Paul Auster’s Voice

Paul Auster died on April 30 after being the voice in my ear for a month. I had only recently finished his massive novel 4321, using an approach I learned from my wife to preserve momentum on very long books. (It is almost 1,100 pages.) By taking up an audiobook alongside a physical volume and alternating between the two as circumstances require, the reader can keep a story going without getting stuck. The only downside is the tricky business of finding one’s place while jumping back and forth between media. Auster narrated his own audiobook version of 4321, so I had been listening to him talk quite a bit before learning he was gone.