Paul Auster’s Ethereal ‘Baumgartner’

 

I referenced this book in my prior entry and decided not burden an already long entry with a review.  Now that I’ve sat down with this lovely slender book in hand, this is not a formal “review” but, instead, an impression, and how it relates to my own life. 

 

Thankfully, I have not experienced a loss of a spouse, the main theme hanging over the protagonist, Sy Baumgartner who lost his wife, Anna to a drowning accident, after 40 loving years of being together.  She becomes almost a ghost which follows his next ten years.  It is a skillful memory novel, the author stepping into the past and then back to the present, and as a metafictional piece, into the process of writing, even giving Anna a voice from her poems and essays, and frequently blending Baumgartner the protagonist with the author, Auster.  There are so many tributaries he sets sails on, including his most personal one; a trip to Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine in 2017 which Auster had written about before and now reiterates as Baumgartner’s journey to find traces of his grandfather and his Jewish roots, but they are all skillfully connected. 

 

Three important characters fall into his life, Ed Papadopoulos, a seemingly ungainly new employee of the Public Service Electric and Gas Company, but a man with a heart of gold, and watch how he comes back into Sy’s life later in the novel.  Judith, the first woman he allows himself to love after dealing with such a prolonged bereavement, and, finally a young scholar, Beatrix Coen, who has discovered Anna’s work, wants to write her doctorate thesis on the thinly published poems, as well as her unpublished works and essays.  This gives Sy (and thus Auster) a reason for the next chapter in the book, one which is not there.  The book ends abruptly.  I have my ideas where that goes; yours may be different. I think Auster carefully thought through the unusual conclusion. As with his own his life, abrupt endings can be expected but not easily anticipated.

 

I said that there were also connections to my own life noted in my review of his novel, Brooklyn Follies.  There the main character (Auster as well) lived in Park Slope, as I did earlier in my life.

 

In Baumgartner his early adult years, where he connected with Anna, were on 85^th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam on NYC’s upper West Side, Mine were on the same street just off Columbus when I connected with my own wife-to-be, Ann.  Auster and I apparently missed each other by a year.  He doesn’t go into the detail about the UWS as he does about Park Slope in Brooklyn Follies, but the coincidence was a little eerie.

 

More significant, to me, the book serves as a wake-up call to finish my memoir, not that the story of my life or writing can compare to Auster’s, but we all share mortality and I think his later works reflect an acceptance of this reality.  When he (Baumgartner – now a retired philosophy professor -- and no doubt, Auster, who died only last April) has an epiphany about time running out, and the need to tie things together, Baumgartner thinks about a book he has not yet completed, interestingly entitled Mysteries of the Wheel.  He is seventy one while having this thought, daydreaming in his backyard, living in Princeton, now, about deceased friends, increasing memory lapses.  His writing is exquisite, greatly introspective and stream of consciousness, moving from amusing anecdotes to profundity, and he might as well personally be relating a cautionary tale to me:

 

Nothing to be done, he thinks, nothing at all. Short-term memory loss is an inevitable part of growing old, and if it’s not forgetting to zip your zipper, it’s marching off to search the house for your reading glasses while you’re holding the glasses in your hand, or going downstairs to accomplish two small tasks, to retriever book from the living room, and to pour yourself a glass of juice of the kitchen, and then returning to the second floor with the book, but not the juice, or the juice, but not the book, or else neither one because some third thing has distracted you on the ground floor and you’ve gone back upstairs empty-handed, having forgotten why you went down there in the first place. It’s not that he didn’t do those kinds of things when he was young, or forget the name of this actress, or that writer or blank out the name of the secretary of commerce, but the older you become the more often these things happen to you, and if they begin to happen so often, that you barely know where you are anymore and can no longer keep track of yourself in the present, you’ve gone, still alive but gone. They used to call it senility. But the term is Dementia, but one way or another Baumgartner knows, and even if he winds up there in the end, he still has a long way to go. He can still think, and because he can think, he can still write, and while it takes a little longer for him to finish his sentences now, the results are more or less the same. Good. Good that Mysteries of the Wheel is coming along and good that he has stopped work early today and is sitting in the backyard on this magnificent afternoon, letting his thoughts drift wherever they want to go, and with all the circling around the business of short term memory, he is beginning to think about long-term memory as well, and with that word, long, images from the distant past star flickering in a remote corner of his mind, and suddenly he feels an urge to start foraging  around in the thickets and underbrush of that place to see what he might discover there. So rather than go on looking at the white clouds and the blue sky and the green grass, Baumgartner shuts his eyes leans back in his chair, tilts his face toward the sun, and tells himself to relax. The world is a red flame burning on the surface of his eyelids. He goes on breathing in and out, in and out, inhaling the air through his nostrils, exhale through his partially open lips and then, after 20 or 30 seconds, he tells himself to remember.

