The music of chance

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The music of chance (English original title: The Music of Chance ) is a novel by the American writer Paul Auster from 1990, which was published in German in 1992, in a translation by Werner Schmitz . It was filmed in 1993 with James Spader and Mandy Patinkin .

action

Fireman Jim Nashe is finally lucky - it seems. Although his wife left him and he had to bring his little daughter to live with his sister, he unexpectedly inherits a lot of money from his father, whom he didn't actually know. He quits his job and drives all over the USA. When he had just $ 14,000 left, he hitchhiked Jack Pozzi, a bankrupt poker player.

Nashe is now risking all of his remaining money to enable him to play a game with millionaires Flower and Stone, in which both hope to get rich again. But you lose the money as well as the car and still run into debt. To pay off the debt, they must build a wall on the Stone and Flower grounds. The stones come from a castle in England that the eccentric millionaires bought and then demolished.

Nashe and Pozzi get used to work well, but when they think they have worked off their debts, they are unexpectedly presented with a bill for food and entertainment. Pozzi then flees. The next morning Nashe finds him beaten up half-dead. Murks, who oversaw the two from the start, and his son-in-law Floyd take him to the hospital, which Nashe never believes. Nashe, who now continues to work alone, is going through a crisis. When he is finally free, he is allowed to drive his previous car again and has a fatal accident. Murks and Floyd were in the car with him.

interpretation

The novel depicts the restless journey of two underdogs in the tradition of modern American travel novels in the style of Jack Kerouac ( Unterwegs ), with which he also breaks ironically. The central theme is the coincidence of human happiness and at the same time the arbitrariness of subjective constructions of reality.

filming

In English:

expenditure

  • Paul Auster: The Music of Chance. Novel . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1992 (13th edition February 2006, 254 pages), German by Wener Schmitz; ISBN 3-499-13373-3 .