Man in the Dark

So, it's been awhile. Not quite two months. Not that anyone is much reading this, I suspect, but still, for the 1, possibly 3, loyal readers out there, I feel like I've let you down. It's been a hectic summer to say the least. Last time I posted I was still in Indiana. Now I'm in South Georgia, just miles away from the Florida border. So that's one reason it's been awhile. There are others.

BUT, I finished a book tonight that had nothing to do with the job (another reason) I've been starting down here in Dixie. That book was Paul Auster's Man in the Dark. It's a short little novel--a novella almost, about an aging writer/critic experiencing insomnia. Since insomnia is something I regularly deal with myself, I've always found that particular topic especially interesting.

So it's a good book, but it feels, even in 180 rather generously lined pages, a little unfocused. At least one half of the first half (if that makes sense) of the novel is given to a character that that August (our central insomniac) is creating in his head to while away the sleepless hours. The reader gets interested in this meta-fictional character, and the rather odd predicament he finds himself in (he's supposed to kill his creator) and then Auster, using August, kills him off rather unceremoniously. I get the feeling that this meta-fictional character is supposed to tell us something about the domestic plot that August is involved in with his daughter and grand-daughter. Perhaps I'm obtuse, but I never got the connection.

It's like a New Yorker short story got involved with a Charlie Kaufman screenplay, but no one ever bothered to explain the connection. It's not a bad idea, perhaps even a good one, but I needed something a little more obvious to make it all make sense.

What else to tell? I'm trying to learn to run in the Georgia humidity. Honestly it hasn't been that bad so far, but the locals tell me this is a pretty moderate summer. Apparently we're going to get some hurricane inspired rain later in the week. So, THAT should be interesting.