 

And so I try “to remember” writing what is tentatively entitled “Explaining It To Me.”  It is a race with time to finish and publish it so it may accompany the ones I’ve already published, Waiting for Someone to Explain It: The Rise of Contempt and Decline of Sense, my 2019 book dealing with my times’ social, political, and economic breakdowns, and Explaining It to Someone: Learning From the Arts, published in 2020, a collection of hundreds of my theatre and book reviews, which might suggest some answers from our writers and playwrights.  “Explaining It To Me” will be personal and therefore even more challenging to write and finish.  Maybe I can complete and publish it next year if there is enough time to “forage around in the thickets and underbrush.” I have a first draft but it needs much more work and there are so many appointments to keep.

 

A Twenty Six day Trip with Four Legs

 

 

This lengthy entry necessarily starts with a picture of the boat we lived on each summer for nearly 20 years after I retired.  It is the thread that loops us through the eye of the needle of the past.

It used to be so much easier when we lived on it in Connecticut for the summer months: oaf up the car and off we went to our second “home.”  Driving up to CT each year was eagerly anticipated, and once unpacked and provisioned, voyaging on the Long Island Sound, to our mooring off the Norwalk Islands, and stays at Block Island, and day trips to NYC for theater on the New Haven Railroad, were planned, and seeing our family and friends.   Aging and then with Covid, we turned over the ‘Swept Away’ to someone more fit (and eager) to take on the responsibilities of upkeep and the joys of ownership:  our son, Jonathan.

Now that the boat is no longer ours and Covid seemingly, although not entirely, a nightmare of the past, last October we considered our options for this summer.  The same forces draw us back to the past. It might sound premature, but logistics dictate some sort of plan and commitment, even booking flights back then (no more driving up to NY or CT). 

Call me crazy.  But I came up with a Frankenstein trip, trying to combine four trips in one, for almost exactly a month squeezing into two medium size suitcases, even calculating our movements so we are at a public laundry about half way through. Thinking we still had limitless energy, plans were flying into White Plains, renting a car, and visiting our younger son and daughter in law at our former boat in CT for a few days, then off to a B&B in the Berkshires for a week of theatre, museums and local restaurants, then to Boston to spend time with our older son and significant other and then finally an eleven day cruise through the Canadian Maritime, the furthest point being Quebec for an overnight, returning to Boston for a flight home.  Whew. 

We were lucky to have caught some of the Democratic National Convention and the US Tennis Open while away.  Kamala gave us some hope, the DNC being alive with positive vibes, one that made us think, for those few days at least that we can erase the unmentionable one from our consciousness.  Otherwise, I’m moving to Halifax, the third time we’ve visited there with this trip.  I only need to grow younger like Benjamin Button to make that a reality (if the Canadians would have us). 

So as providence intervenes:  six days before taking our ambitious trip, I had a dental emergency. A permanent tooth had to be removed (a first for me other than wisdom teeth). Eventually, it will require a bone graft, post and crown.  Old age is not for sissies.

