The Red Notebook: True Stories Book

60th book of 2020.

I have a story to tell: In my first year of University, I believe in a Poetry module, we were given a passage (of prose, bizarrely) by a writer about his friend (J.) and the end of their friendship. The reason? The writer has had only four flat tyres in his life and all four of which happened with J. in the car. The writer admits it was not the only reason, surely, but that fourth tyre must have been symbolic of something, and they both knew it. Now, for some reason, that story has remained with me for a long time, but for the life of me I could not remember the writer. Considering how small the passage is and how seemingly unimportant it is - simply four flat tyres and a failed friendship - I am surprised it has stayed with me so long.

At the end of my second year I took a flight out to Paris to visit a friend, E. Though the Two Friends and Four Tyres (the name I mentally gave it as I didn't know the title) remained in my mind, I had forgotten the writer already, or maybe I never knew it in the first place. Anyway, E. was several years older than me and had been living out there for around nine months by that point, in a small Parisian apartment, which wasn't his. There was a cat he had to feed, but other than that, it was essentially his own. The real owner was elsewhere in the world for an undisclosed amount of time, I don't remember where. E. wrote poetry, good poetry. At the time I arrived in the summer he was finishing up on a collection he had been working on, and was very proud of. However, my flight was on the Friday and he was at work (in a restaurant) so I had the day to mooch around Paris alone.

I won't go into every minute detail, I'll bring it to the boiling point. In a café in some random side street in Paris, there was a girl I once knew. We didn't know each other particularly well but we had spoken to one another infrequently in college. She immediately recognised me and we had coffee together. I had already spent several hours wandering around alone so I felt oddly relieved to be talking to someone. She was working out here too, she told me, as a journalist. I meekly told her I was at University, slightly bitter that she had skipped it, moved to Paris and was already working as a journalist. As well as the coincidence of her being there in the first place, I noticed The New York Trilogy poking out of her handbag, which I was reading at the time. We laughed about that, and I pondered if the universe was telling me to love this girl, to move to Paris with her, to own an apartment and walk along the Seine hand-in-hand. She asked what I was doing, which broke my fantasy. I told her about E. (she was immediately interested, and wanted to read his poetry) and that I was only visiting for an extended weekend. I had assignments to do, I added on the end, but regretted it, as it made me sound childish. She paid for the coffees, which also hurt my twenty-year-old masculinity, and we wandered around the streets for a short time before she told me she had to get home. I also realised it was later than I had expected and E. would be wondering where I had got to. She gave me her number (in a formal, professional way, I couldn't help but notice) and said she would love to meet up with me again, and meet E. I said I would be happy to.

The rest of my trip was uneventful. In the end, I didn't see her again. Though I rang her the following day, it had already become a vague promise of meeting again; she was busy, E. was busy, and I didn't want to appear desperate. I finished The New York Trilogy on the flight home, pondering the two bizarre coincidences: not only meeting her, but both reading the same Auster book. I couldn't help but wonder if it symbolised something like that fourth flat tyre. Coincidences were so rare that it was hard not to seek symbolism in them. Back in England I finished University, forgot about Auster and the girl, forgot mostly about E. (I haven't seen him since, but not due to any flat tyres) and mostly forgot about the coincidences I had experienced. Though, I'll admit, sometimes I wonder if I should have moved to Paris, and fallen in love there.

It is now, of course, 2020 and I am reading The Red Notebook. I get to chapter 10 of the first part, and find that I am reading Two Friends and Four Tyres, which I will continue to call it as it is given no name in the book other than 10. I can't help but ponder, like the ridiculous chance of our own existence, the probability of reading this again. Of all the books and all the writers in the universe, past and present, it is here, in front of me, in an Auster book. And no less, The Red Notebook, filled with coincidences from Paul Auster's life. So a coincidence in my life within a coincidence in his life. It also throws me back in time to my weekend in Paris with E., on meeting the girl and us both reading Auster. Too much to fathom, I think. The last line of The Red Notebook reads: This really happened. Like everything else I have set down in this red notebook, it is a true story. I don't think I believe him, not entirely; maybe it is true, we will never know. In the same sense, you must not entirely believe what I have said here, either.