What to read: the epic novel "4321" about the impact of small decisions on our destiny

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

An excerpt from Paul Auster's book about four parallel lives of one hero.

The first issue of "Conqueror of the Pavement" was released on January 13, 1958. A. Ferguson, founder and publisher of the newborn newspaper, announced in an editorial on the front page that The Conqueror intends to "communicate the facts with all the accuracy we can and tell the truth, no matter what the cost."

The printing of the new edition was carried out under the direction of production manager Rosa Ferguson, who took the original handwritten layout to the Myerson Printing House in West Orange to complete the task there - they reproduced both sides of the sheet twenty-four by thirty-six inches and printed them on paper enough thin to fold a sheet in half, and because of this fold, The Voyager was born more like a genuine news publication (almost) than a typewritten and mimeographed home-made newsletter.

Five cents per copy. There are no photographs or drawings, on top there are some margins for the cap stencil, and besides that there are only two large rectangles filled with eight columns of small block letters, handwritten by an almost eleven-year-old boy who always had difficulty aligning the letters on the line, but despite some fluctuations and their curvature, the result was quite legible, and the overall impression produced resembled a sincere, albeit slightly crazy version of an eighteenth-century leaflet.

The twenty-one articles ranged from four lines of typography to two essays on three columns, and the first was a nail on the front page, with a headline that read: HUMAN TRAGEDY. The "tricksters" and "giants" are leaving N.-Y. TO THE WEST COAST,”and which included excerpts from interviews Ferguson had with various family and friends, with the brightest response from his fifth grader Tommy Fuchs:“I want to commit suicide. There is only one team left - the Yankees, and I hate the Yankees. What am I to do now?"

The essay on the back page looked at the unfolding scandal at Ferguson Elementary School. Four times in the past month and a half, students bumped into one of the two brick walls of the gym during bouncer matches, causing spikes in black eyes, concussions, and broken skulls and foreheads, and Ferguson pushed for matting walls to prevent further mutilation. After collecting comments from recent victims (“I was chasing the ball,” said one victim, “and before I had time to figure it out, I was already flying off the wall with my head knocked out”), Ferguson turned to the director, Mr. Jameson, who agreed that the situation was out of - under control. “I spoke to the Board of Education,” he said, “and they promised to cover the walls with mats by the end of the month. Until then, no bouncers.”

Disappeared baseball teams and preventable head injuries, but also publications on missing pets, telegraph poles damaged by the storm, traffic accidents, chewed paper spitting contests, Sputnik and the president's health, as well as brief updates on current affairs of the Ferguson clans and Adlerov, such as - “THE STORK IS AHEAD OF THE SCHEDULE!”: “For the first time in the history of mankind, a baby was born on the appointed day. At 11:53 pm on December 29, just seven minutes before the clock passed her, Mrs. Francis Holler, 22, from New York City gave birth to her first child, a 7 pound 3 ounce boy named Stephen. Congratulations, Cousin Francie!"

Or - “BIG STEP UP”: “Mildred Adler was recently promoted from associate professor to full professor at the University of Chicago's Department of English. She is one of the world's leading experts on Victorian romance and has published books on George Eliot and Charles Dickens."

And also not to forget about the frame in the lower right corner of the back page, which bore the name "Adler's Joke Corner", which Ferguson intended to publish on an ongoing basis in all issues of "The Conqueror", because how could he have neglected such a valuable resource as his grandfather, the king of a bad joke, who over the years told Ferguson so many nasty anecdotes that the young editor-in-chief would consider himself unscrupulous if he did not use at least some of them.

The first example looked like this: “Mr. and Mrs. Hooper were traveling to Hawaii. Before the plane landed, Mr. Gooper asked his wife how to pronounce the word Hawaii - Hawaii with g and b or Howai with x and y. “I don’t know,” Mrs. Hooper replied. "Let's ask someone when we arrive." At the airport, they spotted a little old man in a Hawaiian shirt. “Sorry, sir,” Mr. Hooper said to him. “Could you tell us how to speak correctly, Hawaii or Howai?” Without batting an eye, the old man replied: “Howai”. “Thank you,” said Mr. and Mrs. Hooper. To which the old man replied: "Usikhda pzhalsta" ".

Subsequent issues were published in April and September of the same year, each one is better than the previous one - well, or so Ferguson was assured by his parents and relatives, but with his school friends everything was different, because after the success of the first issue, which caused a storm in the classroom, to the surface a little bit of discontent and hostility began to appear.

