Infinite Books

Saying that Sy Baumgartner, an about-to-retire Princeton professor, doesn’t have a good day is an understatement: first, he burns his hand leaving a pot on the stove, then falls down the stairs showing, completely unnecessary, the way to a meter reading technician. I expected that things would get worse, but no, there were no broken bones, and the burn was painful but healing. Even the meter man, Ed, turned out not to be a potential thief or killer but a kind guy who eventually would become an old professor’s friend.

Yes, this novel is infused with more hope than despair. Still, it is a novel talking, in a very gentle, human way, about grief that doesn’t diminish with time. Baumgartner’s wife, Anna, passed away ten years ago, and he still feels almost physical pain, constantly aware of her absence. Paul Auster compares this to phantom pain, the feeling that amputees have as if the cut-off member was still a part of one’s body. However, the professor also considers he might get remarried. Despite his forgetfulness, perhaps the onset of dementia, Baumgartner is still very active: he organizes Anna’s writings and decides to publish her poems; he also writes a philosophical paper himself and is surprised that it gets published. Life goes on, with all its narratives, good and bad. Baumgartner is a survivor.

I simply loved this moving, reflective novel and its slow, poetic way of introducing characters. The story meanders back to Baumgartner’s youth when he met his wife at Columbia University. I realized that Baumgartner is a fictional alter ego of Paul Auster himself, as the novel’s protagonist’s mother’s name was Ruth Auster, and his father’s roots were in Poland and east of Poland. Then, reading Anna’s journals, I looked at the young Sy from his girlfriend’s point of view. Eventually, coming to the end of this short book, I was left with a cliffhanger, hoping that Paul Auster would find time and energy to give us another book about Baumgartner. It’s a beautiful life story of a man coming to the end of his life but open to something unexpected. And welcoming this unexpected not with fear but with hope and curiosity; as Paul Auster writes, “A chance to begin again. A chance to take chances again and ride through the whirlwind of whatever good or bad thing will be happening next.”

BAUMGARTNER, by Paul Auster, Grove Atlantic, 2023