In the peaceful tranquillity of my Croatian home in Rovinj, I settled over the Christmas Days to finish off some studies of my current research work on monothematic social networks as well as internationalization of B2C software platforms.
Rovinj has always carried special meaning to me, not just from the fact that I have been coming here since I was 6 years old. I also spend a few weeks here to learn for my “Abitur”, so some undefined force keeps on dragging me whenever peace of mind is supposed to meet some kind of thoughtful output.
In transit to here I spent half the day in Trieste, went to sit down in a coffee-bar called “James Joyce” as a tribute after the great Irish author who as a young man spent a few years living in this Italian city.
So I finally found the time to read a book my friend Martin Wunsch had gifted me in October. Martin today is a lecturer for English literature at the University of Munich and we went to school together where he graduated as the best and smartest of our batch. I’d call him one of my closest friends, with his integrity, caring and down-to-earth ways making this super-brain a super-member of the “Blue Team”. I’ll explain.
“Oracle Night” from Paul Auster is the book concerned, a pretty dark story about the author Sidney Orr whose life starts getting completely out of whack after he resumes writing following a life-threatening accident. An immaculate craft of a story within a story, with occasionally even about to plunge into a story within a story within a story, the protagonist is faced with his wife Grace becoming increasingly distant to him. Initially without a clue for her motives, assumptions of adultry and of a pregnancy with questionable paternity start gnawing on him. The narrative catch of this fictional novel is that Auster manages to intertwine the prime story such with the story within the story that the latter becomes something like a precursor for the former.
The interplay between these layers raises the question within the primary plot whether fiction is just an invention or something that can predict reality and thus become in effect a part of it. Obviously, if so well told as here, the story will permeates to the reader’s chilled spine and surface to the allegedly true world. Finally, the story is a fantastic insight into the techniques of a gifted author for drawing plots, design characters and make ongoing adjustments to achieve certain desired story-telling effects. In that sense, the book contributes to a notable extent its own secondary literature.
One passage, however, touched me by far most. It is about the “Blue Team” when Sidney Orr recounts during a taxi ride to his wife from his student years:
Blue Team members didn’t conform to a singly type, and each one was a distinct and independent person. But no one was allowed in who didn’t have a good sense of humour - however that humour might have expressed itself. Some people crack jokes all the time; other can lift an eyebrow at the right moment and suddenly everyone in the room is rolling on the floor. A good sense of humour, then, a taste for the ironies of life, and an appreciation of the absurd. But also a certain modesty and discretion, kindness towards others, a generous heart. No blowhards or arrogant fools, no liars or thieves. A Blue Team member had to be curious, a reader of books, and aware of the fact that he couldn’t bend the world to the shape of his will. An astute observer, someone capable of making fine moral distinctions, a lover of justice. A Blue Team member would give you the shirt of his back if he saw you were in need, but he would much rather slip a ten-dollar bill into your pocket when you weren’t looking.
So I guess, my closest friends and me have been kind of unknowlingly running the “Blue Team” already. And it was Martin, too, who gave it a name during our joint comrades’ stay in Rovinj: “Männer mit Ähre” (sic!) … :-)
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