The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster (2002) In The Book of Illusions, David Zimmer has lost his wife and two sons in a tragic car crash. Left wealthy by the insurance settlement, the grieving Zimmer quits his job as an English professor at a Vermont college and becomes a reclusive alcoholic. Flipping through television channels one night, Zimmer happens upon a film clip of the silent comedian Hector Mann, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1929. Suddenly, Zimmer’s life has purpose again, as he becomes enthralled by Mann’s work and writes a book about him. Some time later, after the book has been published, Zimmer receives a letter from someone in New Mexico claiming to be Mann’s wife. The woman tells Zimmer that Hector has read his book and would like to meet him. Zimmer is obviously confused, presuming that Mann has long been dead, and he writes the letter off as a fraud. A visit from an unusual and remarkable woman named Alma Grund, however, changes Zimmer’s mind. The Book of Illusions takes Auster’s relationship with risk and chance to a new and exciting level, as Auster examines, in great depth, the life of a vanished man. We learn where Hector Mann went, what he did, and why he remains in hiding. Like François-René de Chateaubriand in his Mémoires d’outre-tombe (1849-1850; memoirs of a dead man), which Zimmer translates, Mann seemingly communicates from a world beyond. He meditates on life, art, and love, as does Zimmer himself, and this sets the uniformity of mood pervading the novel. Like Hawthorne, whose “The Birthmark” is alluded to by Alma, Auster has a spirit of introspective memory and moral consciousness. The Book of Illusions is, in a way, a high-wire act, a reflection on the thin line between madness and sanity, and, arguably, the finest achievement of Auster’s career. About the author Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American author and director whose writing blends absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction, and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy (1987),Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), and The Brooklyn Follies (2005). His books are translated to more than forty languages. Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish middle class parents of Polish descent, Queenie (née Bogat) and Samuel Auster. He grew up in South Orange, New Jersey and Newark and graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood. After graduating from Columbia University in 1970, he moved to Paris, France where he earned a living translating French literature. Since returning to the U.S. in 1974, he has published poems, essays, and novels of his own, as well as translations of French writers such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Joseph Joubert. He and his second wife, writer Siri Hustvedt (the daughter of professor and scholar Lloyd Hustvedt), were married in 1981, and they live in Brooklyn. Together they have one daughter, Sophie Auster. Previously, Auster was married to the writer Lydia Davis. They have one son together, Daniel Auster.
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