On page three of Paul Auster's "The Brooklyn Follies", there's a cancer drop, which didn't end up being a through line in the rest of the book, but did make me pause to go "Are you fucking shitting me?" at my terrible gift of choosing books with cancer in December.
It was fine.
Both the book and my managing of the feelings provoked by encountering cancer without preparing myself in advance. In general, I've gotten better at handling these things, and it's easier in private than in a group setting, such as watching a movie or tv show, but an understanding and considerate social group helps. (Special shoutout to dear friend @NutshellGulag )
I read Auster's "The New York Trilogy" ages ago and quite liked it, but "The Brooklyn Follies" aims to take a more comedic tone and I don't think it's Auster's forte. A retired insurance salesman, recently divorced, recovering from lung cancer, moves to Brooklyn and tries to figure out what to do with a life he isn't sure is going to last much longer and that he isn't sure he wants to last much longer. It starts off in an explicit place of "killing time, waiting to die" and branches out into neighbourhood discovery, reconnection, making new friends, finding joy in life again, all while re-establishing a connection with estranged but beloved family and it's fine. Sometimes it hits amusing. Auster has good turns of phrase. It's an easy read.
But Auster's use of first person reflective, the fact that the narrator is laying out an actual book, brings me closer to a main character that I don't find particularly charming in a way that does him no favours.
Auster seems aware that he is writing about a Brooklyn that his protagonist is an outsider to, someone out of step with its modern incarnation and the diversity therein, and self-awareness is great, but it's still outsider, post-middle age cis white man mostly concerned with his own world and finding people outside that sphere interesting accessories to the new life he's building.
Women, of course, are evaluated on their appearance and the protagonist's sexual attraction to them on introduction.
All of the above is not unexpected by picking up a book by this kind of author and I note these things not as criticisms but observation; this is the kind of book it is.
What is annoying is that Auster has written this kind of book but peppered it with exciting things happening before or adjacent to the narrative. There are criminal schemes and prison and false identities and a nascent cult and a little girl's escape from the cult to the big city to find relatives she barely remembers or knows! Tragic love stories! Some people with really cool jobs! Questioning of sexuality and discovery of new, healing relationships and love!
So "The Brooklyn Follies" is fine and enjoyable and easy but I can't help but think of all the much more engaging stories it suggests.