The Music of Chance

Rating:
Summary: Much ado about nothing
Review: The outline: A lost soul spends the first ten percent of this book driving aimlessly across the US. He meets a young gambler with whom he then is forced into indentured servitude after losing at poker to a pair of rich eccentrics. I won't divulge the entirely predictable ending because there would then be no reason for reading the book. Auster explains and connects nothing, not the genesis of his protaganist's aimlessness, not the scenery or atmosphere of his automotive trip, not the what or why of his imprisonment nor the reason or mechanism by which his friend came to the end that he did. His style is pedantic and his reluctance or inability to conclude any theme bespeaks a writer not long remembered.