Alright, the case against The Autograph Man has many elements, but basically it boils down to this: it's too damn obvious. I more or less like it notwithstanding, but it's probably telling that I thought exactly the same things about it on this reading as I did the first time round, a few years back.
Lessee...to begin with, naming one's central character 'Alex' (ie, 'without words') and then making him a dealer in autographs (ie, the word, or sign, or signifier, of a person), might well be construed as Hitting The Reader Over The Head, never mind the numerous overt references to signs and signification which are scattered throughout the novel. Then, too, the novel employs what might be called the DeLillo strategy - start off with an obvious central conceit (see above), and then 'develop' it with lots of single scene or even single sentence instances of the same basic point. Which is all very clever, and wonderful grist for the mill of academic writing, but in the end not terribly satisfying for the reader ("oh look, yet again the sign has been confused for the reality"...ho hum).
Then, don't waste any time quoting Benjamin's famous definition of aura at the beginning of the first chapter proper (calling him a 'popular wise guy', because of course you're going to be irreverent), and then work references to him into the text (because of course you're going to get the intertextuality going). Then connect this up to the autograph business, and in particular Alex's (well, Alex-Li's, actually) fixation on one particular screen actress of the past, Kitty Alexander (nostalgia, don't you know?), and then have him actually meet her, and look: authenticity (or some simulacrum of it?)!
But hold on. Things are getting a bit more complicated here. Detachment of signifier from signified, yes. Hyperreality not reality, yes. Mediation not authentic experience, yes. Aura not object, yes. All very obvious - but. But the way they all come together in The Autograph Man - that's a bit more interesting. Plus, Alex-Li is Jewish, and much of the rest of the novel is concerned with his attempts to come to terms with this, and the various approaches of his friends to the same questions of identity and faith, and to arrive at a sort of authentic experience of, or insight into, the world. (And hang on, Benjamin was Jewish as well, right? Famous (ahem) for it.)
Now, a novel cannot survive on ideas alone - what about the story, the characters? Alack, in The Autograph Man, the characters are somewhat submerged beneath the ideas - rather ironically, to some extent they become mere signs themselves, rather than fully fleshed-out subjects in their own right. One never feels - as one always does in reading White Teeth (well, except maybe with the Chalfens) - that these are quite real people; they somehow don't quite come to life in the same way. There's not that much of a story...but I've never minded that in a novel.
All that said, this is still a funny, lively, easy-to-read novel, and while I may have criticised it for being a bit obvious, I do think that it has many virtues, and overall I think I like it, though I can't imagine wanting to read it a third time any time soon. As it happens, the day after I borrowed this from the City Library, I was in the Shoppingtown library and picked up On Beauty; I've refrained from starting that latter until finishing The Autograph Man, but word on it is good (Booker nominated, no less!)...
