Saturday, July 30, 2005

2005 book 95

paul auster's the music of chance
my immediate family has all safely arrived in south carolina and the vacationing has begun! i have only read one book so far, but expect to get to at least 100 while at the beach/pool. anyway, this book is about a poker game that goes terribly awry--jim, who has recently inherited a bunch of money from his father, is traveling aimlessly around the country when he encounters poker hotshot jack pozzi and offers him his last ten thousand dollars for a high-stake poker game against two eccentric millionaires. there's also a lot of wall-building that goes on in this book. you must realize that while this sounds like a harmless, perhaps wacky, story, it's actually deeply unsettling and very dark. it's more straightforward than some of the other auster books i've read, and i liked it a lot--it was nominated for the pen/faulkner award, and i'm curious to see what beat it (but since i'm on a modem connected at 31200 bps, i think the internet search can wait for another day!).

eta: i accidentally left my cell phone in carrboro (the agony!!!!!), so don't bother calling. :)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is one of my favorite Auster books. The movie is not bad either, as I recall--but I might be prejudiced toward it because you can hear my brother playing music on the tape that's in Mandy Patinkin's car stereo at the beginning.

Alicia K. said...

phil--i also really like auster's new york trilogy, although it is very different--i've never heard of the american story project, so thanks for giving me something to check out!

minty--OMG, i totally did not even know it was a movie! now i have to netflix it so i can say "hey, the sister of the dude who's playing right now reads my blog!" haha. also, mandy patinkin is pretty awesome, even if he does do commercials for low cholesterol medicine, or whatever it is . . .

David said...

I don't think you can beat Paul Auster, unless you have read Timbuktu, which can be beaten pretty easily--like by a menu from a Chinese Restaurant.