The closed world of life in the fifth and sixth grades was governed by a strict set of rules and social hierarchies, and by taking the initiative to launch the "Pavement Conqueror", that is, daring to create something out of nothing, Ferguson, without knowing it, crossed these boundaries.

Within these boundaries, boys could achieve position in one of two ways: by achieving success in sports or by asserting themselves as masters of leprosy. Good grades in school meant little, and even some exceptional talent in art or music was hardly considered, since these talents were viewed as innate gifts, biological traits such as hair color or leg size, and therefore were not fully associated with the person who possessed them. simply facts of nature, independent of human will. Ferguson has always been quite successful in sports, which allowed him not to break away from other boys and avoid the horrific fate of an outcast. He was bored with pranks, but his anarchic sense of humor helped to cement his reputation as a decent guy, even if he kept his distance from the unbridled show-off who all weekends stuffed paint bombs in mailboxes, beat streetlights and called with obscene proposals to beautiful girls in the older class. …

In other words, Ferguson so far maneuvered successfully, without facing any excessive difficulties, his good grades were not considered a plus or a minus, his tactful, non-aggressive approach to interpersonal relationships protected him from the anger of other boys, which meant that in fights he he almost did not participate and, it seems, did not make permanent enemies for himself, but then, a few months before he turned eleven, he decided that he wanted to make some kind of splash, and this was expressed in an independent publication of a one-page newspaper - and suddenly his classmates realized that Ferguson lurks more than they suspected, that he is actually a rather intelligent young man, not just a boy, but a master of his craft, and his mind is enough to throw out such a bizarre feint like The Conqueror, and therefore all twenty-two of his fellow practitioners in the fifth grade put their nickels on the copy of the first issue, congratulated him on an excellent job, laughed at the ridiculous phrases which were full of his articles, and then the weekend came, and by Monday morning everyone had already stopped talking about it.

If “The Conqueror” had ended after that first issue, Ferguson would have bypassed the attack, which eventually fell on his head, but how could he have known that there is a difference between simply clever and too clever, that there is a part of class will begin to turn against him, because this number will prove that Ferguson is trying too hard, trying too hard, but they are trying not enough, which means that Ferguson is a diligent quickie, and they are just lazy, worthless dumbbells? The girls were still with him, every single one, but the girls did not compete with him, it was the boys who began to feel the pressure of Ferguson's diligence, at least three or four, but Ferguson was too full of his own happiness and did not notice anything, he overwhelmed by the sense of triumph of finishing another number, and he didn't wonder why Ronnie Rabbit and his gang of hooligans refused to buy a new edition of The Vanquisher when he brought it to school in April, thinking if he was thinking about this in general - that they simply do not have enough money.

According to Ferguson, newspapers were one of the greatest inventions of mankind, and he loved them ever since he learned to read.

Early in the morning, seven days a week, the number "Newark Star Ledger" appeared on the front steps of the house - it landed with a pleasant thud just as Ferguson was getting out of bed, thrown by some nameless, invisible person who never missed goals, and by the time Ferguson was six and a half, he had already begun to take part in the morning ritual of reading the newspaper at breakfast - he, who by force of will forced himself to read a broken leg in the summer, who escaped with a fight from the prison of his own childish stupidity and turned into a young citizen of the world, now developed enough to understand everything, or almost everything, except for obscure issues of economic policy and the idea that creating more nuclear weapons will ensure a lasting peace, and every morning he sat down at the table to have breakfast with his parents, and each of them took up his own section of the newspaper, read in silence, because it is very difficult to talk in such a morning early, and then read e notebooks were passed to each other in the kitchen, full of aromas of coffee and omelet, hot bread roasted in a toaster, butter melting on hot slices of this bread.

For Ferguson, comics and sports always served as the beginning, the strangely attractive Nancy and her friend Sluggo, Jigs and his wife Maggie, Blondie and Dagwood, the Beatle Bailey, followed by the latest news from Mantle and Ford, from Conerley and Gifford, and then to local news, national and international news, articles about movies and plays, so-called life stories - about seventeen college students crammed into a telephone booth, or thirty-six "hot dogs" eaten by the winner of the Essex County Eating Contest, and when these too were depleted, and there were still a few minutes before going to school - advertisements and private ads. Honey, I love you. Please come back home.

Paul Oster is one of the greatest exponents of postmodernism in American literature. His new novel, “4321,” which explores the theme of duality, was shortlisted for the 2017 Booker Prize. The unique structure, scale of the narrative and unexpected turns of fate of the protagonist gave him the love of readers all over the world.