But what a way to start such a trip and I was on Amoxicillin for ten days.  Oh, swell, all the restaurants we were going to try and I just wanted a nice cold mug of Ensure as initially I couldn’t chew on my left side.  

We flew to White Plains (HPN) airport to pick up our car rental.  We had three wonderful days in Norwalk, going out on the boat with Jonathan and Tracie, and then Chris and Megan joining us for part of the weekend.  We got out to the Norwalk Islands where we’ve spent so much of our boating lives.  We change; it doesn’t.  There is something both reassuring and ominous about that.

Although not very descriptive, here we are approaching the islands we boated to for decades, Chimon on the left, Copps on the right and that little sand bar between, Crow.  But this is from the west side.  All those years we had a mooring on the east side, very protected from most winds, but, of course, the east.  Not wanting to be maudlin, but I expect my ashes to be deposited near Crow.

 

On the way out the harbor we visited our old, good friends, Ray and Sue, living on their boat only for the summers now since Ray has had health challenges.  But he hasn’t lost his sense of humor and they still act like the childhood sweethearts they were from grade school.  Ray was my boating mentor as described on the piece I wrote about our Block Island Days.

Except for the tooth extraction, the first leg was what we expected, and so nice to be with the family and friends we don’t get to see often enough. Our stay culminated with a festive dinner at The Cottage in Westport, the town where I had my publishing office for some thirty years.

 

 

Then we drove up to the Berkshires to stay at the Wainwright Inn Bed and Breakfast in Great Barrington for an entire week.   We had also booked this in October as it was the only B&B we could find that was more than a room, more like an AirBnB, yet still an Inn, including breakfast.  Our stay was in the entire upper floor of the separate, later built annex:

 

The main Inn was built in 1766, a charming old house with spacious yet cozy rooms on three floors.  Innkeepers Chris and Barb made it a pleasure.  I don’t do reviews on any social sites, just what I write here, but it was a wonderful stay, very convenient, and we made every minute count.

I can’t write in great detail, but the high points besides walking towns such as Great Barrington and Stockbridge, was visiting some of their restaurants, their public libraries, and of course museums and theatre. To me, architecture and people are the most important aspects of any such visit.  I want to imagine living in the places we visit (and I’d live in New England in a heartbeat, but Ann likes it here and so happy wife, happy life as they say).

Some of the highlights.  Our all day tour of the grounds, the museum, and a guided tour of Norman Rockwell’s studio were moving.  He and Edward Hopper are my favorite artists, the former capturing our aspirations and the latter our isolation.

Here is Rockwell’s famous painting, The Golden Rule, on display in his studio.  If you look carefully at the lower left is a photo he used for one of the subjects, most of these people from his home town.

 

Perhaps my favorite reason for connecting with his work is that I lived in those times.  One of them, ‘Soda Jerk’, features his own son, but a copy was displayed at the outside restaurant so we could walk into that time zone.

 

Most moving, and most evident of Rockwell’s transition from depicting Lily-white Americana to becoming an active civil rights advocate in the 1960s is his fabulous portrait of Lincoln for the Defense.  It depicts a famous murder trial, capturing his client, Duff Armstrong, shackled in the background.  It is spectacular, in its perspective, showing the towering strength of the future President.

 

No visit to Stockbridge would be complete without a meal at The Red Lion Inn, originally established as a small tavern on the main corner in 1773.  Norman Rockwell’s original studio was just across the street.

 

But much of our week was spent near our home base of Great Barrington, taking advantage of the town’s varied restaurants, and fun walking trips. Love visiting libraries wherever we go.  Found one of our best selling books in the Great Barrington Public Library and it was somewhat dog-eared meaning it’s been used frequently.  No better compliment to author and publisher!

