Mr. Vertigo

In Mr. Vertigo, his dazzling eighth novel, Paul Auster introduces a quintessentially American hero who, early in his life, masters the art of the unimaginable, and then must live out his days long after the magic has been lost and forgotten.

It is 1927, the year of Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh—and of Walter Claireborne Rawley, a streetwise orphan from Saint Louis who becomes “Walt the Wonder Boy,” a diminutive showman famous for stunning audiences across the country with his f…