-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the Book | Readalikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
I had told Rachel my days were numbered, but that was no more
than a hotheaded retort to her meddling advice, a blast of pure hyperbole. My
lung cancer was in remission, and based on what the oncologist had told me after
my most recent exam, there was cause for guarded optimism. That didn't mean I
trusted him, however. The shock of the cancer had been so great, I still didn't
believe in the possibility of surviving it. I had given myself up for dead, and
once the tumor had been cut out of me and I'd gone through the debilitating
ordeals of radiation treatment and chemo, once I'd suffered the long bouts of
nausea and dizziness, the loss of hair, the loss of will, the loss of job, the
loss of wife, it was difficult for me to imagine how to go on. Hence Brooklyn.
Hence my unconscious return to the place where my story began. I was almost
sixty years old, and I didn't know how much time I had left. Maybe another
twenty years; maybe just a few more months. Whatever the medical prognosis of my
condition, the crucial thing was to take nothing for granted. As long as I was
alive, I had to figure out a way to start living again, but even if I didn't
live, I had to do more than just sit around and wait for the end. As usual, my
scientist daughter had been right, even if I'd been too stubborn to admit it. I
had to keep myself busy. I had to get off my ass and do something.
It was early spring when I moved in, and for the first few weeks
I filled my time by exploring the neighborhood, taking long walks in the park,
and planting flowers in my back garden—a small, junk-filled patch of ground that
had been neglected for years. I had my newly resurgent hair cut at the Park
Slope Barbershop on Seventh Avenue, rented videos from a place called Movie
Heaven, and stopped in often at Brightman's Attic, a cluttered, badly organized
used-book store owned by a flamboyant homosexual named Harry Brightman (more
about him later). Most mornings, I prepared breakfast for myself in the
apartment, but since I disliked cooking and lacked all talent for it, I tended
to eat lunch and dinner in restaurants—always alone, always with an open book in
front of me, always chewing as slowly as possible in order to drag out the meal
as long as I could. After sampling a number of options in the vicinity, I
settled on the Cosmic Diner as my regular spot for lunch. The food there was
mediocre at best, but one of the waitresses was an adorable Puerto Rican girl
named Marina, and I rapidly developed a crush on her. She was half my age and
already married, which meant that romance was out of the question, but she was
so splendid to look at, so gentle in her dealings with me, so ready to laugh at
my less than funny jokes, that I literally pined for her on her days off. From a
strictly anthropological point of view, I discovered that Brooklynites are less
reluctant to talk to strangers than any tribe I had previously encountered. They
butt into one another's business at will (old women scolding young mothers for
not dressing their children warmly enough, passersby snapping at dog walkers for
yanking too hard on the leash); they argue like deranged four-year-olds over
disputed parking spaces; they zip out dazzling one-liners as a matter of course.
One Sunday morning, I went into a crowded deli with the absurd name of La Bagel
Delight. I was intending to ask for a cinnamon-raisin bagel, but the word caught
in my mouth and came out as cinnamon-reagan. Without missing a beat, the young
guy behind the counter answered: "Sorry, we don't have any of those. How about a pumpernixon
instead?" Fast. So damned fast, I nearly wet my drawers.
After that inadvertent slip of the tongue, I finally hit upon an
idea that Rachel would have approved of. It wasn't much of an idea, perhaps, but
at least it was something, and if I stuck to it as rigorously and faithfully as
I intended to, then I would have my project, the little hobbyhorse I'd been
looking for to carry me away from the indolence of my soporific routine. Humble
as the project was, I decided to give it a grandiose, somewhat pompous title—in
order to delude myself into thinking that I was engaged in important work. I
called it The Book of Human Folly, and in it I was planning to set down in the
simplest, clearest language possible an account of every blunder, every
pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I
had committed during my long and checkered career as a man. When I couldn't
think of stories to tell about myself, I would write down things that had
happened to people I knew, and when that source ran dry as well, I would take on
historical events, recording the follies of my fellow human beings down through
the ages, beginning with the vanished civilizations of the ancient world and
pushing on to the first months of the twenty-first century. If nothing else, I
thought it might be good for a few laughs. I had no desire to bare my soul or
indulge in gloomy introspections. The tone would be light and farcical
throughout, and my only purpose was to keep myself entertained while using up as
many hours of the day as I could.
From The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster. Copyright Paul Auster 2005. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Henry Holt.
 (1).gif)
Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for ...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