 

Also notable there was a production in town of ‘A Jewish Journey through Broadway 1920-1980.’  As the majority of that journey was by Jewish lyricists and composers, it covered so much of the beloved music of our times, and it was an evocative reminder of the power of music.  Although performed at the St. James Place church, and by only three singers and three musicians, it nonetheless rang out a full Broadway sound, arranged by the gifted pianist and mega talented singer, Brett Boles (who I was amused to learn from the program notes is the vocal arranger for Randy Rainbow).  But make no mistake about it; his is a giant talent, along with the other two singers, Jennifer Mintzer, and Michael Pizzi, all Broadway pros with lavish singing voices.  How nice to emerge into a cool evening and be “home” in five minutes.

Another production we took in was in nearby Lenox.  Our timing was so lucky.  I thought we had seen virtually every Rodgers and Hammerstein show, even multiple times, until we learned that the Berkshire Theatre Group was putting on a full blown production which (embarrassingly to me as a pianist and to us a theater buffs) I had never heard of,’ Pipe Dream.’  Now I could spend the next few pages describing why this show “failed” but I’ll let the Berkshire Edge tell about this particular production.

 

I might add the following:  it was clearly R&H, much of the music beautiful.  R&H have always rooted for the underdog, and here we have a prostitute and, amusingly, an ocean scientist in love (not until the end though!).  The influence of Steinbeck whose stories the musical’s book is based on can be clearly seen.  Ironically, it reminded me of seeing the London production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s ‘In the Heights,’ also about people living on the fringe, and yet an energetic and tight knit community

Another day side trip was to a tour of The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox.  I can never do justice to the visit fully describing this phase in her life and post all the photos I took, so just linking their web site for further information, especially the introductory videos, shows why a trip to the Berkshires would be incomplete without visiting her home.

Here, though, is Ann in Edith’s bedroom where, remarkably, although Wharton had a beautiful library and a writing- greeting room, she wrote most of the novels while she lived there, dropping long-handed complete pages from her bed to the floor for her amanuensis to pick up, collate, and then type.  Stunning one can write a novel without a word processor!

 

Finally after one full week in this paradise, we drove off to Boston, first visiting Chris and Megan in Upton, MA.  Megan had prepared a lunch and we spent a lovely afternoon with them and our grand-dog Lily.  Maybe I was also “out to lunch mentally” – I was back on an antibiotic for a severe cough (Covid test negative!) and I thoughtlessly didn’t take pictures of that visit.  A shame.  They’ve fixed up their home as a dream cottage.

And so we went on to Boston to check into our hotel and drop off the car. Originally we had planned to hop the ferry to Provincetown for one of our days there, but I needed rest.  However, Monday we caught up with my old college buddy, Bruce and his wife Bonnie who came into town from their home in Sudbury.  We met at the Boston Waterfront where we were staying, and they took us to a lovely lunch at Legal Seafood.  Again, in my antibiotic haze, I neglected photos, but there are plenty of Bruce in my blog, including a piece I wrote more than 15 years ago.

The following night we met up with Chris at his office.  You can see Ann pointing to his office window in the Old City Hall building, which conveniently has a Ruth’s Chris Steak House in the back of the bottom floor. 

 

So for the second time in two days, we were treated, not only to a lovely dinner, but again getting together with Chris and Megan.  So wonderful that they found each other during Covid, on line, and have a meaningful, relationship.  Love and commitment later in life has its virtues.

After a lovely three day stay at The Seaport Hotel, the area filled with activity, from the fishing wharfs, to new architecture, plenty to explore, it was time to pack up for an eleven day cruise on The Celebrity Eclipse, not a mega ship but one of the largest ships we’ve ever been on, some 3,000 passengers.  It needs refurbishing.  But we selected this cruise back in October for its timing and itinerary, departing from Boston, visiting mostly the Canadian Maritime, some of which we’ve been to on previous cruises.  This itinerary included an overnight in Quebec, which we were anxious to visit.

The cab ride to the Boston Cruise terminal was short, easy, so you can imagine our surprise when we arrived on time and we could already sense chaos, long lines of people, many more elderly than us and we’re no spring chickens, with their walkers and wheel chairs, trying to get into the cruise terminal which looked like a dilapidated old warehouse.  So we inched along in the hot sun for nearly an hour.

