All of Paul Auster's novels begin well

All of Paul Auster's novels begin well, and the question is always, for me, can he sustain it? Can he go anywhere with his premise? Some - e.g., the New York Trilogy - grow in mystery and oddity as they proceed, and it's these on which Auster's reputation rests. Others - that Brooklyn one I read a few years ago - start off well but founder, or flounder, and go nowhere. Starting "Invisible" with high hopes - the premise is typically Auster, an odd encounter between a young, bright, handsome, athletic (auster?) naive (probably not auster) protagonist and a mysterious stranger. The narrator - Walker - a Columbia student circa 1967, meets a strange, exotic, domineering visit professor, Born, who offers to set Walker up as the editor of a literary magazine; Born gets called back to Paris, pretty much leaving his strikingly beautiful girlfriend to Auster to do with as he will. Fantasy? Yes, sure, on every level - but obviously Walker is getting himself into something he doesn't quite understand and can't control. Will see where Auster goes with this. Part of my interest is: I have written about the same location, same era, and wonder how Auster will handle the material; he and I have kind of bumped literary shoulders in this case, each scouting out the territory - and I cede that it's really his, he's been there his whole life, I was a tourist. My style is also sometimes compared with his, and I don't know what to make of that, except we are from the same native soil and probably similarly educated, and I guess we see a lot of things the same way. I wonder, though, how he will manage to write about Columbia 1967 without taking on the political scene - maybe he was entirely sealed off from its realities, or just not interested?