SOURCE: “Levitate!,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 31, 1994, p. 2.

In the following review, Scott offers positive assessment of Mr. Vertigo.

Throughout his career as a novelist, Paul Auster has been making a fictional map of the United States, carefully pinning his characters to real places—to specific city streets, small towns and stretches of highway. In this new novel, Auster takes us to the Midwest in the 1920s and '30s, but this time his map includes a portion of the Kansas sky.

“I was 12 years old the first time I walked on water,” begins the narrator of Mr. Vertigo. He is Walter Rawley and, though he likes an occasional wisecrack, he's telling us the truth here. “Walt the Wonder Boy,” as he is nicknamed, does walk on water in this novel. He flies. He climbs up invisible staircases and over bridges that don't exist. He somersaults...