Léviathan (Auster)

Léviathan

The Léviathan is in the Livre of Job a gigantic monster, which will be represented later by an open mouth; in the language, it passes to indicate any thing monstrous and terrifying. With Thomas Hobbes in 1651, it becomes the State, the State despotic, the absolute capacity, the only one which, in spite of its not very pleasing face seems to the philosopher the guarantor of a true civil society. The German novelist Arno Schmidt entitles “Léviathan” one of his news which describes the desperate escape of civilians in Berlin, under the bombs in 1943. One recalls to it that Nietzsche called the State “a cold monster”.

Narration

The narration is traditional in that which it begins with the end and begins again immediately at a former time where the two main characters met; then comings and goings in the past, randomly seem memories of the narrator who seeks to reconstitute it why event which opens the book.

History

Peter Aaron, writer and narrator of the history, have just read in the newspaper the account of fine “the explosive” of his friend Benjamin Sachs. Surrounded by dynamite, until becoming a true “human bomb”, it gave itself death in its car on a highway. Peter expects the visit of the police force, and is not astonished by this end for Benjamin. The destiny of this last was marked by the bomb which exploded with Hiroshima at the time of its birth the August 6th 1945. Peter evokes the life of his friend: a forty years route which passes by the writing. If Peter and Benjamin are all two writers of fiction, Benjamin wrote one novel: a book in which it tries to imitate “all the styles” less to show virtuosity that fault of being able to choose only one solution. The course of Sachs is sown significant details as for its problem of identity and its conviction to be “the child of the bomb”. For example, the mother of Ben took it along child with her buddies to visit the Statue of Freedom. Seized of giddiness, it assied on a walk, while his/her son climbs all alone in the “torch” and devotes itself to it to dangerous distorsions… during a festival, and whereas he is already married, Ben lets himself allure by Maria, voluble artist (inspired directly of the artist Sophie Calle who in return will conform personal to the character of Maria, created by Auster, to compose a work, Gotham Handbook ) and ex amante of Peter. He follows it until in top of a scale of help from where he falls several meters in height. Its life changes; he divorces, cease to write, withdraws himself in a house in forest.

The route of Sachs takes an unexpected relief; the new book on which he works “Léviathan”; which one remains to be unaware of the contents, does not prevent it from meeting a man in the car, which it kills, in a state of self-defense. In the vehicle, it finds explosives, and much of banknotes. Learning that the man is married and father, he does not want to deliver it to the police force and is obstinated with living at his wife, to give him the money, adopting his young girl. All that hardly brings satisfaction to him; then, it begins a career of terrorist to the image of the man whom it killed; this man worked for FBI: Sachs, it, attack only statues of Freedom in miniature against which it makes many attacks, before being caught some with its own person.

Conclusion

The couple Pete/Benjamin appears as a body which includes/understands two complementary individuals the writer who succeeded and wants to accept the values of literary creation (it is also a character minor, unobtrusive) and that which does not believe in it any more and quickly ceases writing, to launch out in the action. A little ridiculous actions: to make an attempt on statues of Freedom… without being able to be caught some with principal… but courageous and of a value symbolic system. This novel testifies through its characters to a nation in search to identity, which lost its reference marks.

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