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father, suddenly making them into step-siblings and ruling out any possibility of an intimate relationship between them. In most lives he is strictly heterosexual, but in one life a series of experiences makes him bisexual and he increasingly displays a preference for men – influenced by living with a glamorous expatriate bisexual
American woman based in Paris. In another life he is involved in a very different way with an older woman, his former high school teacher with whom he has an intensive affair – which ends unhappily. In one life the school principal threatens to expel him over an article he wrote to the school paper, denouncing American Imperialism in Latin America; in another life he is politically indifferent, which causes his beloved Amy to reject him in disgust; in yet another life he and Amy together get involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement, but break up when she becomes a white-hot revolutionary while he remains skeptical of the chances of a Socialist revolution in America.
180:
affluent life. In yet another life, the father got rid in time of these nasty brothers and built up a commercial empire – but
Ferguson is sickened by a life of nouveau riche conspicuous consumption and becomes totally alienated from a workaholic father who works twelve to fourteen hours a day and has little time or energy left for his family. In one life Ferguson's mother runs a modest suburban photo studio, in another life she has become a well known artistic photographer whose framed photos are exhibited in prestigious American and European galleries, and in a third life she is a dashing press photographer venturing into the midst of race riots to get exclusive action photos.
176:
would meet as a teenager, and also different conditions for the development of his father's business – altogether accumulating into four lives significantly different from each other. The four divergent stories follow his home life as well as college years, his love life and political ideas. Depending on the version of his life, Ferguson experiences various identity issues.
179:
In one life, he loses his father at the age of seven, leaving him deeply scarred. In another life, the schemes of his father's crooked brothers cause the collapse of the family business, destroying his father's dream of financial success – but the family manages to live a reasonably happy though not
250:
Though none of
Ferguson's lives is a precise autobiography, Ferguson shares quite a few features of Auster's own life: birth in 1947 to Jewish middle-class parents, growing up in New Jersey – specifically, in Newark and its suburbs, left-wing views, and spending some time in France (Ferguson does it
175:
His different lives diverge from mundane matters – in which suburb, out of several plausible choices, did his parents choose to buy a house after his birth? But from that develops in each life a different school in which
Ferguson would study, different schoolmates and teachers, different girls he
158:
published in
January 2017. At the time of its publication, it was the first new Auster novel to have appeared in seven years. Auster worked on the book seven days a week for three-and-a-half-years and wrote it in long hand. At 866 pages, the novel is much longer than any of his previous works. In
183:
In all his lives
Ferguson is deeply in love with the formidable and incomparable Amy Schneiderman, but only in one life does she become his steady girlfriend. In another life they only have a brief affair and then she moves elsewhere, while in a third life his divorced mother marries her widowed
171:
The novel is the story of Archie
Ferguson told in four different versions. Each of the seven chapters in the book is divided into four parts (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 2.1... etc.) which represent the different versions of his life. Ferguson (as he's known in the book) grows up with the same Jewish,
172:
middle-class parents, Stanley and Rose, as well as many of the same friends, including Amy
Schneiderman, his girlfriend/friend. However, the relationships change with each Ferguson version. Due to the individual circumstances, his lives take very different paths.
293:
In fact, the development and mingling of four versions of Archie
Ferguson not only illuminate and enhance his character, it gives the storytelling the power of enchantment that sustains the reader through the length of the
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in various lives, under different circumstances in each). Like Auster himself, Ferguson in all his lives feels at home in New York City and has an abiding interest in French culture and language.
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289:, David Takami praised Auster's execution as "brilliantly conceived", a "brilliant compendium of the tumultuous 1960s", with many "descriptive gems" too numerous to name:
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is a work of outsize ambition and remarkable craft, a monumental assemblage of competing and complementary fictions, a novel that contains multitudes."
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At the time of its publication in
January and February 2017, the book received mixed reviews, and with widely divergent opinions. Novelist
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in the 1950s and 1960s. As Archie grows through young adulthood, events such as the
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443:"Hardcover Fiction Books - Best Sellers - February 19, 2017 - The New York Times"
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687:"4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster, book review: At 1.23 kilos you can barely pick it up"
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540:"Paul Auster's '4321' offers four parallel versions of one life"
603:"4321 by Paul Auster review - a long-winded coming-of-age tale"
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348:"Paul Auster's '4 3 2 1': four versions of one man's life"
366:"How Paul Auster Delivered His Most Intricate Novel Yet"
560:"Review: Paul Auster's New Novel Is Four Times the Fun"
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649:"One Young Man's Life Served Up Four Ways"
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243:and the reaction of American Jews to the
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518:Lorentzen, Christian (18 January 2017).
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478:(Interview). Interviewed by Paul Laity
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601:Cummins, Anthony (29 January 2017).
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667:Schaub, Michael (1 February 2017).
498:Kiesling, Lydia (10 January 2017).
350:. The Seattle Times. Archived from
205:Attack on Richard Nixon's motorcade
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538:Ulin, David L. (24 January 2017).
322:Dean, Michelle (2 February 2017).
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684:Wolf, Janette (1 February 2017).
558:Begley, Sarah (25 January 2017).
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346:Takami, David (2 February 2017).
241:1968 Columbia University protests
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698:from the original on 2017-02-01
626:"Paul Auster's Novel of Chance"
470:Paul Auster (20 January 2017).
978:The Inner Life of Martin Frost
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817:In the Country of Last Things
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1123:Henry Holt and Company books
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1118:Novels set in New York City
500:"The Novel as Math Problem"
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1013:The Story of My Typewriter
889:Travels in the Scriptorium
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419:"Split Lives: Paul Auster"
233:Northeast blackout of 1965
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118:866 pp (hardback edition)
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1133:Novels by Paul Auster
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1113:2017 American novels
1077:Talking to Strangers
881:The Brooklyn Follies
809:The New York Trilogy
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16:Novel by Paul Auster
946:The Music of Chance
833:The Music of Chance
647:(31 January 2017).
624:(30 January 2017).
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544:The Washington Post
399:. 13 September 2017
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1048:A Tomb for Anatole
970:Lulu on the Bridge
743:on 1 December 2017
653:The New York Times
447:The New York Times
302:Best Seller list.
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189:Newark, New Jersey
70:Henry Holt and Co.
26:First edition (US)
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1084:Burning Boy
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913:Sunset Park
849:Mr. Vertigo
825:Moon Palace
788:Paul Auster
747:20 November
722:20 November
702:20 November
675:20 November
658:20 November
635:20 November
612:20 November
592:20 November
569:20 November
549:20 November
529:20 November
509:20 November
482:20 November
217:Vietnam War
156:Paul Auster
140:Sunset Park
42:Illustrator
36:Paul Auster
1107:Categories
452:2017-07-25
428:2017-07-24
376:2017-07-25
306:References
269:, wrote: “
905:Invisible
841:Leviathan
786:Works by
255:Reception
213:Venezuela
66:Publisher
857:Timbuktu
696:Archived
107:Hardback
58:Language
20:4 3 2 1
921:4 3 2 1
795:Fiction
524:Vulture
492:Reviews
370:Esquire
271:4 3 2 1
209:Caracas
151:4 3 2 1
61:English
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197:Paris
115:Pages
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