An old man, Mr Blank, is trapped in a windowless room with no idea how he got there. On the mahogany desk are photographs of people he vaguely recognises, and the typescript of a story about a civil servant imprisoned while on a mysterious mission.

Mr Blank receives visitors. Anna, one of the people in the photos, but older now, brings him breakfast and makes him take pills that leave him even woozier. She mentions that he used to send people, including herself, on missions, and he gets the idea that he must be a spymaster, though it seems more likely he’s a writer and his “operatives” are his characters.

A Scotland Yard man accuses him of various things. A doctor encourages him to think of an ending for the unfinished Borgesian story in the typescript. He finds this easy and suddenly remembers spending his life at the typewriter, but he thinks he was typing up secret “reports”. A lawyer reads a list of the nebulous charges he faces.

Well, of course, he is neither a writer nor a spy. He starts reading another typescript, which turns out to be the story we are reading, so he is a figment. The narrator chips in to remind us that Mr Blank “can never die, never disappear, never be anything but the words I am writing on this page”. What aspect of writing Paul Auster wishes to highlight is not quite clear, although there is some truth in the implicit suggestion that writers really ought to get out more. What with the old gags about characters coming to life and none of it being real anyway, a certain amount of conventional hocus-pocus is going on. But the cool, spooky, parable-like feel is effective.

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