Giordano Bruno proposed the existence of alternative universes back in the sixteenth century... and he was burnt at the stake. Philip K. Dick did the same thing four hundred years later, and he received only a slightly warmer (or perhaps “cooler” is the better word) response from the literary world of his day. In the new millennium, both Bruno and Dick are enshrined in the pantheon of the greats, and alternative universes have gone mainstream.
We find this once arcane subject, formerly restricted to sci-fi or metaphysics, thrust into the center of many contemporary narratives. Alternative universes provide the impetus for modern novels by serious litterateurs such as Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policemen's Union) and Philip Roth ( The Plot Against America), among others, and serve as the springboard for a host of movies from Sliding Doors to The Matrix. We find them in children’s books, video games, TV series, comic books - indeed, in virtually any and every type of narrative structure.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, experimentation with levels of reality looms larger in modern fiction than experimentation with language or syntax. We live in the age of what I like to call “conceptual fiction,” and few writers are more adept at it than Paul Auster. So we shouldn’t be surprised when this celebrated novelist pursues his own alternative universe fantasy in his new book Man in the Dark.
Of course, Auster has always been a master of metafiction, of the story thrust uneasily inside another story. Even in an early effort, such as his The New York Trilogy, Auster was setting up conflicts between different levels in the narrative the way youngsters create head-on collisions with their Lionel train set. In Man in the Dark, as in so many other Auster works, the main character is a writer, and the stories he tells have the potential to obliterate real life.
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