In depth book review of Paul Auster's 'The Music of Chance'

The Music of Chance will always be one of the most memorable books I have ever read. Why? Because I've never found a book so disturbing (not even the likes of Ellis' American Psycho) that I had to stop reading it. I can even pin point the exact sentence I snapped shut the covers of the book and with it a most terrifying world, one that even Brave New World couldn't compare to.

But I did go back to it – noteworthy because I am rarely faithful. Like the protagonist of the novel, Jim Nashe, by the time I understood what was happening I was past the point of wanting it to end. It was only after many brave attempts and a two week lapse that I managed to muster the courage to face the ending. In that two week lapse I read - I'm ashamed to say - a romantic novel by Jude Deveraux. I loved the happy ending, the gorgeous hero and even the soft porn. Forgive me, I have sinned.

Both the elusiveness of the text and the elliptical narrative style will be familiar to fellow Auster fans. If you're looking for a compact novel with neatlty wrapped ribbons at the end, this book or anything by Auster for that matter, isn't for you. If however you're looking for a mental challenge, shivers down your spine (excuse the cliche, I doubt it will be the last) and an agonosing frustrating feeling which will trouble you even when you're trying to sleep then this novel is the book version soulmate for you.

What it all comes down to is chance and the order of events. ‘Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t’ (p2). It’s interesting that ‘chance’ means both good fortune/luck as well as its opposite - risk/hazard. If Jim Nashe hadn’t inherited by chance a substantial amount of money from his estranged father’s death then there would have been no chance of backing a poker player with a lumpy sum from the inheritance. What is at first good fortune becomes a hazard.

But if he’d only inherited that money just a month before his wife, Therese, left she wouldn’t have walked out on him; leaving him no choice but to take his daughter to his sisters. Free from responsibility he would not have quit his job, taken the wrong ramp on the motorway and therefore he would never have met Pozzi, the poker player. But even if hadn’t inherited the money at all she would never have left him if all his money wasn’t tied up in the rest home his mother had died in. And so on.

Chance meetings and occurrences, we are told, is quite common in Nashe’s life. Even his job as a fireman was the result of a chance encounter with a man he met in his job as a taxi driver. He talked Nashe into the taking the fire exam and he does so on a whim and achieves the highest grade that year. The other man was turned down but Nashe was offered a job. If we’re going to be very obvious and analytical the very essence of his job is governed by chance – you go on a job as a fireman and there is 50/50 chance you will return. It’s a risky business. Which he packs in and takes to travelling around America, just him, his car, his music and the open road and all its tantalising promises. The similarity to Keruoacs’s On the Road ends there, I promise. Actually I liked On the Road but that’s a journey for another time.

Jack Pozzi

A year and two days into this new lifestyle and with just over fourteen thousand dollars left he meets Jack Pozzi. Although generally Nashe refused to help hitchhikers (for obvious reasons) he cannot resist slowing down to observe this small, thin limping figure. It becomes apparent that Jack Pozzi isn’t drunk like Nashe first assumed but just badly beaten. ‘His clothes were torn, his face was covered with welts and bruises, and from the way he stood there as the car approached, he scarcely seemed to know where he was.’ (p19, Faber and Faber, 2006).

Despite what his instincts tell him, Nashe offers him a ride. And Pozzi accepts.

In case you’re thinking ‘this sounds familiar’ let me assure you that Pozzi does no turn out to be some psychopath who ties Nashe between two moving vehicles and rip him apart. That memorable scene is from The Hitcher – the 1986 version. Pozzie doesn’t butcher and decapitate Nashe. You’re wrong. So sit tight and read on.

Actually – talk about chance - I’ve just remembered Jim is the name of the man who offers the hitcher a ride and Nash is the pretty waitress he meets who is torn into half. Jim Nash(e). Wow. This can’t be a coincidence. Has anyone noticed this? Remember you read it here first! I think this calls for a separate post on some sort of comparison between the two. Maybe sometime next year. Sigh.

