Timbuktu

We were supposed to read Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy for one of my courses last spring, but we never got to it. I still have the book, and I even brought it in my carry on when I flew back from Heathrow. (I suspect I was too busy bawling my eyes out to read it.) He has come highly recommended and since Timbuktu was relatively short, I was able to finish it in a few hours. Perhaps it wasn’t short enough.

The idea, of course, is a splendid one, and as the inside book cover proclaims, Mr. Bones is “the most memorable and endearing dog ever to grace the pages of a novel” (I don’t know, that parrot from Love in the Time of Cholera was getting to be pretty memorable). It is, of course, a story told entirely from a dog’s perspective, and not a happily pampered pooch, but a rather unusual dog. I am relieved Auster resisted the temptation to tell the book in first-person, which I think might be condescending and cutesy; instead, Mr. Bones remains eminently dog-like and yet very easy to relate to. I especially like the fact that while he can understand “Ingloosh” quite well, morphology of the mouth and throat make it impossible for him to speak it. One of the reasons he can understand it so well is that his owner, Willy G. Christmas, is a bit of a nutter and talks to him on equal footing.

Interestingly, the short book (180 pgs) is told mostly in exposition and flashback as Mr. Bones reflects on what leaves him and Willy (born Gurevitch) hoofing the streets of Baltimore. Easily you can imagine a book being written just about Willy, whose drug-induced (or not) epiphany saw him tattooing Santa Claus on his arm and becoming an itinerant poet. Again, I am glad Auster sticks with the dog and the dog’s perspective on this. Willy, like some writers I know, becomes stuck in a whirlwind of word association, leaving such imponderables as “The Pep Boys, the Ritz Brothers, Rory Calhoun. Captain Video and the Four Tops. The Andrews Sisters, Life and Look, the Bobbsey Twins. There’s no end to it, is there? Henry James and Jesse James, Frank James and William James. James Joyce, Joyce Cary, Cary Grant. Grant me swizzle sticks and dental floss.” Frankly, I get a bit tired of it after it goes on for several pages (but then, I did for Howl also).

After the inevitability of Willy’s death, a lot of the tension of the book seems to dissipate, and the rest seems an afterthought. Oh, a lot more happens to Mr. Bones, but it seems aimless meanderings stuck together with fragments of dreams. The ending, especially, did not please me at all. Personally I felt the idea was better suited to a short story, a long short story if need be, but it could have benefited from conciseness rather than loping, drawling storytelling. Of course I cared about Mr. Bones, and I’m sure the author intended the book’s unique structure. It just didn’t work for me, I guess. one of the best things was that Auster allowed his dog protagonist to dream, and frequently. In the dreams Mr. Bones could see visions of the future, revisions of the past, even dreams in which he could physically speak to Willy. Salman Rushdie on the back cover seems to see the book only in its metaphorical sense: “in a world in which many people get treated like dogs.” But why does the book have to reflect on us? Why can’t it just be a dog’s story, that isn’t all happy endings and Lassie? By turns it reminded me of Metamorphosis and a Ray Bradbury story I can’t remember the title of.