About this title: Both chilling and poignant, this labyrinthine novel by the author of "Leviathan" follows a man who awakens disoriented in an unfamiliar chamber, as he pieces together clues to his past--and the identity of his captors.
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Edition: First edition. FIRST EDITION, NUMBER LINE-1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780805081459ISBN:0805081453
Description: Fine in fine dust jacket. FINE-PERFECT-HARDBACK WITH DUST COVER. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 145 p. Audience: General/trade. FINE-PERFECT-HARDBACK WITH DUST COVER. FIRST EDITION, NUMBER LINE-1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2. F-Auster, Paul, Henry Holt & Company, 2007. Auster is one of our most intellectually elegant writers. He has persistently subverted the ordinary mechanisms of suspense, chronology, even genre. In certain fundamental attributes, this new novel resembles his ... read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co
Date Published: 2007-01-23
ISBN-13:9780805081459ISBN:0805081453
Description: New. Book is Brand New, Gift condition. Free tracking # included! International buyers are welcome. We ship every business day. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed! read more
Description: Good. Purchasing this book supports the King County Library System Foundation. Thriftbooks and KCLSF have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Edition: 1st
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Picador
Date Published: 2007-12-26
ISBN-13:9780312426293ISBN:0312426291
Description: Like New. May be shiny, in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, no damage to binding, may have a remainder mark. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Picador
Date Published: 2007-12-26
ISBN-13:9780312426293ISBN:0312426291
Description: Very Good. Soft cover. Minor cover wear. Unmarked text. Buy with confidence. 100% satisfaction guaranteed! ! Shipped each business day. read more
"Paul Auster has definitely gotten some brilliant ideas. In this one also he had showed one of those nice things. The old guy who wakes up and finds himself in a completely strange room. And a writer who is moving the whole thing, doing whatever he wants to his characters. Things have been nicely related and formed an elaborated story. The best part in my opinion was near the end of the book, when the old guy, Mr Blank, is making up the rest of the half finished he has read before that day. He does it great. His sensations are neatly described and give a clear and real view of the way he feels about what he is making as his story. The were, in some parts, in complete accordance with my own personal experience of writing, and that was so joyful. But in problems. I'd say the biggest problem of this book, was that it was too crowded. This was the same in that other book of his I'd read, the Brooklyn Follies, but the idea of the story there was not this great. Actually it was more of a spare time book to me. Thus the fact that it was bombarded with people and events did not really hurt much of it. But in this one, with such a fantastic beginning and brilliant idea, well, that was a pity. He really did not need to fill up his pages with all the things that happen in it. From my point of view, that was a waste of the idea. Concentrating on the main events, and not even analyzing them, but just a bigger description of what is going on in and outside the characters would have done much better. Actually, I believe that this could have been a masterpiece, at least a bit of one, if it had been written by a more introspective writer; somebody like Nabokov."
"This is hands down the worst book I read in 2008. The only reason it doesn't get zero stars is because goodreads won't let me do that, and because it is quite short, barely a hundred pages, and therefore only wasted a few hours of my life. Auster is a well respected author and this was my first and last foray with him. Here's what I think happened: He wrote a book and became famous. The publisher said, "Wow, this guy's selling pretty good. See if he has anything else." He says, "I don't have anything else." They say, "Nothing." He says, "Well, I got this one think I wrote when I was twelve, but it's really pretty horrible. Definitely one of the worst books Adrian, whom I respect greatly, will read in 2008." The publisher says, "F@#$ that guy. Let's publish it!" This is definitely a travesty that should be blamed on the hack who published it as much as on the writer. The Kafka-esque yarn about a man, not too allegorically dubbed Mr. Blank, who wakes to find himself in a small sanitized hospital room where he is catered to in high Rothian style with a handjob. He has no recollection of any of the persons who visit him in the room and remembers nothing of his own path. By and by the creative reader comes to understand Mr. Blank is a writer condemned to this hell by the characters he created and abused in life. The book fails as a meditation on the ethics of art primarily because the motifs are explored with little depth and no originality. The final analysis is of a high concept novel with too little effort put into it that falls short of its metaphysical aspirations. Frankly, this novel would fail as a half-rate Twilight Zone episode."
"A narrator tells us of a man, Mr. Blank, who wakes up in a room with no memory. He doesn't know if he is in a prison, an asylum or someone's home. By the end of the book, he and the reader still don't know.
Mr. Blank is visited by a number of people who have had some connection with his life. They provide maddeningly vague tidbits about their relationship to him and who he is/was.
Shortly after awakening, Mr. Blank is told to read an unfinished manuscript - a story about a man held prisoner. Mr. Blank is asked to imagine how it may have ended and he begins to develop a narrative.
At the end of the book, we learn the book's narrator is not relaying a "real" story, but is in the process of writing this fictional narrtive about Mr. Blank. It's an unfinished narrative about a man who is writing a narrative about another man.
Unlike The Raw Shark Texts (another man-without-a-past saga), this book is a very quick read and easier to digest. Perhaps like Life of Pi, it points to the deeply embedded human need to create narratives - to package the bewildering array of our life experiences into tidy story lines."
"I have to say this was the worst Paul Auster book I've read, and I've read most of his works. If you must read Travels in the Scriptorium, it is best that you keep your expectations in check. That way you won't be bitterly disappointed. From the very first words I thought this story was going nowhere. I was correct. When I had finished it it had gone nowhere. It was a tedious read. And a bore. At least though, the second half was a little better than the first, but overall I thought it was a lame story and poorly written, not the work of Paul Auster at his best. If you're thinking of reading this book I suggest you borrow it from your local library and save your money for something decent. I have generously given this two stars, but I was tempted to give it one."
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