In the car, Pozzi and Nashe strike up an easy conversation. Pozzi explains that earlier in the evening he was in a poker game with lawyers and corporate hot shots. Towards the end of the game their poker game was hijacked and the thugs left with their money. Pozzi is blamed –

‘It’s just like I told you, Gil, you can’t bring riffraff into a game like this’
‘What are you talking about George?’ Gil says and George says ‘Figure it out for yourself, Gil. We play every month for seven years and nothing ever goes wrong. Then you tell me about this punk kid who’s supposed to be a good player and twist my arm to bring him up, and look what happens. I had eight thousand dollars sitting on that table and I don’t take kindly to a bunch of thugs walking off with it’ (p27)

Playing for seven years and not once anything out of the ordinary. The one time Pozzi comes along they are robbed! Is Auster making a point or what.

Pozzi informs Nashe that the day after tomorrow he has a poker game – one of the biggest games of his life. Now with no money and little potential money he’s going to have to pull out.

Now what do you think happened next? I mean here is a young man who claims to be an excellent impeccable poker player but has no money to enter the big game. Next to him you have Nashe, who has been on the road for quite a while, has quite a large lump of money left but not enough to continue funding his life on the road. Is the suspense killing you?

If it isn’t already obvious Nashe offers to help. Pozzi needs just under ten thousand pounds. Nashe tells him it’s a big risk, there is always the chance of losing to which Pozzi replies confidently ‘Sure there’s a risk. We’re talking poker here, that’s the name of the game. But there’s no way I could have lost. I’ve already played with those clowns once. It would have been a piece of cake.’ (p28).

The ‘clowns’ he refers to are two reclusive millionaires, Flower and Stone, ‘a regular comedy team’. Six or seven years ago they shared a lottery ticket and won twenty seven million dollars. Pozzi calls them Laurel and Hardy because one is fat and the other is thin. Seems fair enough to me. Nashe offers to help him out providing they split the profit 50-50. Pozzi agrees.

So ends chapter two. Chapter two I hear you exclaim. I write too much.

Nashe feels a change come over him immediately. Chapter three begins with the following words: ‘Nashe understood that he was no longer behaving like himself.’ He realizes that putting most of his money behind a foul mouthed impudent kid is risky but the risk motivates him: ‘It was a crazy scheme, perhaps, but the risk was a motivation in itself, a leap of blind faith that would prove he was finally ready for anything that might happen to him’ (p33). I love the idea of being ready for anything/something that MIGHT happen to you. Pozzi was simply a means to an end. Nashe was just going to use him and once that job was finished they would go their separate ways. What actually transpires is that Nashe becomes a fatherly figure of sort to the young man; they develop a close bond. But they do go their separate ways in the end. If you can call it that.

In New York they stay at the Plaza Hotel. Nashe pays for accommodation and food and takes Pozzi shopping for clothes.

Once Pozzi is safely tucked in bed, Nashe settles down with Rousseau’s Confessions. This is probably my favourite part of the novel. Just before he falls asleep he comes to the passage where the author is standing in a forest. He throws a stone at a tree, telling himself that if it strikes the tree his life will be better from this moment. However he misses. He moves closer to the tree and tells himself the same thing and throws the stone. Again he misses. He tells himself that was just a warm up and moves closer to the tree just to make sure he doesn’t miss. Again he reassures himself that if he strikes the tree his life will be better from that moment on. Now only a foot a away from the tree he strikes the tree. He doesn’t miss this time. Success! From this moment on life will be better, so he tells himself.

Nashe is moved and embarrassed by such naked self-deception and then falls asleep and dreams he is in the forest in which the wind sounds like shuffling cards.

By pinning his hopes on Pozzi is he deceiving himself like Rousseau? I’d say yes. Though he ‘tests’ Pozzi’s skills he is not entirely confident that they will win. He is deceiving himself and he knows it. Perhaps each stone Rousseau throws is like each hand at poker. You’ve lost this hand but never mind, you’ll win the next hand, or the next, or the next. And then everything will be fine. So you reassure yourself. I’m sure more can be said about this but I lack the eloquence.

Flower and Stone

On their way to the grand residence of the Flower and Stone they lightly banter with each other and Pozzi decides he will introduce Nashe as his brother. Some 'hireling', Murks, opens the gate and in they go.

Once inside they are taken to a ‘self consciously masculine room’ (p62) and Flower and Stone are dressed in white summer suits. The two men seem to be opposites of the same coin. Flower is talkative with a blustery humour whereas Stone is silent and observant. Stone, as his name implies has more gravitas.

