You will need to keep your wits about you and you’ll want to keep flicking back and forward to remind yourself who in this huge cast of characters is who and what they did in their previous incarnation. It is a great doorstep of a book and tempting to read in lightweight kindle format. Hence he is given the very non-Jewish name Ferguson and his life in the New World spools out, eventually leading to the birth of his grandson Archie.
By the time he reaches the front of the queue he has forgotten his alias and says in Yiddish he has forgotten (‘ Ikh hob fargessen’). Ferguson’s Russian grandfather, on arrival in Ellis Island in 1900, is advised by a compatriot that he can’t go wrong if he gives his name as ‘Rockefeller’. Remarkably broad in scope yet fantastically rich and detailed, this is Paul Auster’s post-modern version of The Great American Novel. Same boy, four different childhoods, four different paths. But because this is Auster, there is a twist: this is not one linear narrative it is four stories, four lives in one. Born in 1958 to hard-working parents, he grows up, negotiates adolescence, plays baseball, gets to know his extended family, lives through the major events of the 20 th century. 4321 by Paul Auster is a novel about Archie Ferguson, American grandson of a Jewish immigrant.
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