Leviathan (Paul Auster)

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Leviathan (English original title: Leviathan ) is a novel by Paul Auster from 1992. The German translation was published in 1994.

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The book begins with the chronological end, the mysterious death of an unidentified man in an explosion, in which the narrator Peter Aaron recognizes his best friend Benjamin Sachs from circumstances reported in the newspapers. In flashback, Aaron reports the history of Sachs largely chronologically.

Aaron and Sachs, both writers, get to know each other and quickly become close friends. Sachs seems to be superior in many ways without ever being aware of it. He effortlessly writes a huge number of articles and essays of high quality, his first novel The New Colossus is not badly received by the public. He never bends in his orders, money seems indifferent to him anyway, although he is not rich. He has a wonderful wife, Fanny, with whom he has had a deep relationship for a long time and whom Aaron happens to know from his own college days. Aaron was even in love with her at the time, but was never able to get closer to her. At that time she was married to Sachs, but he was in prison for conscientious objection.

Peter Aaron himself is less successful as a writer, and so are his relationships. First he marries Delia, who after years of adoration still heard him. They have a child, David, they have money problems, they quarrel and split up. Then he has a brief affair with Sachs' wife Fanny, but she definitely doesn't want to leave her husband. This is followed by a two-year relationship with the weird artist Maria Turner, with whom he may share the bed, but otherwise not even let it be known that he knows her as long as the relationship lasts.

Then Aaron gets to know his future second wife Iris, and while his life is otherwise changing for the better, Sachs inexplicably seems to be going in the opposite direction.

First Sachs falls from the fourth floor at a party, but miraculously survives without permanent damage, slowed down by a few clotheslines and cushioned by the laundry hanging on it. Nevertheless, he never finds his way back to his old life afterwards. He wants to start a new life, shaves his beard, trims his hair and separates from his wife, under the depressively distorted misconception that he is not worthy of her.

He retires from New York to a cottage in the Vermont countryside and begins writing a new novel, Leviathan . He lives very lonely and takes long walks in the woods. He gets so lost with one of them that he has to spend the night outdoors in the most uncomfortable conditions and only finds a road in the morning on which a boy takes him in a delivery van and even wants to take him back to his house on a shortcut along a forest path. There a car stands in their way, the boy gets out to help and ignores the rejection of a man who then shoots him. Sachs falls out of the van with the boy's baseball bat and hits the man's head at the same moment he fires the fatal headshot on the boy. Sachs is standing in the woods with two bodies. At a loss as to how he should ever explain these circumstances to the police, he covers up his own tracks and escapes in the stranger's car.

In the car he finds utensils for building bombs, large amounts of cash and the dead man's passport. He drives to New York to see his ex-wife Fanny, whom he unintentionally surprises with her new boyfriend in bed in the middle of the night, tries to call Aaron, who is just being called by Fanny, and finally drives to Maria, with whom he has been since the fall a friendship connects. He tells Maria the whole story and finally shows her the passport. Maria recognizes the husband of her best friend Lillian Stern, Reed Dimaggio.

Sachs drives to Lillian Stern's house in Berkeley and tries (with the money from the car and with personal commitment) to pay off the guilt he feels. Lillian is initially very confused, both by Sachs and by his insane story, but then lets him into the house. Lillian is rarely at home and hardly speaks a word to Sachs, who subsequently takes care of her chaotic household and her neglected daughter Maria. Unexpectedly, Lillian then declares her love for Sachs, and the two experience several weeks as if on clouds, while the child Maria, immeasurably disappointed at the loss of her newly won stepfather, becomes unbearably jealous. The relationship soon breaks due to these tensions.

Sachs stands there more lonely than ever and, instead of performing his atonement through beneficence to Lillian Stern, decides to continue Dimaggio's work. This seems to have been a kind of anarchist eco-terrorist, as Sachs recently discovered in the study in Lillian's apartment. Sachs begins to blow up replicas of the Statue of Liberty across the country, with which he also associates bad childhood memories. He takes great care to ensure that no one is harmed and makes moral comments about his actions in anonymous phone calls to newspapers.

Finally, Sachs meets Aaron again in the hut in Vermont. He is completely surprised because he has long believed him dead. At night Sachs leaves and leaves only a short farewell note on a piece of paper. A few months later he is dead.

Remarks

The book has some autobiographical details such as Aaron's stay in France at a young age, a long unsuccessful period in his job and his first marriage that changes for the better with his second wife. In addition, Peter Aaron not only shares Paul Auster's initials, his wife Iris also bears - read backwards - the first name of Auster's wife Siri Hustvedt .

The model for the figure of Maria Turner was the concept artist Sophie Calle , who in turn realized some of the art actions described in Leviathan . Auster then wrote her a multi-page concept known as the Gotham Handbook , from which the joint artist's book Double-Game emerged .

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