One of the indulgences of my "college of my own making" in retirement is that I create my own syllabus and I don't finish books that I don't like. I did feel compelled, however, to slog my way all the way to the end of Paul Auster's massive tome 4 3 2 1.The premise of the book is ingenious, interweaving the divergent stories of four different Archie Fergusons -- four possible lives of the same boy. All born in 1947 (like Auster). Similar but different life experiences that gradually diverge more and more as they reach their early twenties.
But I barely remember the names of characters when I'm reading a single version of a story. Keeping track of the roles of various friends and relatives in the different versions of Ferguson was just too much for me. Maybe I should have started taking notes and drawing diagrams right from the start, but then it's a text book, not a novel. So if Auster did a good job of demonstrating the impact that various life experiences had on his protagonist, some of that was lost on me because I couldn't keep them straight.
I'm a bit younger than Auster and Ferguson, but not so much younger that his life experiences are uncharted territory. The reactions of an adolescent and young adult to the unjust war and the racism of the late 60's rings true to me, even though I'm enough younger that I didn't experience it in the same way. Sharing generational experiences was probably my motivation for soldiering on through all 866 pages. I must say that the last couple pages were profoundly disappointing. He just couldn't figure out how to bring his story to a good closing.
If you are of a completely different generation than Paul Auster and I are, I'm not sure that you'll experience sufficient insight to justify the investment of your time.
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