Mr. Vertigo [Paperback]

Paul Auster (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1995

The author of Leviathan returns with a dazzling, picaresque, new novel in which Walter Claireborne Rawley, now an octogenarian, recounts his extraordinary vaudevillian adventures as "Walt the Wonder Boy" in 1924. "One hears every page of this novel, and sees it as well."--Washington Post.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It will come as no surprise to the gifted Auster's ( Moon Palace ; The Music of Chance ) many fans that walking on air, the implausible premise of his marvelously whimsical seventh novel, is treated with convincing gravity. Walt Rawley recounts his life: an orphan born in 1924 with "the gift," he was seized by his master, Mr. Yehudi, a Hungarian Jew who taught him to levitate. Yehudi takes the boy from St. Louis to his own Kansas menage, which consists of Mother Sioux and Aesop, a young black genius. (Also influencing Walt's life is classy, henna-headed Marion Witherspoon, a seductive mom figure from Wichita.) After harsh training, Walt tours with his mentor as "the Wonder Boy," aka Mr. Vertigo. Crammed into this road saga is the potent Americana of myth: the 1920s carnival circuit, Lindbergh's solo, the motorcar, the ethnic mix, the Ku Klux Klan and the Mob, baseball and Kansas, "land of Oz." Diverse mishaps descend, but eventually Walt glides into old age and writing. The characters speak a lusty lingo peppered with vintage slang, while a postmodern authorial irony tugs their innocence askew. The prose grows particularly electric when demystifying "loft and locomotion." Implicit is an analogy between levitation and the construct of fiction: both require fierce discipline to maintain a fleeting illusion.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Rescued from the streets of St. Louis and taught to fly by Master Yehudi, Walter Rawley soon becomes a national sensation. The boy wonder foils a kidnapping by his evil uncle, but his powers of levitation suddenly wane with the onset of puberty, and he declines from miracle worker to Depression-era mobster. Auster provides a dazzling display of narrative power, but his story remains a metaphysical muddle. Fluctuating between the fabulous and the mundane, it establishes no firm foundation in either realm. If Yehudi's mysterious powers are real, why must his wards die in a Klan lynching and why must Yehudi himself resort to suicide? If the alleged powers are spurious and Auster's aging narrator is unreliable, the extent of his unreliability needs sharper definition. Auster's previous novel, Leviathan (LJ 7/92), is a much more absorbing study of the elusiveness of truth.
Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (August 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140231900
• ISBN-13: 978-0140231908
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #198,487 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Auster's Fable, June 11, 2002

By 

Mike Stone - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mr. Vertigo (Paperback)

Paul Auster is usually a steadfastly metaphysical writer, procuring post-modern ideas from his books with the regularity of an oil derrick. He's usually so preoccupied with the subtext of his works that the universes he creates come off as nondescript and inconsequential, and his prose remains, well, austere. The purpose of this preamble is to prepare you for the marked departure that is "Mr. Vertigo".

The universe here is quite definite: America in the early twentieth century. The prose is decidedly un-austere. Auster attempts to authentically capture the lingo and rhythms of the 1920s and 1930s. Either that, or he has created a grand parody of the way people spoke. Either way, the dialogue here is colourful, flavourful, but sometimes peculiar. Paul may have bit off more than he can chew. Examples such referring to St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Dizzy Dean as 'The Dizmeister' try and inject style into corners where style isn't needed. Was the name Dizzy not interesting enough? A minor quibble, that. (Dean also serves as an analogy-within-analogy; his meteoric rise and fall rivals that of our protagonist.) For the most part Auster has a grand command of the language he uses.

But all this does not deny the fact that this book is still a pretty powerful analogy. It is a picaresque, following the adventures of Walter Claireborne Rawley, a.k.a., Walt the Wonder Boy. Rescued from a scamp's life by the mysterious Master Yehudi, Walt is taught to fly. This curious skill -- the only piece of Auster-esque magic in a book that takes great pains to mimic its reality -- takes them on adventures all over the country. And herein lies the analogy. As Walt's powers and fame grows, so to do those of the young country on the verge of its own modern breakthroughs. Walt's adventures parallel the rise and fall of American culture in its infancy: from Vaudeville, to the Circus, to motion pictures; from a run in with the Ku Klux Klan, to an allegiance with Prohibition-era Chicago gangsters. Walt lives a kind of Forrest Gump-type existence. The cherry on the sundae is his love for and near ruin at the hands of that most American of pastimes, baseball. "Mr. Vertigo" is about America finding its wings, and Auster weaves its story with Walt's with near-seamless precision.

On a deeper level, it should not be overlooked that Master Yehudi is seen, several times, reading from a book of Spinoza. My elementary understanding of the man's philosophies, with thanks to Bertrand Russell, indicates that Auster intended these passing mentions to have some weight. The relationship between Master Yehudi and Walt is analogous to God's relationship to Man. This is best seen in the (evil) training Walt must undergo in order to lift-off. There are also references to bondage by outside sources, freedom stemming from self-determination, and happiness in the face of misfortune, that readers of both Spinoza and "Mr. Vertigo" will find familiar. And finally, we get a philosophical explanation of why the boy can fly: "Everything that happens is a manifestation of God's inscrutable nature, and it is logically impossible that events should be other than they are," says Spinoza. So, Master Yehudi says, "In order to lift you off the ground, we have to crack the heavens in two. We have to turn the whole bloody universe inside out." Familiarity with Spinoza is unnecessary (I only achieved mine in hindsight) but it might just enhance your experience with the novel.

