Paul Auster - Man in the Dark

I put him in a hole. That felt like a good start, a promising way to get things going. Put a sleeping man in a hole, and then see what happens when he wakes up and tries to crawl out. I'm talking about a deep hole in the ground, nine or ten feet deep, dug in such a way as to form a perfect circle, with sheer inner walls of dense, tightly packed earth, so hard that the surfaces have the texture of baked clay, perhaps even glass. In other words, the man in the hole will be unable to extricate himself from the hole once he opens his eyes. Unless he is equipped with a set of mountaineering tools - a hammer and metal spikes, for example, or a rope to lasso a neighboring tree - but this man has no tools, and once he regains consciousness, he will quickly understand the nature of his predicament.
And so it happens. The man comes to his senses and discovers that he is lying on his back, gazing up at a cloudless evening sky. His name is Owen Brick, and he has no idea how he has landed in this spot, no memory of having fallen into this cylindrical hole, which he estimates to be approximately twelve feet in diameter. He sits up. To his surprise, he is dressed in a soldier's uniform made of rough, dun-colored wool. A cap is on his head, and a pair of sturdy, well-worn black leather boots are on his feet, laced above the ankles with a firm double knot. There are two military stripes on each sleeve of the jacket, indicating that the uniform belongs to someone with the rank of corporal. That person might be Owen Brick, but the man in the hole, whose name is Owen Brick, cannot recall having served in an army or fought in a war at any time in his life.

================
Paul Auster konečně přichází na řadu a rozhodně tu není naposledy. A to jsem od něj první knihu přečetla teprve loni v srpnu. Taky jsem někdy na začátku zimy byla na jeho čtení, je to takový šedivý pán s praskajícím hlasem (mimochodem, svoje knihy do audio podoby načítá sám a je to mimořádně podařené, přihlaste se v komentářích, kdo už odhalil, že mám ráda muže, kteří čtou nahlas) a břitkou ironií, temný a přitažlivý. Zápletka Muže ve tmě (česky v roce 2009) je zajímavá - muž zotavující se po nehodě, který nespí a po nocích vymýšlí paralelní svět, v zásadě proto, aby se vyhnul přemýšlení o skutečných problémech - a dá se z ní trochu vytušit, jak vlastně spisovatel přemýšlí; jak vezme hrdinu, nejdřív anonymního a beztvarého jako taková ta polohovací dřevěná figurka, co používají malíři, dokreslí mu vzhled a minulost, a pak ho prostě posadí doprostřed nějaké situace. A čeká, co se stane.