Mr. Vertigo - Softcover

Auster, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140231900 ISBN 13: 9780140231908

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 1995

Synopsis

An enduringly brilliant tale of trial and triumph, set in America in the 1920s, from the author of 4 3 2 1:  A Novel

Paul Auster, the New York Times-bestselling author of The New York Trilogy, presents a dazzling, picaresque novel set in the late 1920s – the era of Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, and Al Capone. Walter Claireborne Rawley, renowned nationwide as "Walt the Wonder Boy," is a Saint Louis orphan rescued from the streets by a mysterious Hungarian Jew, Master Yehudi, who teaches Walt to walk on air. Master Yehudi brings Walt into a Kansas circus troupe consisting of Mother Sioux and Aesop, a young black genius. The vaudeville act takes them across a vast and vibrant country, through mythic Americana where they meet and fall prey to sinners, thieves, and villains, from the Kansas Ku Klux Klan to the Chicago mob. Walt's rise to fame and fortune mirrors America's own coming of age, and his resilience, like that of the nation, is challenged over and over and over again.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of The New York Trilogy and many other critically acclaimed novels. He was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in 2006. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

From Kirkus Reviews

Auster (Leviathan, 1992, etc.) departs from his usual cerebral fiction for this quick trip into Doctorow Land--a mytho-historical tale that invokes the American '20s, complete with glamorous gangsters and legendary sports stars. Writing in his anec-dotage, the septuagenarian Walter Rawley recalls his moment of fame back in his youth when he toured the country as ``Walter the Wonder Boy,'' a freckle-faced bumpkin who could walk through the air. Walter's levitations were no sham, but a carefully nurtured talent developed by the mysterious Master Yehudi, a Hungarian Jewish impresario who discovered Walter on the streets of St. Louis at age nine. ``A pus-brained ragamuffin from honky-tonk row,'' the orphaned Walter eventually submits to Yehudi's grueling regimen. Yehudi's household on the Kansas prairie harbors other outcasts also: Mother Sue, a stout Sioux who once performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show; and Aesop, a precocious crippled black foundling admitted to Yale. Yehudi and Walter finally take their show on the road after their house is visited by the KKK, who lynch Mother Sue and Aesop. Walter's fame grows rapidly. ``In the arms of the great ambient nothingness,'' he floats above ground, astounding audiences from coast to coast. His career is interrupted by a ghost from his past, a mean-spirited uncle who wants some of the loot. Then disaster strikes: The onset of puberty destroys his gift. Life after that is never the same. Yehudi shoots himself. Walter becomes a gangster in Chicago; develops a bizarre obsession with the great pitcher Dizzy Dean; and slowly fades away into alcoholic obscurity before recovering and writing this tale. Despite intimations of allegory and parable, Auster's dizzying trip through the century is not nearly as dimensional as Moon Palace, his previous escape from the metaphysical rigors of his shorter works into the picaresque. Disappointing. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0140231900
• ISBN 13: 9780140231908
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304