A misstep in meta-fiction

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.”

And just as the reader expects Rod Serling to welcome us into the fifth dimension, the phone rings. It’s James P. Flood.

James P. Flood? From “The New York Trilogy” (arguably Mr. Auster’s finest work)? Ah yes, “Travels in the Scriptorium” isn’t much of a novel at all, but a Paul Auster puppet show featuring a number of characters from past novels. They appear in Loveboat-style cameos, talking cotton-candy philosophy, tolerable only if one remembers the three-dimensional human beings they were in the novels for which Mr. Auster created them.

What one thinks of this set-up entirely depends on what one thinks of the prefix “meta.” Ironically, fans of experimental fiction will be the least forgiving of Mr. Auster’s cliche-heavy, clunky dialogue: “You’ve sacrificed your life to something bigger than yourself, and whatever you’ve done or haven’t done; it’s never been for selfish reasons,” says one character, a mere 20 pages into the book (to which Mr. Blank replies, “Have you ever been in love?”).

Prolific as he is, Mr. Auster is also notoriously uneven. His work ranges from the heart-wrenching lucidity of “Moon Palace” to the gimmick-driven, forgettable “Timbuktu” (narrated by a dog). In addition to his fiction, Mr. Auster has written several memoirs and directed a handful of well-received independent films (“Blue in the Face,” “Lulu on the Bridge”).

One literary form Mr. Auster hasn’t attempted is the short story, which is a shame, because the first 30 pages of this book hold up on their own. The remaining 100 are directionless, less of a demonstration of the writing process (Mr. Blank’s blatant allegorical significance) than that of writer’s block.

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