Once all four mean are seated Flower tells them the story of how they struck it rich, with Stone adding a comment here and there. The turning point in the conversation comes when Flower informs Pozzi that they have been practicing everyday and night since they last played and have even taken lessons from a man called Sid Zeno – ‘one of the top half dozen players in the game’(p69) according to Pozzi.

Pozzi and Nashe are given a tour of the house and by the second room Nashe becomes annoyed by the boorish vain Flower who rarely neglects to mention what each thing cost – true to his quondam profession (accountant). They move onto the second floor and are ushered into a large room to show Stone’s creation, inside the room is a miniature model of a city with fastidious attention to detail. ‘It was a marvelous thing to behold, with its crazy spires and lifelike buildings, its narrow street and microscopic human figures, and as the four of them approached the platform, Nashe began to smile, astounded by the sheer invention and elaborateness of it all.’ (p77).

Stone called it ‘The City of the World’ and it reflects the way Stone would like the world to be, his ‘utopia’. For example, prisoners working happily at various tasks because they are glad that they are being punished for their crimes and hope to find their inner goodness again through hard work. It appears to be a pleasant enough place to live in.

Whereas Stone liked to make and create things, Flower liked to collect things. Flower’s half of the east wingo on the second floor is the exact opposite of Stone’s. Instead of one large open area he had divided the area into a network of smaller rooms. Each room is ‘choked’ with a plethora of collectable items, such as furniture, books cases, rugs, plants etc. Flower, immensely proud of his collection, fails to realise how silly it all looks, what he calls ‘gems’ and ‘treasures’ might be junk and worthless to another. It strikes me as a selfish thing to do, to consume and collect objects for a private collection (which I’m guessing he would rarely have time to admire) and thereby depriving others of a chance to see such treasured objects.

Most amazing item in his collection is a fifteenth century Irish castle destroyed by Oliver Cromwell. Yep, you read right. When there were on holiday there Stone and Flower came across the ruins of the castle, no more than a heap of stones. Flower had decided to buy it and it was shipped to America. Over ten thousand stones loaded on to a truck and then on to a ship. No wonder if cost a ‘bundle’. It now sits in their large back garden.

Nashe asks ‘you’re not planning on rebuilding the thing, are you?’ (p77). The idea seems grotesque to him. They can’t rebuild the castle because too many pieces are missing. Instead they plan to build a grand wall with the stones, ‘A Wailing Wall.’ Poor Nashe. Unbeknown to him it will be him and Pozzzi who will be building the ‘waling wall’. But more of that later.

The Poker Game

Once the ground rules of the poker game are settled the poker game begins. Nashe takes a seat behind Pozzi. The first few hands are undramatic. Flower and Stone have improved as poker players but Pozzi’s patience prevails and finally he is sitting on a large sum, twenty seven thousand dollars to be specific. As they begin to open a new deck of cards Nashe uses the interruption for a bathroom break. He feels like he can relax and let Pozzi out of his sight, the kid knows what he is doing.

He intended to go straight back to the game but instead ends up taking a stroll around the house. He spends nearly an hour looking at the ‘City of the World’. Now that he has time to take a closer look at this utopian city it takes on a sinister atmosphere. Especially the prison. ‘In one corner of the exercise yard, the inmates were talking in small groups, playing basketball, reading books; but then, with a kind of horror, he saw a blindfolded prisoner standing against the wall just behind them, about to be executed by a firing squad. […] For all the warmth and sentimentality depicted in the model, the overriding mood was one of terror’ (p87). The earlier admiration disappears and to him it appears to be a city of war, not utopia but a sort of totalitarian state.

He is just about to leave the room but then on impulse he turns around and walks back to the model. Without feeling any guilt he jerks at the miniature wooden version of Flower and Stone until it snaps and then shoves the ‘souvenirs’ into his pocket. It was the first time he had stolen anything since he was a little boy, but it was absolutely necessary and he knew that in the same way he knew his name.

Nashe returns to the poker game to find Pozzi losing. Later on Pozzi blames Nashe for his change of fortuune. His break effected Pozzi's momentum and later when Nashe shows him what he stole Pozzi becomes convinced it was that act which turned the tide for them. Logic tells us that Nashe's decision to take the miniature dolls should have no effect on Pozzi's game. The two are not connected in anyway. Clearly Auster is showing how people connect and make meaning out a seemingly meaningless act or event, exactly what Auster is guilty of in this novel.

