Absolutely loved the first half, but 'The Book of Memory' just wasn't as strong.

Phần 1 'Người vô hình' : 5*, rất hay. Một số đoạn phải ngưng để ngẫm vì quá thâm.
Phần 2 'Sách của kí ức': 1*, tác giả dẫn dắt qua tâm trí của ông, lan man và rất khó đọc.
Ngỡ tưởng cha của tác giả là kẻ lập dị, hóa ra tác giả cũng dị ko kém.
Tổng lại là 3*, cho ai muốn thử thì phần 1 là phần nên đọc :)

I am not the greatest Auster fan, and I think that after this book I will stay put. The book has two stories. The first is the Portrait of an invisible man, and this one I quite liked. It is a hommage to his father, written after his father died. And it has got something personal in it, something that reveals the human in the writer and shows his attitude towards life and the passing of it. The second story The book of memory was not that much to my taste. It was like a collage of various bits and bobs that he remembers stuck together in various bits and bobs that belong into the collective memory. However, I found it a bit too bit & bobby for my liking and struggled to get through the text, because once I start...

come Diario d'inverno, ma qui c'entra il padre. molti più non-detti

I'm wavering between 3 and 5 stars, so picked 4. The first part, titled "Portrait of an Invisible Man" is fabulous. It's the first 69 pages where Auster, as he cleans out his recently deceased father's hosue, thinks about his father, investigates his past, recognizes, at least, that their relationship was stronger than he always thought---that he is much like his father in many ways. Nothing new there in a memoir by a son about a father, but this one is so beautifully written that I was all set to add the book to my Autobiography class this fall.

But then I read the second half titled "The Book of Memory" and here (pp.71-173, so the bulk of the book) Auster goes all post-modern on us. While the first memoir plays with time, geography, perspective, it does so in a way that doesn't detract from the story. Yet the second story, with letters instead of people's names, does so to such a degree that we just don't give a damn about A or his son D or whatever letter he was. There are moments that stand out: his grandfather learning magic for his grandson, and becoming basically Mr. Magic for the senior set; the prostitute he meets in a bar in NYC--the scene works, it's powerful. The French poet who remembers every detail of A's advisor's apartment from a year earlier---that power of memory, as the title warns us. But that's all I remember, which is not a good thing since I just finished the book last night.

Perhaps it deserves another chance, though: I'll give it that.

Sarà un caso, ma da qualche mese a questa parte le mie letture sono legate dagli stessi temi: il tempo che passa, la giovinezza perduta, i rapporti che cambiano, la morte. Che detti così sono i temi di tipo tutta la letteratura, ma The Invention of Solitude ne è un po' la summa.
La prima parte è un ritratto del padre ed è abbastanza vivido nella mia memoria. La seconda parte è più oscura e ne ho solo un vago ricordo. A distanza di anni probabilmente mi resteranno solo due cose: la definizione di memoria ("Memory: the space in which a thing happens for the second time") e la ruota che gira (Auster che passa dall'essere figlio all'essere padre e figlio a essere solo padre).

Uskomaton teos, jota oli todella hankala lukea, koska jokaiseen sanaan, ajatukseen ja havaintoon tahtoi jäädä paikalleen pureksimaan. Ajattelemaan. Aivan käsittämättömän koskettava ja kaunis. Sisälsi koko maailman. En kestä, että maailmassa voikin olla olemassa sellainen mieli kuin Paul Austerin!