the other, why block out one-half of humanity in the name of normal or natural when the truth was that everyone was Both, and people and society and the laws and religions of people in different societies were just too afraid to admit it. As the California cowgirl had said to him three and a half years ago: I believe in my life, Archie, and I don’t want to be scared of it. Brian was scared. Most people were scared, but scared was a stupid way to live, Ferguson felt, a dishonest and demoralizing way to live, a dead-end life, a dead life.’ 5.3

‘It wasn’t that Ferguson felt any enthusiasm for the Democrats, but it was important to make distinctions, he told himself, important to recognise that there were bad things in this flawed world, but also even worse things, and when it came to voting in an election, better to go for the bad over the worse’ 6.1

I delighted in moments like these - that last quote must be a cheeky reference to real-life politics and the situations that the UK and USA have found themselves in in the last couple of years. Indeed – another one:

‘What moment could be more important for the writing of books than a year when the world was on fire—and you were on fire with it?’ 7.4

There’s something to be learned in the individual lives of each Ferguson – in all the banal moments, the icky firsts, the freak accidents, and the existential quandaries. For me, the ending is clever and makes you think back on all you've read, adding further layers and elements of pathos. There's so much in this novel that could be explored and unpicked - but these are my thoughts as of now on a work I certainly admire and still find myself revisiting in my mind. It's a commitment worth making. 

More favourite quotes:

Self-aware narration:

‘There was, as there always is, another side to the story’ 2.1

On music:

‘The need for music that ran through their bodies, which as that point in their lives was no different from the need to find a way to exist in the world’ 2.1

On curiosity:

‘Anger and disappointment could take you just so far, he realised, but without curiosity you were lost’ 2.4

Even with four versions of a live, you’ll never have THE answer – just answers:

‘I’m saying you’ll never know if you made the wrong choice or not. You would need to have all the facts before you knew, and the only way to get all the facts is to be in two places at the same time—which is impossible.’ 2.4

On feeling:

‘We feel what we feel, he wrote, and we’re not responsible for our feelings. For our actions, yes, but not for what we feel’ 3.4

A beautiful moment of self-reflection:

‘Ferguson was beginning to understand how fragile he was, how difficult it was for him to steer his way through even the smallest conflicts, especially conflicts brought on by his own flaws and stupidities. For the point was that he needed to be loved, loved more than most people needed to be loved, entirely loved without respite through every waking minute of his life, loved even when he did things that made him unlovable, especially when reason demanded that he not be loved, and unlike Amy, who was pushing her mother away from her, Ferguson could never let go of his mother.’ 4.3

On life and the self:

‘People die, and the world goes on, and whatever we can do to help each other out, well, that’s what we do, isn’t it?’ 6.1

‘And what did it mean to be himself anyway, he wondered, he had several selves inside him, even many selves, a strong self and a weak self, a thoughtful self and an impulsive self, a generous self and a selfish self, so many different selves that in the end he was as large as everyone or as small as no one, and if that was true for him, then it had to be true for everyone else as well, meaning that everyone was everyone and no one at the same time’ 6.3


‘The world as it was could never be more than a fraction of the world, for the real also consisted of what could have happened but didn’t, that one road was no better or worse than any other road, but the torment of being alive in a single body was that at any given moment you had to be on one road only, even though you could have been on another, travelling toward an altogether different place’ 7.4

*Thank you to Faber for the chance to review 4-3-2-1 through Netgalley.