Timbuktu (oyster)

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Timbuktu is a novel by the American writer Paul Auster , which was published as Timbuktu - A Novel in the United States in 1999 and in German translation in the same year.

action

The narrator of the novel is Mr. Bones, a dog. At the center of the action is initially the first owner of the promenade mix, William Gurevitch alias Willy G. Christmas, an unsuccessful poet who spends his summers as a vagabond but the winters with his mother, a militant Polish immigrant. The story begins shortly before the death of the poet, who collapses in front of Edgar Allan Poe's house . Death is transfigured through the play on words "Poe-Land" as a return to the land of his parents. It becomes completely metaphysical when the dying author presents his vision of paradise to his dog. Timbuktu , the legendary African city, stands for paradise . Even after the death of his master, he remains present to his dog in dreams, tells him comforting things from the afterlife, even predicts that Mr. Bones will be accepted there.

The now abandoned dog is then confronted with the bitter reality of an abandoned animal and still finds two new owners in the meantime. He spends his summer vacation with the young son of a Chinese restaurant owner who hates dogs, then flees to a middle-class American family after being discovered. There the conditions seem to be heavenly at first, the father, a pilot, but turns out to be a double-edged personality, the couple's love is in crisis, the external appearance of a perfect world is deceptive. The dog senses this long before its masters. From a stay at an animal shelter during the summer holidays, the dog starts its last escape. After his master promised him to return home to Timbuktu in a feverish dream, the dog runs in a mixture of seeking help and suicide on a busy highway.

Classification in Auster's work

Typical for Auster is the use of motifs from their own works. He already uses puns around the term "Timbuktu" in his novel "Mr. Vertigo". There the two protagonists take on the role of father and son and call themselves Timothy Buck and Timothy Buck II. "Or Tim Buck One and Tim Buck Two".

"A joke that got us a few laughs, and the funny thing was that our whereabouts actually had a lot in common with Timbuktu, at least as far as its remoteness was concerned; on a headland high above the sea and miles of no neighbors."

The dog perspective shows American worlds from the perspective of the weak, which in its naivety is both childlike and philosophical. Naivety stands next to wisdom, and incomprehension turns out to be a critical perspective. The easy-to-read story was not only positively received by the critics.

criticism

Hanns-Josef Ortheil writes in the time (42/1999):

"At first Auster missed the right entry into the story. Timbuktu is a dog story, it is as interesting as the dog perspective, which is supposed to be the only and central point of the novel. Auster initially evades it. He clings to the life story of the master, gives it a few bizarre features and moves from one cliché to the next. So the story remains dead, from the beginning, it seems cold, you turn the paper, page by page, and don't grasp what is being offered to you: "Me never wanted to be a bum. I had never thought of it this way, I never dreamed the future like this. Rummaging in wastebasket for returnable bottles was not on the plan. Neither does splashing water on windshields. And to fall on my knees in front of churches and close my eyes so that I looked like an early Christian martyr and the passers-by felt pity for me ... "- enough."

Adaptations

expenditure