Baumgartner by Paul Auster is about the final years an elderly philosophy professor and the poignant love story with his poet wife. S.T. Baumgartner reveres Anna, a woman for whom even the most ordinary words were “imbued with some mesmerizing, transcendent quality.” That quality emerged “not just in her voice but in her power to transform the most ordinary movements of the body into acts of sublime self-expression and grace, the eloquence of her fingers as she turned the pages of a book, for example….”
Anna died a decade earlier, at age 58 after being struck by a rogue wave at Cape Cod. Baumgartner struggles with life alone, trying to form new relationships even while thoughts of Anna linger.
At one point he dreams of receiving a phone call: “Such is the power of the imagination, he tells himself. Or, quite simply, the power of dreams. In the same way that a person can be transformed by the imaginary events recounted in a work of fiction.” He concedes that “he has never not been in contact with Anna since the day she drowned, and if he has now conjured up an alternative world in which she knows that he is thinking about her, can feel him thinking about her, can think about him thinking about her, who is to say there isn’t some truth to it?”
Baumgartner wonders if he has found religion, “Or what passes for religion in a man who has none and believes in nothing but the obligation to ask good questions about what it means to be alive, even if he knows he will never be able to answer them.”
The couple did not have children and Baumgartner has no regrets, understanding that family members do not automatically connect. He reflects on his own family history and his father’s unhappiness about running a family dress shop, starting at age 22 when illness would have otherwise forced the grandfather to sell. The father bid farewell to his dreams of studying history or law and becoming an activist. He left night school and a library job to support his mother and four siblings whom he did not respect – “there was no right choice or wrong choice, only two right choices that both would have come out wrong in the end.” The decision to stay with the store was “an honorable one, even a noble one, but if you began to feel that your self-sacrifice has been wasted on a family of morons and mooching chiselers, your choice will inevitably turn into a source of resentment, and, as the years go on, inflict serious damage on your soil.”
Anna's spirit lives on through her writing. Soon after Anna’s death, her husband compiles her finest poems and arranges publication of a collection. And he continues to read her other unpublished poems, essays and short stories.
Years after that publication, a colleague of Anna and Baumgartner reaches out to introduce a doctoral student who wishes to research Anna’s work for her dissertation. Baumgartner anxiously rearranges his plans and remodels a place for the student to stay. He recalls Anna's last dash into the waves and worries about the young woman's long drive during the winter months.
But he remains quiet, supporting a spirited and determined student, still connecting with Anna during the last few years of his life.
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