A misstep in meta-fiction

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TRAVELS IN THE SCRIPTORIUM

By Paul Auster

Henry Holt and Company, $22, 260 pages

REVIEWED BY JOANNE MCNEIL

A microphone is embedded in the wall and a camera is implanted in the ceiling. Second-by-sec

ond, the camera secretly snaps photos of an old man sitting in a near-empty room. But "even if he knew he was being watched, it wouldn't make any difference. His mind is elsewhere, stranded among the figments in his head as he searches for an answer to the question that haunts him."

And so begins Paul Auster's 14th novel, "Travels in the Scriptorium," a postmodern puzzle paying tribute to Samuel Beckett, Flann O'Brien and Italo Calvino, without ever quite reminding the reader of Mr. Auster's own past literary achievements.

Aptly named "Mr. Blank," the man under surveillance is locked in an embodied conundrum -- the "scriptorium" is housed in the deep recesses behind Mr. Auster's eyes. Mr. Blank looks at a wall, with the word "wall" written on it, and reads the word aloud.

But like Searle's Chinese Room, "what cannot be known at this point is whether he is reading the word on the strip of tape or simply referring to the wall itself. It could be that he has forgotten how to read but still recognizes things for what they are and can call them by their names, or, conversely, that he has lost the ability to recognize things for what they are but still knows how to read."