Luckily, the first day was at sea, and beautiful.  Some time to recover.  The US Tennis Open was on and I could leisurely read my book, Baumgartner, by Paul Auster, on the balcony (which I finished and was going to review here, but this entry is way too long as it is – another entry later). 

Throughout the cruise, when not touring ports, we were more likely to be in our comfortable room as the further we got away from all the artificial entertainment the better.  We settled on a regular dinner reservation in the main dining room, just the two of us, although the Captain was constantly encouraging us to make “lasting friendships” while on board.  We did not need such patronizing.  I relate more to the help, the waiters, the assistant waiters, the receptionist, the room attendant.  The service people were genuinely very friendly and hard working, all from distant parts of the world.  Bless those people.

The first port was Halifax where we’ve been to several times and still one of my favorites. 

 

On previous cruises we thoroughly explored the city, including this moving Titanic Exhibit, but this time I just wanted to test my lungs with a long walk to the Halifax Citadel.  Ann walked part of the way along the waterfront and then I booked it for a 4 mile walk, half uphill the equivalent of twenty stories.  I probably had no business doing that in my medicated condition, but like Mt. Everest, I had to because it was there?

With every 20-25 degree uphill block I stopped for a few minutes, and then continued on.

The prize: you can see the waterfront from the Halifax Citadel.

 

One of the nice things about traveling is I met a young couple touring Canada from Ghana of all places, while climbing the hill to the Citadel.  They were very impressed to meet someone from nearby famous Palm Beach FL.  They were sure excited to allow me to be photographed with them so they could show their friends back home, a Floridian!  So we exchanged reciprocal selfies with our respective phones.

 

Next stop was the one we most anxiously anticipated: Quebec.  This was an overnight and we hired a private guide to take us on a walking tour of the old and new city and boy, did we walk. 

But first, as we approached Quebec, one of the famous sites could be seen from the ship, one to which we were not taking a tour.  It was impressive though to see the Montmorency Falls from the ship:

 

As we entered the Quebec harbor I thought I recognized the magnificent edifice up on the hill where my parents had their honeymoon, Le Château Frontenac.  I vaguely remember seeing it in one of my father's home movies of that trip.  Here’s the irony. They were married on Sept 2, 1939, so the day we visited would have been the “happy couple’s” 85th wedding anniversary. 

 

Then we disembarked and met our guide, visiting first the Lower Town along the St. Lawrence River while Upper Town is circled by the fortifications, with an elevation of about 165 feet. I have dozens of photographs of architecture and people, always the main attraction to me, but I’ll make this brief.  Here is a Quebecer with her bunny:

 

 

Place Royale is a historic square in the center of Quebec City.  Film buffs will recognize this spot where Frank is apprehended (supposedly in France) in ‘Catch Me If You Can’.  The bust is of Louis XIV and the church is the Notre-Dame-des-Victoires Church, built in the 1700s.  No need to go to France with Quebec so close by!

 

Before “climbing” to the upper city we were on a street towered above by Le Château Frontenac:

 

 The Quebec funicular quickly whisked us to the upper part of the city, over the old fortifications, to spectacular views: 

 

 

And of course the requisite photograph of us in front of the Fairmont Le Château Frontenac:

 

 

 

And to complete the picture of this hotel, the lobby communicates the stateliness of the building:

 

 

But before leaving our guide, Yves Trudeau, from the HQ Services Touristiques agency (highly recommended) we stopped at a little sidewalk bistro (just like Paris!) where we treated him and us on a blustery day to cappuccinos! He was like a walking encyclopedia always imparting some important historical tidbit, explaining that after Quebec was twice captured by the British, it finally reverted to French again, thereby preserving their beautiful language.  

Needless to say we were beat walking hours on mostly uneven cobblestone streets.  We have no regrets though about not going out to experience the night life as the US Open Tennis matches were underway so we had a lovely dinner on board the ship and watched the games that night.

