Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Discussion questions
1. Sidney describes his discovery of (and subsequent productivity in) the blue notebook as “a little piece of black magic.” How is coincidence a force in the novel? How does Sidney, and his creations, react to these mysterious encounters and occurrences? Does he – or do they – believe in fate?
2. Why does John Trause warn Sidney about the Portuguese notebook, saying, “…there’s no question that they’re extremely seductive….These notebooks are very friendly, but they can also be cruel, and you have to watch out that you don’t get lost in them”? Why do they both prefer the blue notebook over other colors?
3. Why does Grace suddenly break down in tears in the backseat of a taxi just hours after Sidney begins writing in the notebook? Why does Sidney believe his initial use of the blue notebook ties in to the start of Grace’s crisis?
4. Why does M. R. Chang, the owner of the stationery shop, precipitously close his business the day after Sidney buys the blue notebook? Why does he cling to Sidney when they scarcely know each other? Why is he so offended by Sidney’s behavior at the brothel in Queens?
5. How does the three-dimensional viewfinder that John Trause speaks of serve as a symbol for the novel? Why is it described as a “magic lantern”? How do words, photographs and other forms of representation allow “the dead to keep their hold on us,” as one character notes? Is this a good or bad thing?
6. How is color used in Oracle Night? Sidney buys the blue notebook, but he also gives “tinted” descriptions of the city. What other examples of color are found and how do they influence the tone of the story?
7. Why do you think the entrances to Ed Victory’s Bureau of Historical Preservation have no doorknobs? Is this an idea from another part of the novel made physical in Nick’s story? What other ephemera from Sidney’s life manifest themselves in Nick’s world?
8. How do you interpret the fact that Grace dreams that she and Sidney get locked in a subterranean room very much like the Bureau of Historical Preservation in Sidney’s story in the blue notebook?
9. Which of Sidney’s feelings for Grace are projections of his feelings about himself? How is his fraught reaction at Grace’s disappearance influenced by his feelings of guilty for attending Chang’s strip club?
10. Towards the end of the book (after his apartment is robbed), on page 210, Sidney re-evaluates the notebook and its influence on his life. What decisions does he make about it? Does his story ends at this point? Is he trapped, like his protagonist? Why do you think he decides that the notebook is trouble? Does Sidney’s destruction of the notebook cause Trause’s death?
11. Sidney is overcoming an illness; John Trause is ill; Ed Victory is ill; by the end of the novel, Grace endures serious ailments. Where does physical suffering lead these characters? Are they changed by pain? Are they made better by it?
12. Oracle Night doesn’t just play with notions of time; it reinvents characters by way of the place within time and some even seem to be misplaced. Are there characters in the book that are representatives of the past, or the future? Do you think Trause’s son’s appearance at the book’s close is a function of such philosophical play?
13. What are the connections between a 1938 Warsaw telephone directory and a lost novel in which the hero can predict the future?
14. Do you think Sidney’s suspicion that Grace and John Trause are having an affair is correct? What evidence points to this conclusion? He says, “I don’t know if it’s fact or fiction, but in the end I don’t care. As long as Grace wants me, the past is of no importance.” Do you think his reaction to Grace’s possible infidelity is believable? To what degree is forgiveness the ultimate expression of love?
15. How do the stories within Auster’s novel (the Nick Bowen story modeled after the Flitcraft episode from Dashiell Hammett; Oracle Night, the long-lost fictional novel within the Bowen story; Sidney’s story treatment for a film version of The Time Machine; and John Trause’s unpublished story “The Empire of Bones”) move the main narrative along or comment upon it?
16. How do suspicion, suspense, and violence inform the novel? At what point does animosity explode into violence?
17. Sidney spends a lot of time aimlessly walking around his Brooklyn neighborhood and also Manhattan. Are his rambles a metaphor? Do they tie into other themes in the book?
18. The relationship between parents and children is a recurring motif. Is Auster trying to deliver a particular message with these references? Another theme in the book is estrangement. Which characters become estranged from others, and how do they react?
About the author
Paul Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1947 to Jewish middle class parents of Polish descent.. Auster's passion for reading began when he was about 12 and his uncle, Allen Mandelbaum (a professor of Italian literature, a poet, and a prolific translator) left several boxes of books in storage in the Auster house while he traveled to Europe. Auster graduated from Columbia University in 1970 and then moved to Paris, where he earned a living translating French literature. He returned to the U.S. in 1974.
Over a 30 year career he has published many volumes of poetry and essays, plus 16 novels that have been translated into about thirty languages. He has also translated French writers including Stéphane Mallarmé and Joseph Joubert. He is arguably best known for his three experimental detective stories collectively referred to as The New York Trilogy (City of Glass, 1985; Ghosts, 1986; The Locked Room, 1986), as well as the novels Moon Palace (1989) and Book of Illusions (2002). In 2012 he published a biography, Winter Journal.
His marriage to writer Lydia Davis ended in divorce; he is currently married to novelist and essayist Siri Hustvedt and they live in Brooklyn. He has two children, Daniel (with Davis) and Sophie (with Hustvedt).