Paul Auster’s new novel Invisible just came out last month, the NY times reviewed it, to say it was favorable is an understatement, I quote: “It has the illusion of effortlessness that comes only with fierce discipline. As often happens when you are in the hands of a master, you read the next sentence almost before you are finished with the previous one…” Which sounds a little trite if you ask me, if we’re in the hands of a master, try reviewing like one,  Clancy Martin (I’m such a hater).

But Auster really is a New York master. Publishing consistently, more philosophically intellectual, nay intellectually metaphysical, than most contemporary popular novelists, he’s a rare bird that bridges the gap between the popular and intellectual. And homeboy makes money doing it (I checked his sales). And by “popular” I mean Dan Brown and by “intellectual” I don’t mean Benjamin Kunkel (don’t know who he is? Neither does anyone else who doesn’t live in Williamsburg or Greenpoint). Auster also does all of this in New York, with books very specific to New York, but his novels daily fly past the golden borders of Manhattan and Selected Parts of Brooklyn (he’s an international bestseller). For a city that is more and more criticized for its closed-off (or cut-off) literati, that’s nothing to sniff at. And still, no matter how far Auster travels (I was given the New York Trilogy by a flamboyant Irishman who worked at Shakespeare & Co in Paris, yes, that Shakespeare & Co) his books are always, even, singularly, more, transcendent, cool, eyelid-opening and better here. Why?

He used to be a fighter pilot. He’s bffls with Mark Rudman. He asks us to look at our mind’s eye differently, he still asks us to look differently.

-Nikki-Lee