Book: Timbuktu by Paul Auster

Timbuktu tells the story of a dog, Mr. Bones, and how he copes with the death of his master, Willy G. Christmas, a poet cum alcoholic cum hobo.  We are introduced to the pair when Willy is already very ill and we discover their past together through the flashbacks of Mr. Bones, who knows that his master’s death approaches and is preoccupied both by grief and by worry for his own future.  Timbuktu is a road story; first, because Willy and Mr. Bones lead a semi-itinerant life, traveling during the warmer months and, winters, retreating to New York and the apartment of Willy’s mother, known as Mom-san to Mr. Bones.  It is also a road story because, upon Willy’s death, Mr. Bones becomes a stray and must wander, looking first for a new master and eventually simply to not be harassed or mistreated.

I still haven’t decided precisely how fruitful this comparison is, but one book that came to mine repeatedly as I read Timbuktu was The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński.  In that book, the protagonist is also a wanderer by necessity.  He too meets with more cruelty than kindness.  He too is viewed as disposable by the larger society in which he finds himself.  Now, certainly, Kosiński’s protagonist endures and witnesses abominably worse cruelties than does Mr. Bones.  The Painted Bird, after all, echoes the plight of Holocaust victims where Timbuktu is just the story of a stray dog.  But perhaps that is exactly why the comparison kept occurring to me – “just” a dog.  To the people Mr. Bones encounters, his life possesses no inherent value.  His pain does not matter, unless it serves to amuse a cruel or bored person.  His emotional state is not merely irrelevant.  It, in fact, does not exist for the bulk of humanity he encounters, even for Dick Jones whose family ultimately takes Mr. Bones in.  Dick does not treat Mr. Bones with cruelty, but neither can he treat him with true kindness when he is convinced that a mere dog cannot possibly have an emotional life.  He’s “just” a dog.  Dumb.  Insensate.  And thus is Jerzy Kosiński’s protagonist treated.

I read Auster’s unusual choice of protagonist in this light. The dog is a multivalent symbol - in western culture, at least. He is sometimes “man’s best friend,” prized for his loyalty and good nature; sometimes he is the epitome of sexualized machismo (i.e., to call a man a “dog”); and other times he is every despised, miserable, low thing (i.e., to be treated “like a dog”). And, of course, in addition to his symbol-hood, the dog is a feeling, sensing, living being. I believe Auster employs Mr. Bones in all of these ways, as a whole, emotionally engaged being and as a layered symbol. We empathetically invest in Mr. Bones as we would do any human character, but we are reminded continually that the humans around Mr. Bones largely do not do so. His vulnerability does not protect him by appealing to good human impulses, rather it makes him a target. And human mistreatment of a stray dog is a matter of mundane course, not of state persuasion or organized persecution. So maybe that’s why The Painted Bird was on my mind as I read Timbuktu. In many ways, our ability to treat each other in insensitive and uncompassionate ways is only the final example of our general penchant for meanness. If we cannot consistently bring ourselves to treat the most vulnerable among us, such as a stray animal, with kindness and regard, why are we ever surprised when that same spirit of disregard and inhumanity exerts itself against other humans?

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