4,3,2,1- Paul Auster
March-June 2024
Paul Auster’s 4 3 2 1 is a sprawling, ambitious saga that reinvents the coming-of-age novel. It follows four parallel versions of Archie Ferguson, a Jewish-American boy born in 1947, each diverging down distinct paths shaped by chance, love, and historical upheaval. One Ferguson becomes a student activist, another a reclusive writer; one grapples with sexuality, another with family secrets. Auster intertwines their fates with mid-20th-century America—the civil rights movement, Vietnam, New York’s art scene—weaving a tapestry of what-ifs that asks how much control we truly have over our lives.
The novel’s brilliance lies in its structure. Auster cycles through each Ferguson’s timeline in meticulous, rotating chapters, creating a hypnotic rhythm where small choices (a car crash, a missed encounter) ripple into radically different futures. Yet beneath the formal experimentation, it’s deeply human—a meditation on identity, luck, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of chaos. The prose is classic Auster: cerebral but warm, peppered with meta-nods (a fictionalized young “Paul” appears) that blur autobiography and fiction.
At nearly 900 pages, it’s a commitment, but the payoff is rich. Some threads resonate more than others, and the pacing lags in spots, but the cumulative effect is haunting. By the end, the four Fergusons feel less like separate entities than facets of a single soul, endlessly refracted. A love letter to youth, art, and the irreducible complexity of existence—best suited for readers who relish slow burns and big ideas over tidy plots.
I didn’t find as much time as I would have liked to read these months, but when I did I was completely engrossed by this. A long slog but engaging an one. It kept me guessing all the way to the end. I would again recommend if you like long reads.