Auster still manages to throw in some po-mo theorizing, this time on the nature of the book as a piece of fiction. To begin with, one of the characters, a poor black boy with designs on getting into university, is named Aesop. He writes a memoir (or is it a fable?) at one point, about which Walt says, "I laughed at some parts, I cried at others, and what more can a person want from a book than to feel the prick of such delights and sorrows?" Auster does his best to inject such sorrows and delights into his book. He also adds meta-fictional moments to the narrative: "If this were a movie, here's where the calendar pages would start flying off the wall," Walt says, just as his career is about to take off, around the time when that cinematic cliche was forming. And most tellingly of all, here's Walt (speaking words you'd expect Auster to believe) on his newly minted status: "I wasn't just a robot anymore, a wind-up baboon who did the same set of tricks for every show -- I was evolving into an artist, a true creator who performed as much for his own sake as for the sake of others." This book is Auster's most accessible work, and the above confirms that he knows exactly what he is doing.

If I've sounded like a book report at times, I apologize, but Auster's writing lends itself to this kind of reviewing. It is concerned with the ideas that surround its fictions, so why shouldn't I take a stab at cracking the codes those ideas are trying to hide? It brings me enjoyment to do so, and I suspect those of you reading this who also have a patient and curious mind will enjoy this book as well.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Alleghory For Human Life, May 25, 2004

By 

Jon Linden (Warren, N.J. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mr. Vertigo (Paperback)

In his book "Mr. Vertigo" Auster once again reveals an incredible talent. A talent for painting a picture with the same clarity with which he writes. In a very real sense, this book is an alleghorical story of most all human life. To summarize his message, it seems he is telling us this:

1) You are born and childhood is mystical, magical, and all things seem possible.
2) You hit puberty, and life is turned a little upside down from what it was before.
3) You recover from the shock and go on and build a life.
4) Somewhere in the process of building this life, something happens and life itself again gets twisted on its head.
5) You rebuild your life.
6) You hope you retire in peace.

While the meaning of the alleghory is poignant, the manner that Auster paints the picture contains even more virtuosity. The story starts very whimsically, with a sense of magic. And then, as usual, there is clearly a lose of innocence, and an experiencing of multiple severe personal tragedies.

These tragedies ultimately lead his protagonist onto the next phases of his life, as they do with most people. And in each phase, he rebuilds that life. And often, because of factors that have nothing to do with his own actions or beliefs, that world is destroyed, and sometimes it is destroyed, because of his actions and beliefs, but each time, he rebuilds, he realizes that he is rebuilding a better life, than the one before.

Auster displays his usual incredible sensitivity and insight. He lays out the mental processes with great aplomb. And he takes the reader through an experience that in many ways, the reader is able to use as an analogy for their own life.

This book is one of Auster's classics and all Auster fans should not miss the opportunity to read it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It Really Surprised Me!, May 12, 2005

By 

Carol Atkins (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mr. Vertigo (Paperback)

I am a little ashamed that I have not previously read any of Paul Auster's work. He is best known for Leviathan, but Mr. Vertigo has been sitting on my shelf for months, begging to be read.

I finally caved in, and discovered that I have been ignoring a fabulous book!

Fabulous? Explain, Please

Well first of all, the plot is a doozy. Our main character is Walt, soon to be known as "Walt the Wonder Boy". He is an orphan living with his aunt and uncle in Chicago. The year is 1927. He is a little rapscallion of a boy, panhandling and working the street the best way he knew how. He is coarse, uneducated, racist, and all around unpleasant.

One day, a mysterious figure named Master Yehudi walks into Walt's life. He forces him to make a choice, to follow him and learn how to fly, or to stay in Chicago where is really isn't wanted anyway. He promises that if he can't teach Walt how to fly in 2 years time, Walt can chop his head off. Now that's a deal.

So what is any self-respecting ragamuffin to do? You take a shot at the big time. Maybe we should ask Horatio Alger, just to be on the safe side. What could be more American?

Walt travels with Master Yehudi, into the great unknown.
The story progresses from there, You get the picture?

The characters of the book are remarkable in many aspects. Although Walt is such a repugnant character at first, this leaves him plenty of room to grow into a wonderful adult. Does he do this? Kind of.

Master Yehudi is a very multi-faceted individual. One one level he is very self serving. On yet another, he cares so much about the people around him, that it almost destroys him. He knows the meaning of sacrifice. He knows about love.

Ms. Witherspoon is Master Yehudi's romantic interest. She too is multilayered. Demure and proper lady, savvy businesswoman, wonderful friend. She adds more flavor to the piece.

This is a great book to relax with on a rainy day. It is entertaining at the forefront, but is also packed with adventures, developing emotions, eccentric characters, and so much more, but try it for yourself. Pick up a copy! Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to Auster, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition," a funny, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.