Paul Auster - Mr. Vertigo

Soaring reviews for Mr. Vertigo

Mr. Vertigo is a thrilling flight of fancy that never abandons the world. A magical pertinent book, it gives us a birds-eye view of the strange, violent, paradoxical century behind us.

Los Angeles Times

A rollicking tale of greed and redemption Auster has created a character who will remain aloft in readers memories.

People

An exuberant novel of ideas strange and masterful . Walt Rawley may well be Austers finest creation his is a shrewd, larger-than-life American voice in the tradition of Huck Finn and Holden Caufield.

Harpers Bazaar

Mr. Vertigo proves that nothing beats a good old yarn.

Details

The language crackles, the plot jumps, and the characters astonish in this tale of magic and loss, loneliness and exaltation.

Entertainment Weekly

Auster Americanizes a miracle and takes us to a place where only magicians have gone before.

Playboy

Auster soars on the wings of a metaphor with a tale thats light and engagingas well as fraught with meaning.

The Boston Phoenix

Beautiful writing does soar, and at his best, Auster makes it look easy.

Chicago Tribune

PENGUIN BOOKS

MR. VERTIGO

PAUL AUSTER is the author of the novels The Brooklyn Follies, Oracle Night, The Book of Illusions, Timbuktu, Mr. Vertigo, Leviathan (awarded the 1993 Prix Medicis tranger), The Music of Chance (nominated for the 1991 PEN/Faulkner Award), Moon Palace, In the Country of Last Things, and the three novels known as The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room. He has also written two memoirs (The Invention of Solitude and Hand to Mouth), a collection of essays, and a volume of poems, and edited the book I Thought My Father Was God: And Other True Tales from NPRs National Story Project. Auster was the recipient of the 2006 Prince of Asturias Award for Letters and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006. He has won literary fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in both poetry and prose, and in 1990 received the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He wrote the screenplays for Smoke, Blue in the Face, and Lulu on the Bridge, which he also directed. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

PAUL AUSTER

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN COMPASS

Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited 1994

First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1994

Published in Penguin Books 1995

Copyright Paul Auster, 1994
All rights reserved

Portions of this book appeared in Granta, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, and Grand Street.

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGUED THE HARDCOVER AS FOLLOWS:
Auster, Paul.
Mr. Vertigo/Paul Auster.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-670-85209-0 (hc.)
ISBN 978-0-14-023190-8 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-1-101-56263-5 (epub.)
1. Aged menUnited StatesFiction. 2. MagiciansUnited StatesFiction.
I. Title. II. Title: Mister Vertigo.
PS3551.U77M7 1994
813.54dc20 93-34887

Designed by Francesca Belanger

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

I was twelve years old the first time I walked on water. The man in the black clothes taught me how to do it, and Im not going to pretend I learned that trick overnight. Master Yehudi found me when I was nine, an orphan boy begging nickels on the streets of Saint Louis, and he worked with me steadily for three years before he let me show my stuff in public. That was in 1927, the year of Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh, the precise year when night began to fall on the world forever. I kept it up until a few days before the October crash, and what I did was greater than anything those two gents could have dreamed of. I did what no American had done before me, what no one has ever done since.

Master Yehudi chose me because I was the smallest, the dirtiest, the most abject. Youre no better than an animal, he said, a piece of human nothingness. That was the first sentence he spoke to me, and even though sixty-eight years have passed since that night, its as if I can still hear the words coming from the masters mouth. Youre no better than an animal. If you stay where you are, youll be dead before winter is out. If you come with me, Ill teach you how to fly.

Aint nobody can fly, mister, I said. Thats what birds do, and I sure as hell aint no bird.

You know nothing, Master Yehudi said. You know nothing because you are nothing. If I havent taught you to fly by your thirteenth birthday, you can chop off my head with an axe. Ill put it in writing if you like. If I fail to deliver on my promise, my fate will be in your hands.

It was a Saturday night in early November, and we were standing in front of the Paradise Cafe, a slick downtown gin mill with a colored jazz band and cigarette girls in transparent dresses. I used to hang around there on weekends, cadging handouts and running errands and hustling cabs for the swells. At first I thought Master Yehudi was just another drunk, a rich booze hound stumbling through the night in a black tuxedo and a silk top hat. His accent was strange, so I figured him to be from out of town, but that was as far as I took it. Drunks say stupid things, and the business about flying was no stupider than most.

You get too high in the air, I said, you could break your neck when you come down.

Well talk about technique later, the master said. Its not an easy skill to learn, but if you listen to me and obey my instructions, well both wind up millionaires.

Youre already a millionaire, I said. What do you need me for?

Because, my wretched little thug, I barely have two dimes to rub together, I might look like a robber baron to you, but thats only because you have sawdust for brains. Listen to me carefully. Im offering you the chance of a lifetime, but you only get that chance once. Im booked on the