Name: Music of Chance
Rating: 4.111111111111111 (9 reviews)
ISBN: 9780571203031

Paul Auster

Music of Chance

The music of chance

Edwin Lang

One thing Paul Auster got right in the Music of Chance, in this otherwise light novel, was that losing a woman who means something to you is nothing less than catastrophic. Everything in you aches with loss. Perhaps there is a type of women from whom it might be prudent to run away if you are a good man because the effect of deepening the relationship with her might be devastating over the long-term, and there is probably no cost, no pain, that one is not willing to sustain in order to escape. But losing a woman, a good one or a bad through exile, with whom one is in love, is disaster. Somerset Maugham illustrated exactly right in Human Bondage, that love lost or unattainable devastates, and like one who is nearly mortally wounded, recovery, if at all possible, takes time, and even then the heart and mind are more than willing to betray you. Thom Gunn wrote in his poem The Wound something along the lines of what we can suffer, excerpted here The huge wound in my head began to heal Its valleys darkened, its villages became still, For joy I did not move or dare to speak Not doctors would cure it, but time, its patient skill … (but there’s always some trigger that rekindles one’s memory, one’s heart, one’s imagination, and still wounded we remain so vulnerable to fortune’s caprice) … Flew to my head, and turning I could feel My wound break open wide. Over again I had to let those storm-lit valleys heal. So in Nashe’s initial running from the scene of the destruction of his marriage seemed a reasonable – neurotic perhaps but reasonable – course of action. Paul Auster has him remain at heart though kind, generous, and when he meets Jack Pozzi for example, it was through an act of kindness and courage, and these qualities remain with Nashe throughout. While the book explicitly lacks depth of any kind, I gave this a three because in spite of the book’s lightness the book grips its reader not just with a sense of suspense and understated adventure but also with some truth about life, love and friendship, and as is often the case frequently all this amid the misfortunes that inevitably come our way. Where The Music of Chance is brilliant is in its illustration of Nashe’s loss of identity. It’s said that all young men are unhappy, and that is why Hamlet has so much appeal, but I think in any loss, especially in that of one with whom one is in love, there is a cut to the heart and it wreaks such havoc on one’s identity that it is hard to recover, to even want to. I wonder if love lost isn’t in some way mortal to some part of oneself? What else is there in life really other than love? Is there really any happiness without it? Who am I, really, without my beloved? Edwin

Ben Morgan

Bruno Costa Teixeira

Klaus Eck

Dennis Jacob Rosenfeld

Miguel Angel

Sabine Delorme

steffi

Roman om Jim Nashe der arver en del penge og derfor starter en evig planløs nonstop tur i bil tværs over landet

The Music of Chance

Gary Homewood

Music of Chance

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