Scanning the Bookshelf

Once encountered, it's an image you can't forget. In the "Inferno," Dante pictures 12th-century Provencal poet Bertran de Born, languishing in the eighth circle of hell (for political misdeeds) and holding his head in one hand like a lantern. So when a major character in Paul Auster's new novel "Invisible" makes an appearance on the first page, with the same last name, you just know Rudolph Born isn't going to be among the book's more likable characters. And the young man who meets him, Adam Walker, clearly has his doubts about Born too, telling the reader, "I had already met his namesake in Dante's Hell, a dead man shuffling through the final verses of the 28th canto of the 'Inferno.'"

Of course, it could just be a chance meeting. But for anyone who has had the pleasure of reading earlier Auster novels, you know that seemingly random events don't remain so: They become a proverbial pebble cast into a pond. And you also know that Walker surely isn't arbitrarily chosen either. He's a kind of innocent: a budding writer and a student of literature at Columbia University, who will come of age in this story.

It's been this way since Auster's breakthrough novella of the early 1980s, "City of Glass," in which Daniel Quinn gets a call, a wrong number. Someone is looking for a detective named Paul Auster. Quinn, formerly a literary writer, now writes formulaic detective fiction under the name of William Wilson (the name borrowed from a well-known tale by Poe).

On a lark, Quinn decides to masquerade as Auster, a decision that will radically alter his life. Along the way, he even visits Paul Auster, hoping to find out if he is the detective that the client was trying to reach. He isn't, of course. But Quinn spends a happy afternoon with Auster and meets his children and wife. But curiously, Auster never takes credit for creating Quinn. Doesn't even seem to know him.

Drawing attention to the fictional nature of his fiction in "City of Glass," and in his books since then, Auster has been grouped, justifiably, with experimental novelists and, more broadly, postmodern writers. But he takes a long view of the elusive relationship between the "true" and fictional story and the author and his tale.

He tells us as much in "City of Glass," where Quinn gets into a discussion with the fellow he is tailing, Peter Stillman, about "Don Quixote." (Part of the humor of the book is the way they matter-of-factly conduct this literary chat.) They both ardently admire Cervantes' landmark novel (like Auster himself) and Stillman talks about the way Cervantes tries to convince readers it was a manuscript he discovered and then translated. In other words, fiction with a frame around it. (In Austeresque fashion, even Daniel Quinn's initials dovetail with this emphasis on "Don Quixote.")

This kind of symbolism has the potential to be ponderous and pretentiously literary.

Not so in Auster's writing. The storytelling voice in his best books (and this includes "Invisible") is compelling, casting a spell that isn't broken until the story ends. The love of literary lore and references to beloved authors (Hawthorne and Poe seem to get the biggest number) are usually wry and witty. And they rarely impede the flow of his tales.

True to form, Walker's story, in "Invisible," has many facets. He conveys his own story, of his first encounter with Born and his girlfriend Margot, in Part I of the novel. Born, a Parisian who is a visiting professor at Columbia, makes a point of talking to Walker at a party. They become better acquainted, which looks as if it may yield a friendship and Born proposes that Walker edit a literary journal he would fund. He becomes involved romantically with Margot, which doesn't affect the journal, much to Walker's surprise — that is, until traumatic events intervene, as you know they surely will with Born.

Walker turns bitter toward Born, not because he doesn't get to edit the journal but because of Born's sordid actions, ultimately triggering a revenge plot against Born. Yet this is only one of the stories in "Invisible" that mark Adam's coming of age sexually, emotionally and professionally.

In the beginning, the novel seemingly is present tense, opening in the spring of 1967. But this is actually a reconstruction of events, as recast by Walker four or so decades later. He suggests a symbolic structure for his story of that year, too: in "Spring," he awakens to evil through Born's action, "Summer" spans the summer of 1967; "Fall" finds him going to Paris for his fall semester, setting in motion a revenge plot against Born, which doesn't unfold as he planned.

But Walker's story, both sweet and heartbreaking, is completed not by Walker but by a friend from Columbia, identified as Jim, who became a far more accomplished and better known writer. Their bond, which disintegrated after college, is re-established in 2007. And as for Born, his story is concluded in the diary of a woman Walker met as a young girl during his fall in Paris. Her mother was set to marry Born ... and that's another story that becomes part of "Invisible."

Then, there's the typically adroit layering of story within story, one posing as a true story while of course all are fictional. Here is Jim, reflecting on his reading of Walker's memoir in progress: "How to describe my response? Fascination, amusement, a growing sense of dread, and then horror. If I hadn't been told it was a true story, I probably would have plunged in and taken these 60-plus pages for the beginning of a novel."

Auster connects all of these characters' stories elegantly. He even works in his own translation of one of Bertran de Born's poems (credited to Walker).

The title, it turns out, has a fine subtlety to it, drawing our attention to the way evil can easily remain invisible; love, too. Their place in the world is wholly individual, dependent on who is recognizing their presence — or isn't. Life just isn't some sort of divine comedy, but there is place for goodness within the everyday world. This beautifully structured novel says as much.

To find out more about Robert Pincus and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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