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I Thought My Father Was God
by Paul Auster
Real stories from real people
Some days, wandering around the library, a title just catches my eye. And although the cliché is often true, other times, it happens that there is a book whose cover does it justice. My latest such find is I Thought My Father Was God, edited and introduced by Paul Auster.
The author's introduction does a good job of explaining the initial foundation for the book: a collaboration between Auster, a National Public Radio show, and their listeners. It also provides a basic set of themes (including death, animals, and humor) around which the stories are roughly compiled. But to see the true connections of these seemingly disparate stories, you have to read them.
Each story is supposed to be true, written by ordinary people all across the country. The stories touch on so many things, it's hard to explain how the whole of them can make you feel. There is no one theme to point out, no one thing that makes them all so poignant. They are just stories, real stories about real lives.
They're about the questions of coincidence, the role of fate. About the oddities that bring people together (A Mathematical Aphrodisiac,) or tear them apart (V-J Day Riots). They are about finding hatred and hope in the most unexpected places, about things people did as a child that still make them laugh, or the things they did that continue to haunt them. They are about the places that we spend our lives: summer backyards, dark hospital rooms, neighborhood streets and greyhound buses. And they're about the people who come into our lives for only a moment and wind up changing them forever.
Perhaps most importantly, each story collected here is about the things that ordinary people do, right or wrong, to make it through every day. These are the stories that are sadly no longer passed down from generation to generation.
This book is the epitome of "every person has a story to tell." And here, with the rare exception, they are told with startling honesty and humor in remarkably clear voices. They are stories that you'll enjoy, stories that you can hardly believe, but will want to share just the same.
Title: I Thought My Father Was God
Author: Paul Auster
Publisher: Henry Holt & Co.
ISBN: 0805067140
Review written by: Melissa
Reviewer's Rating:9
Reader's Rating: 10.00
Reader's Votes: 1
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