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Rating: The moon? A couple of seconds. At that speed, then, just enough time to listen to a short Drim Tiater song and we could be front row, popcorn in hand, enjoying the spectacular solar storm in progress. I don't know about yours, but my mind can't even imagine the boundaries of a distance, tiny and laughable when compared to the fat and obese bottom of the universe, like a paltry, lousy year at the speed of light. This state of affairs manages to bring my lovely little blue planet back to the relationship that befits it: that of the grain of sand fallen among the desert dunes of the Sahara. Like the famous Bluvertigo song, the one with the subjunctive in the chorus, I find the anthropocentric vision that grips a significant portion of the world's inhabitants simply ridiculous and I believe that we are all children of chance. Chance, yes, that very night felt in great shape and its seed also fertilized this point lost in the cold and dark space blackness. We therefore live on one of the many sperms that, since that distant night, has grown and will inevitably die, obviously when we insignificant and egocentric bipeds are long extinct.
In my father's testicles, for instance, there were billions of possible mes and who knows how many better ones died in a condom, or ended up wasted on a T-shirt. And don't even think that in that nightly shot I was the most resilient, strong, and fast: if we give life a positive connotation by default, I simply got lucky.
Using zoom, just a quarter turn to the right, we can certainly partially control our individual existences and direct them towards predefined tracks but the tight turns, the right-angle ones I mean, no. I really don't think so. Right now I am biting into the fifth book of Paul Auster without any chronological order, but even though I still have a substantial part of his bibliography to taste, I have understood how chance is the founding pivot of the author, the point of conjunction for his books with such a different style and flavor.
The Music of Chance
A chance meeting. The protagonist, after his wife left him, wasn't going anywhere in particular: sitting on the comfortable seat of his shiny SAAB, he was intent on covering a lot of miles, crossing the U.S.A. from coast to coast, spending much of his inheritance in an endless "travel-loop" he embarked upon after resigning. He was wandering, and what he was seeking was a strong clash, something that would give a sudden change to his life. Perhaps, a new beginning. The chances of Jim meeting Jack on that exact piece of asphalt were simply ridiculous, and yet that intersection between demand and supply, the request for a ride and the concurrent desire for company, will change both their lives in a drastic and unexpected way. I don't intend to sell you pasta with tomato sauce as some culinary novelty, and indeed the plot of this book is rather overused: the fortuitous meeting that manages to make two strangers collide only to unite them in a spiral of chain events and so on. It is not my intention to extol this novel for its structure: the ending, for instance, did not entirely convince me and seems even slapdash. Perhaps Auster was in a hurry to conclude due to pressing requests from the publisher or perhaps he could not escape the situation in which he had placed the protagonist.
Having said that, "The Music of Chance" is a book that leaves an uncommon pleasantness on you: the pages flip quickly, and the taste it leaves on the fingertips is that of a freshly baked cake; the sound of the paper crumpling to make way for the next, like one of those hits they loved to sing as teenagers at the beach. His writing has the fundamental elements, perhaps the only ones, that clearly distinguish the skilled craftsman from the talented author. Great rhythm and synthesis.
And with this prose, Auster keeps the interest high, building increasing and adrenaline-fueled expectations in situations and developments of the plot that are objectively predictable, creating a continual anticipation. "The Music of Chance" is therefore not a book that sends a particular message, starts with a brilliant idea, or stands out for an atypical and intriguing development. The fact that it is so usable and satisfying highlights and reveals the splendid writing of the author. I consider it a simple work, overall dramatic, although it is not devoid of sharp irony, capable of encapsulating the author's worldview and understanding of life. For these characteristics, I find these 200 pages particularly suitable for those who wish to begin exploring the vast bibliography of a distinguished American pen.
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