Paul Auster has always seemed like one of those antiseptic, bloodless postmodern dudes.
After reading the NYT review for Sunset Park he appears to be the literary equivalent of a Member's Only jacket, and not even in the cool winking version James Caan wore in The Way of the Gun. This stuff looks old-fashioned and embarrassing, the prose that stems from nostalgia for the days of unchecked male privilege and a wanton Lolita fetish.
The chunks started to rise in my throat when the reviewer refers to Auster's protagonist Miles meeting Pilar, an underage girl, one who has deep insights into The Great Gatsby. (The few regular readers I have will note my long standing distaste for Fitzgerald's vastly over rated novel). Auster acts like finding a smart 17 year-old girl is a rare and miraculous find amidst scores of empty-headed dingbats. There are in fact legions of bookish and well read teenage girls in the U.S. To suggest otherwise reflects a serious strain of cluelessness. Also, Auster expects his reader to accept that since this brilliant teenage girl experiences a fear of pregnancy, she prohibits vaginal intercourse, which she describes as "the mommy hole was off limits."
Mommy hole
I doubt even a 5 year-old girl would use such an expression.
There's so much blatant arrogance underneath his poor characterisation of a girl he just uses as a mechanism for spank-bank fantasy projection that I am struck dumb.
