The Music of Chance

Just put down Paul Auster’s The Music of Chance and am enjoying mulling over it.

The Amazon reviews were my first thought after google failed to turn up any free information:

Flat, boring, pointless, plain stupid. Guy gets too pretentious with all that bunch of alleged existencial symbolism, whatever it is supposed to mean. His writing style is quite poor, he uses tons of cliches, and presumes to be telling more than he does. Too kitshy to be true.

I would give it a -5 star if I could. Just stay away from this garbage.

And on the other end of the spectrum:

Someone gave me this book alonf with Michael Cunningham’s THE HOURS, telling me that both were part of a group of talented young writers. Let me tell you, Paul Auster couldn’t be Michael Cunningham’s copy editor. There are more cliches in the first 5 pages of this book than you could find in a dime store mystery novel. The characters are flat, the story ludicrous. It tries hard to be some kind of masonic allegory but is so obvious it becomes aggravating. I read the NY Times review that praises the book for it’s series of “ricocheting” coincidences, and I kept waiting for that to happen. IN fact, nothing ricochets. Everything thuds. IF you are a lover of language, don’t bother with Auster.

Lots A wealth of material (never mind kill this sentance) here. Both end’s of the spectrum reviewers quickly attack cliche’s. One then is upset about how much is unsaid, the other hates how obvious everything is. One calls it garbage, the other says it thuds.

I’ll rate it internets style.

+5

Will read again.