Culture

There are classic books – works that stand the test of time, touching the hearts of readers across the ages. And there are contemporary hits – books that really capture the zeitgeist, and flare in the moment.

And then there are books that are somewhere in between. Books that are already written, woven out of the collective cultural fabric of the here and now, but which will not be read for a hundred years.

This is what the Future Library in Oslo, Norway is all about.

All writers are in the business of creating worlds. Whether it’s for eight straight hours on a rainy Sunday or for 45 minutes before bed after a long day at work, we dive into these worlds as readers. We lose ourselves in the universe the author has created for us.

But few writers do this as well, or as comprehensively, as Terry Pratchett.

Bob Dylan had an uneasy relationship with time.

The scratchy guitar and scratchier vocals of his eponymous 1962 debut channeled earlier folk and blues artists Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly far more than the jangly-pop and youth-centered rock ‘n’ roll dominating the contemporary airwaves.

The smart sideways glances and sardonic wit of his follow-up released a year later, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, later didn’t quite square with the image of a fresh-faced 23-year-old from Duluth, Minnesota.

“I give books one hundred pages in which to enthral me. I think this is a sufficient investment of my time and my effort. If I read one hundred pages of a book, and it still hasn’t grabbed me, I put it down and move on.”

My English teacher told me this when I was 14 or 15, and it has stuck with me. Until then, I felt duty-bound to finish every book I started, labouring on and on even while having a terrible time.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Paul Auster – a writer known for brevity and concision, at least most of the time – re-emerges with his first novel in seven years and presents us with this; a doorstop wedge of a tome which intimidates with its physicality before the reader has even opened the cover.

Or maybe it was; maybe this is the book Paul Auster always wanted to write.