4 3 2 1

I read a lot, and I wish I could read more. 4 3 2 1 is one of those books that I read to find. It's one of those books that overwhelms you as you're reading it, that you look forward to returning to as you go through your working day, and that stays with you long after you've finished it. It's the kind of book that you don't want to finish—despite being over 800 pages long—because living within its pages is so enjoyable.

4 3 2 1 tells the story of Archie Ferguson, or rather four Archie Fergusons split into four separate lives early on. The book moves between the lives of the four Fergusons, telling each of their tales. I had wondered if it would be difficult to track the four of them throughout the book. I briefly thought about making note cards the way I did when I read Russian novels to keep track of the relationships, names, nicknames and patronymics. I decided not to, and I was glad I did. Auster is a master craftsman, and managed to provide enough anchors back the through each of the separate stories. Keep the four Fergusons straight was fairly easy.

The four Fergusons do blur together, but this seems entirely intentional. As the four of them make their way through the fifties and sixties, they are all surrounded by the events of those tumultuous times. They respond to them in different ways, but many of the same events impact the various Fergusons. (And reading it from the perspective of 2017, it's disheartening to see how much hasn't changed). The people that mean the most to the Fergusons take on slightly different roles in their four separate lives. The friends and family of Ferguson as a fully realized as he is. 4 3 2 1 is Borges with heart. This may be a garden of forking paths, but it is populated by characters who are also trying to find their way through life. By the end of the book, these four Fergusons who have taken divergent paths are separate, but form a seamful whole. 4 3 2 1 is one of the most compelling portraits of an individual character I have ever read, but it only accomplished it by telling four different, intertwined stories.

The most remarkable thing about the book isn't its structure. It's the language. The words come off the page in a torrent of carefully crafted sentences. I found my self reaching the end of a paragraph and realizing it was one single sentence. Some I read over and over again. Never once did they feel like run-on sentences. The words seemed to flow from one phrase to the next, carrying me along, until I reached the end of the paragraph again, still not convinced that I hadn't missed the end of a sentence somewhere.

Within those wonderful sentences were books. Book after book that Ferguson read, books that he wrote. This is a book built on a lifetime of reading. Time after time, books that I cherish were spoken of with affection, and each time I smiled. It felt like talking about old friends. Even when books that I didn't love were mentioned, it made me feel that I should go back to them. If one of the Fergusons loved that books, I must surely have missed something crucial.

I suspect that this a book that will be analysed, that will be taken apart and put back together again, that will form the topic of countless academic papers. I feel fortunately to have read it before any of that has happened. I'm glad that I was able to read it as a book without the weight that will inevitably be given to it. I was happy to be able to spend two weeks of my life moving through it, living with it and being enriched by it.