4321

4321 is a novel by Paul Auster that tells the story of Archibald Isaac Ferguson, born on March 3, 1947, in Newark, New Jersey. Rather than following a single life, the book splits Ferguson into four parallel versions of himself, all born to the same parents on the same day, each shaped by different circumstances as chance events send them down diverging paths. The four versions are designated 1 through 4 and narrated in alternating chapters. Three of the four Fergusons die before the novel ends. The fourth survives to become the writer of the book itself.

The novel opens with a shared origin chapter. According to family legend, Ferguson's grandfather Isaac Reznikov emigrated from Minsk and arrived in New York on January 1, 1900. At Ellis Island, a fellow immigrant advised him to say his name was Rockefeller, but by the time Isaac reached the immigration officer he had forgotten the name and blurted out in Yiddish, "Ich hob fargesn!" (I forgot!), which the officer recorded as "Ichabod Ferguson." Isaac led a hard itinerant life and was shot dead during a robbery at a Chicago leather warehouse in 1923, leaving behind his wife Fanny and three sons: Lew, Arnold, and Stanley. The family settled in Newark in poverty. Stanley, the youngest and most ambitious, opened a radio repair shop after high school and expanded it into 3 Brothers Home World, a furniture and appliance store, bringing his unreliable brothers into the business. A childhood eye injury left him partially blind and exempt from military service.

Ferguson's mother, Rose Adler, is the daughter of Benjamin and Emma Adler, immigrants from Warsaw and Odessa. Rose works for portrait photographer Emanuel Schneiderman and learns the craft from him. She was previously engaged to David Raskin, who died in a military training accident. After more than a year of grief, a friend arranges a blind date with Stanley Ferguson. Stanley falls deeply in love, but Rose, still mourning David, accepts his proposal primarily out of practical considerations. They marry in April 1944. After three miscarriages and a difficult pregnancy during which her sister Mildred transforms her into a passionate reader, Rose gives birth to Archibald Isaac Ferguson on March 3, 1947, named after her beloved uncle Archie, a jazz musician who died suddenly.

From this shared beginning, the four lives diverge.

In Version 1, the family moves to Montclair, New Jersey. Young Ferguson discovers baseball after watching Willie Mays's legendary catch in the 1954 World Series. Uncle Arnold robs the family warehouse, then flees to California. Uncle Lew dies in a car accident, shattering the extended family. Stanley opens a smaller shop. As a teenager, Ferguson meets Amy Schneiderman at a Labor Day barbecue: She is brilliant, fearless, and fiercely opinionated. They fall in love, and on November 22, 1963, the day of Kennedy's assassination, they make love for the first time. A ski trip with Ferguson's cousin Francie ends in disaster when Francie, furious at Ferguson for using her home for a sexual encounter, loses control of the car and crashes into a tree. Ferguson loses two fingers, ending his baseball career. Amy helps him recover, insisting his scars are "signs of life."

Ferguson enters Columbia University in 1965, writes for the student newspaper, and publishes poetry translations. Amy joins Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and becomes increasingly radicalized. In spring 1968, students occupy university buildings to protest military research ties and a proposed gymnasium on public land in Harlem. Ferguson covers the crisis as a journalist while Amy is among the occupiers in Low Library. Police storm the campus on April 30; Ferguson is beaten. Amy breaks up with him weeks later. After graduating, Ferguson is hired by the Rochester Times-Union. He falls in love with Hallie Doyle, a Mount Holyoke student, and for the first time experiences a healthy, reciprocal relationship. On September 8, 1971, a fire started by a downstairs neighbor's cigarette spreads through the old wooden house. Ferguson dies in his sleep at twenty-four.

In Version 2, young Ferguson breaks his leg falling from a tree. His grandmother teaches him to read during recovery. Rose finds a location for her photography studio, but that night 3 Brothers Home World burns to the ground. As a preteen, Ferguson founds a handwritten student newspaper that provokes bullying and accusations of communist propaganda from his principal. He befriends Howard Small, a talented artist, and commits to becoming a writer after reading Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. On August 10, 1960, during a thunderstorm at summer camp, Ferguson runs outside, exhilarated by the rain. A falling branch kills him. He is thirteen.

In Version 3, Stanley Ferguson dies in the fire at 3 Brothers Home World after staying behind to thwart an arson plot arranged by his brother Lew's bookmaker to collect insurance money. Stanley had intended to scare off the arsonist but fell asleep; the fire was lit while he slept. Eight-year-old Ferguson and Rose move to New York. Ferguson attends an elite boys' school and deliberately fails his classes as a secret experiment to test whether God will punish him, reasoning that God's silence since his father's death proves His nonexistence. He confesses to his mother in an emotional breakdown. Rose remarries Gilbert Schneiderman, a music critic who introduces Ferguson to classical music. Ferguson develops close relationships with Gil's brother Daniel's children, Jim and Amy Schneiderman. He confronts his bisexuality through relationships with both men and women, is arrested for stealing books to fund visits to a sex worker, and earns a criminal record. He decides to skip college and moves to Paris, where Vivian Schreiber, a wealthy American widow and art historian, becomes his mentor. He writes How Laurel and Hardy Saved My Life, a memoir about his father's death and the films that sustained him. The book is published in London. Ferguson falls deeply in love with Albert Dufresne, a Canadian-American writer of mixed race, but Albert leaves Paris after his mother's death. On March 6, 1967, Ferguson looks the wrong way crossing a London street and is struck by a car. He dies at twenty.

In Version 4, Ferguson grows up amid his parents' prosperity and eventual divorce. His mother marries Dan Schneiderman, making Amy and Jim his stepsiblings. At Camp Paradise, Ferguson witnesses the sudden death of his friend Artie Federman, who collapses from a brain aneurysm during baseball practice. Ferguson discovers Thoreau's Walden, writes prolifically, and wins a Walt Whitman Scholarship to Princeton, where his roommate is Howard Small and classics professor Robert Nagle becomes his mentor. His most intense relationship is with Celia Federman, Artie's sister, but he hides his obsessive guilt over Artie's death and his medical diagnosis of infertility. His scholarship is revoked after a bar fight in Vermont in which he defended Amy's Black boyfriend, Luther Bond, against a racist attacker. Aunt Mildred secures him a place at Brooklyn College. His father dies of a heart attack; he inherits one hundred thousand dollars. He catches Celia kissing another man, ending the relationship.

Ferguson graduates, works as a house painter, and publishes experimental fiction. His novel The Capital of Decay, about a doctor confronting an epidemic of youth suicides, is rejected 14 times before a small press accepts it. On New Year's Day 1970, his mother tells him the old family joke about his grandfather at Ellis Island. The story triggers the idea for his next novel: four divergent versions of the same person, three of whom die, leaving only the writer to tell the tale. Ferguson moves to Paris and spends five and a half years writing 4321, completing its 1,133 pages on August 25, 1975. The novel ends with Ferguson alone, the last surviving version of himself, having written all four lives into being out of love for the boy who died, the father who vanished, and the selves he might have been.