Pretty soon Pozzi loses all his chips and Nashe sells his car to the millionaires for five thousand chips. However the ‘emergency transfusion’ doesn’t work and Pozzi loses that too. Now they have nothing, not even a car to get out of there. They strike a deal – despite Flower’s warning not to make things worse – that if they win the next hand they win the car back, if however they lose Nashe and Pozzi then owe the millionaires ten thousand pounds. A sum that matches the number of stones to the Irish castle which seems to foreshadow what will happen next.

Pozzi loses that final hand.

Nashe and Pozzi must now come up with a plan to clear their debt. Stone makes them an offer – that they build the ‘wailing wall’ mentioned earlier, ‘honest work for an honest wage’ (p97). I thought it was quite fitting that it is Stone, the maker of the city who should propose this idea. The whole idea of working for your freedom stinks of the Nazis and the Third Regime – arbeit macht frei, just the sort of totalitarian doctrine Stone would approve of.

Though outraged at first they accept and a contract is drawn up. In the meadow they have a fully equipped mobile home, work clothes would be provided as well basic essentials such as food and if there was anything else they desired all they had to do was ask. At ten dollars each for an hour’s labour they would earn twenty dollars an hour. If they worked ten hours a day that would come to two hundred dollars a day. It would then take them fifty days to make up the ten thousand dollars. Nashe offers a way out for Pozzi, that he would be happy to do the work alone but Pozzi won’t hear of it. The contract is drawn up and all four sign it. The maid makes them a meal, whereas before she was pleasant and welcoming this time she is rude and even aggressive. Nashe realises that whereas before they were guests they were now reduced to hired hands, not worthy of the maid's respect and endeavour.

The Wailing Wall

And so the labour begins. The hireling, Murks, who had opened the gate earlier supervises over them. Murks assists with the move to the mobile home and they make a list of essentials, food, newspapers, cards etc. With no phone in the house and no view of the Flower and Stone residence they really are cut off from the world. Anything could happen and no one would be any wiser.

The slow labour begins. And by slow I mean excruciatingly slow. First the foundation must be laid, then one stone at a time and on top of each other to build the height. And it was monotonous. Their task parallels the task of Sisyphus. Though the stones do not roll back a sloped hill, it is essentially the same task over and over again. It is absurd. Perhaps it typifies the absurdity of the human condition far more than Sisyphus' example does because unlike Sisyphus, Pozzi and Nashe are sentenced to this punishment out of chance, they are sentences to this punishment because of something out of their control. Chance events brought each of them on that road for the fulfillment of a chance encounter, followed by defeat in a game governed by chance. Like human life, events which appear out of their control make them bear the consequences. All is not well.

The wall is menacing and all that it connotes, a barrier, a restriction. The closer the become to finishing their ‘time’ and therefore to escaping the more they close themselves in. It is slightly poignant that they are building the very wall which prevents their escape, like when victims are forced to dig their own graves. I can’t even begin to imagine what that would feel like.

Things become slightly sinister when Murks starts wearing a gun after a brawl with Pozzi. Now they are in ‘real’ danger. Whereas before the danger was never visible, never real but just a feeling they had, an atmosphere created, it is now very real in the shape of a gun.

The end of fifty days arrives but Pozzi and Nashe decide to stay on a bit longer to make a little money for themselves. They decide to have a celebration on the night they would have left and no expense is spared – caviar, lobster, cake, champagne and a prostitute for Pozzi. Murks informs Nashe that though Flower and Stone didn’t approve they accepted and would get them everything they needed for the party. Nashe’s instincts tell him that Flower and Stone are not the sort of people who splashed out for other people’s party and it puts him on his guard.

The party is eventful, to say the least, for Pozzi.

After a small period, in which they accumulate money for themselves, their ‘release’ day arrives. Pozzi is excited beyond words. Nashe, on the other hand, just felt empty and numb. Murks arrives with a single sheet of typed paper.

On reading the contents of the paper and realising in less than a second what it meant I closed the book very slowly and left it on my desktop out of sight for a period of two weeks.

What was on the paper?

I’ve not mustered the courage to talk about it yet so you will just have to read it for yourself.