As long as they kept on working, the work was going to make them free.
           -Paul Auster, The Music of Chance

            Jerusalem

    And did those feet in ancient time
    Walk upon England's mountains green?
    And was the holy Lamb of God
    On England's pleasant pastures seen?

    And did the Countenance Divine
    Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
    And was Jerusalem builded here
    Among these dark Satanic mills?

    Bring me my bow of burning gold!
    Bring me my arrows of desire!
    Bring me my spear! O clouds unfold!
    Bring me my chariot of fire!

    I will not cease from mental fight,
    Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
    Till we have built Jerusalem
    In England's green and pleasant land.
        -William Blake

There comes a moment in the very best works of film noir and existentialism when the reader/viewer too surrenders to the internal logic of inexorable fate, stops thinking of the protagonist as a passive idiot, and starts rooting for him to see the situation through to its inevitable ugly end with some style.  Forget the underlying philosophy of man's helplessness, there's just something viscerally thrilling about watching someone go down in flames.  But then, on reflection, you come back to the same old objections, chief among them : that man is not doomed; that free will exists; and that individuals determine their own fates.

Paul Auster manages here to provide a compulsively readable thriller, wherein we experience that moment where surrender makes sense, and then to pull back from that brink and restore some measure of free will.  Along the way he hurls around enough allusions, references and parallels to keep a battalion of academics scribbling away for years as to what it all means.  I'm afraid to even hazard a guess--let me just say that I was especially struck by the Biblical and Sisyphiphean themes and the similarities to Cool Hand Luke and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but noticed the Huck Finn theme which Michiko Kakutani talks about in her NY Times review, and am perfectly willing to accept both her Waiting for Godot comparison and the Freemasonry angle that one reviewer at Amazon has come up with.  Though brief, it's a densely textured work, great fun to read and to contemplate afterwards.  Though I find its ultimate elusiveness to be frustrating, I'm sure others will find it especially gratifying for precisely the same quality.

(Reviewed:15-Jan-01)

Grade: (A-)