Mr. Vertigo

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Mr. Vertigo is a novel by the American writer Paul Auster , which was published in the United States in 1994 and in German translation in 1996.

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The narrator Walter Clairborne Rawley is picked up as a nine-year-old street boy by Master Yehudi, a Hungarian Jew. His uncle Slim is very happy to get rid of him. To Walt's horror he has to live with a black boy named Aesop and an Indian named Mother Sioux. After several attempts to escape, however, he gains full confidence in the Jew, the black and the Indian woman and realizes what kind of loving people they are.

Master Yehudi wants to teach Walt to fly. To do this, Walt has to go through a series of terrible agony, and the day Lindbergh flies over the ocean, he takes off for the first time. Even before he can perform the feat, he has to watch the Ku Klux Klan kill the black woman and the Indian woman. Walt and Master Yehudi then live with his lover, Mrs. Witherspoon.

As a flying prodigy, Walt roams the US with Master Yehudi from one show to the other until his uncle Slim kidnaps him to extort ransom. Shortly before the handover, Walt manages to free himself. However, his career ends with puberty, as he gets unbearable headaches after every performance.

The two now head to Hollywood , where Master Yehudi wants to turn Walt into an actor so that he can have a decent job even without his career as a boy wonder. But on the way there they are ambushed by Walt's uncle Slim. Master Yehudi was injured by a shot and asks Walter to shoot him, but the latter refuses and he has to do it himself.

For three years the narrator roams the United States in search of his uncle Slim. When he finds him in Chicago, he poisons him. In his place he becomes a member of the Mafia , collects protection money, runs a betting office and opens a nightspot, the Mr Vertigo . When he wants to play god and shoot a seedy baseball player , he has to leave Chicago and join the army.

After the war, he got by with odd jobs until he fell in love with the modest Molly while working in a bread factory, married her and led a quiet, middle-class life with her - for 23 years. After her death, he meets Mrs. Witherspoon again and works for her.

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