As I finished reading Portrait I can say I was truly amazed. Here was a intricate, well-thought out piece of literature that deeply explored one man's inner thoughts, essentially down to what made him tick. The time that Auster must have took to think and ponder about his father would probably boggle my mind. Frequently, during my reading I had to stop and just acknowledge the sheer work to get inside a man's mind and figure out why the man acts this way.
I honestly don't know how close Auster came to really figuring out his father's behavior, or even how accurate he is. I"m not sure of how much of his speculating is true or if all his stories are correct. I was truly pulled in by this piece of literature. It was extremely interesting to me and affected me emotionally. At the end, I truly felt Auster's pain and disappointment for his father as he wrote. Having his father grow up in those horrible conditions, It was prevalent to me that he didn't have a good chance at life. If I grew up knowing that my mother killed my father and watching the complete deterioration of my mother would have serious psychological impact on me. This work made me appreciate the great father I have, even though I know and realize his weaknesses. .
Another part I loved about this piece was the way it was structured. It started with the negative things about his father. Halfway through the piece, Auster made me feel that his father was the lowest form of life on earth. Then he went through the troubling childhood that his father had I could not help but feel pity for him. Then he started wrapping up the positive things he had noticed about his father. This piece showed so many different sides of his father, it made me feel like I knew him personally. I loved the way Auster put it ". . . he was good, or he was bad; he was this, or he was that. All of them are true. At times I have the feeling that I am writing about three or four different men each one distinct, each one a contradiction of all the others"(p.