From there we went on to the Port of Sydney Nova Scotia.  We’ve been there before and it is a pretty town to walk but stayed on board  Before arriving in the harbor, we passed Anticosti Island on the starboard side and counted at least 60 giant wind turbines on the island and wondering, where are ours? 

Its harbor is tricky to get into and I was impressed with how the ship was handled, all it’s automatic controls and positioning being checked out by old fashioned dead reckoning, reminding me of what I had to do (without joy stick controls and GPS) to manage our boats over the decades. 

I had a clear view of the starboard control (there are three centers on the bridge) watching an officer with his binoculars checking out the position it showed on their electronic charts.  Redundancy equals safety. The harbor had been dredged about fifteen years ago and I could see the bow thrusters churning up the bottom:

 

 

Late that day we departed for Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  Charlottetown, its capital, has rows and rows of Victorian homes.  It had a feeling a little like Block Island where we spent parts of our summers on our boat.  It is certainly known for its seafood and we were determined to have some of their famous oysters and especially mussels. 

 

 

They are justifiably proud of their heritage and they have an occasional actor walking the street, who stays in character (you can’t drag the 21^st century out of them).  Here you see a young housewife and mother being interrogated by Ann about the town in the age she is portraying, her name, her children, and, in general, her love of Charlottetown in the nineteenth century.

 

 

Finally, we returned to the U.S. with a stop in Portland, ME, where once we had a festive dinner with family and friends to celebrate Jonathan’s graduation from Bates College so many years ago.  I didn’t see the city then, but was determined to use the day to walk from the waterfront, to the arts district, the old port and see the sights.  It reminded me a little of Asheville, NC, sort of hippy in its own way, and with a dedication to more liberal values.

 

Clearly, the First Unitarian Church of Portland stands firmly on those liberal grounds and as the last religion I briefly held was Unitarian, I made it a point to see that social activism is still a foundation of this humanist religion:

 

 

A bit of serendipity brought me to the childhood home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which he occupied in Portland.  I stopped by the Historical Society to ask for directions to the library and a lovely woman said right next door is a research library which I toured.  It was adjacent to Longfellow’s home which he occupied in his youth and early adult years before he became closely associated with the nascent Bowdoin College and went on to become one of the most recognizable scholars and poets of his time (although now considered a minor poet).  Fascinating to read about his life.  And most of us can still recite part of his famous ‘The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.’

Just to stand there and walk through the gardens which his family created was inspiring.  It is the oldest standing brick structure on the Portland peninsula, and was meticulously restored by Maine Historical Society to its mid-nineteenth century character.

 

As in Halifax, I covered about four miles on foot, with the inclines not as steep.  But was happy to return to the ship dreading the next day of disembarkation in Boston, getting to the airport, where we would have to wait about four or five hours for our flight. 

Getting off the ship was not quite the nightmare of getting on, and Boston Airport was quite comfortable.  A little restaurant at the end of A Terminal, Harpoon’s, served delicious Lobster rolls, ironically the only time we ate lobster on the trip (skipping the traditional fanfare lobster night on the ship for a more quiet meal in one of the ship’s specialty restaurants, unfortunately, mediocre at best).

Total time between leaving the ship and getting home was about 11 hours.  The plane, a Delta Boeing 737 was like a meat locker and we had to keep hoods over our heads to stay warm, but we were prepared.  Actually, it was a very nice flight, in spite of leaving on time, getting in a little late as the pilot was rerouted over the west coast of Florida to miss some big thunderstorms.  I watched him thread the plane between them using my Flight Aware app on my phone as we were tied into the plane’s Wi-Fi. 

We had covered 2,750 nautical miles on the entire cruise, and add in the nearly 500 miles in our rental car.  So, after 26 days on the road and at sea, it’s wash, wash, wash, and write, write, write.

Stockbridge Red Lion Inn Figures by Norman Rockwell