The role of solitude in paul auster s prose

I herby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. I used only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography

MASARYK UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature

The Role of Solitude

in Paul Auster’s Prose

I herby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself I used only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography

Brno, 15 April 2008 Richard Tetek

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mgr Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D., for her patience, kind guidance and worthy advice

Contents

Introduction

The aim of this thesis is to analyse Paul Auster’s prose in connection with the theme of solitude I have chosen two of his books, namely The Invention of Solitude and The New York Trilogy, because they provide a wide range of views on the topic The two books deal with similar questions and they both reflect Auster’s opinions on the role of solitude in our lives

For most people the word solitude often carries mostly negative connotations It is connected with other expressions such as loneliness, friendlessness or isolation It is generally seen as something undesirable and unwanted Nevertheless, there inevitably are moments when we are alone Moreover, it is possible to find many examples of important figures throughout history who relished aloneness

I have decided to choose Paul Auster’s books because they focus on contemporary problems of our lives in an original way The theme of solitude, which is often connected with the quest for one’s identity, is paramount in Auster’s work, and it is one of the key issues he tries to explore

The purpose of this paper will be to examine Auster’s views on the role of solitude

in postmodern world and to identify what the term means for him I will analyse each book separately because they both approach the topic from a different perspective I will also try

to decide whether they have something in common

Finally, I would like to find out whether Auster’s understanding of solitude is more negative or positive I will describe possible advantages and disadvantages of aloneness in accordance with the both books

Because Paul Auster’s prose often draws on autobiographical material, I will include a brief biography and also a short introduction to each book in order to provide useful background for understanding Auster’s work

0.1 Paul Auster’s biography

Paul Auster was born on February 3, 1947 in Newark, New Jersey His parents Samuel and Queenie Auster were middle class Jews of Polish decent However, their marriage was unhappy and they later divorced In 1960 Auster’s uncle, who worked as a translator, left several boxes full of books in Auster’s house in storage Young Auster started to read them and it developed his interest in literature and writing

When his parents separated, Auster lived with his mothers and younger sister, who suffered from mental breakdowns After finishing high school, Auster went on to study literature at Columbia University, where he began his relationship with Lydia Davis Auster graduated in 1970 and started to work as a utility man on an oil tanker Between 1970 and

1974, Auster lived in France, where he tried to support himself with various translations and other occasional jobs (Kreutzer)

After his return to the USA, he married Lydia and the couple settled in New York, where their son Daniel was born in 1977 Auster was translating French poetry and some of his poems and essays were published However, the family had serious financial difficulties and the marriage was gradually disintegrating Auster also tried to write several plays but they were unsuccessful

Desperate to earn money, Auster even wrote a private-eye thriller under the pseudonym Paul Benjamin or invented a card game In spite of all those attempts, his financial situation did not change for the better In 1979, Auster’s father died and Auster inherited enough money to pursue his literary career Meanwhile, his marriage with Lydia collapsed They decided to live separately and later divorced It was at that time, when Auster started to work on The Invention of Solitude (Kreutzer)

In 1981, