And so each chapter is also divided into four parts: there’s a chapter 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4, for example. As the novel progresses, each Ferguson’s fate splits off from the others. See, instead of a single life’s trajectory, we are actually given four Fergusons to consider. But a structural trick breaks up the pattern. “4 3 2 1”’s over-inclusive spirit sometimes makes it feel very much like a particularly chatty 19th-century social novel, transposed onto the 20th. We’re told the names of his various twentysomething roommates even though they “had no role to play in the story.” We’re told not only what books Ferguson reads, but how long Ferguson takes to read a particular book. We’re filled in on the major events of American history that occur in and around Ferguson’s life.
In fact, the sheer accretion of names, dates, places and other minutiae are the chief engine of the novel. This is a novel that accumulates small incidents rather than tells the story of some Big Event.īut over the course of the novel, the details of Ferguson’s more or less ordinary existence are cataloged in exhaustive detail.
That’s about it for the plot, such as there ever is one. He has vague aspirations of being a writer. Other than that offbeat origin story, Ferguson does not have any particularly remarkable powers or character traits. As we’re told in the opening pages of the book, the name is an accident, assigned to a grandfather (original name: Reznikoff) on Ellis Island by an impatient bureaucrat. 3, 1947, which suggests he’s trying to tell us that this character is not-him, but also yes, him.) Auster calls his character by his surname, Ferguson, throughout. (Yes, the precision of this birthday for a fictional character is unusual. The book straightforwardly tells the story of the life of one Archie Ferguson of New Jersey and New York, born March 3, 1947. The Other Auster of “4 3 2 1” is a wry authorial presence but not a particularly interesting one. It’s almost as though it’s been written by some other writer. But curiously, in “4 3 2 1” the clever, philosophical, morose Auster of his moving, sometimes surpassingly beautiful New York Trilogy is playing possum. It means it is an Important Book in the oeuvre of the author. He is also way too self-conscious a writer not to know what dropping an 866-page book means. Auster has not, traditionally, been a writer of doorstoppers. Paul Auster’s 866-page “4 3 2 1,” landing with a thud on the threshold of the nation’s bookstores, is plainly playing with that idea. A long novel is something thought to be a serious novel.
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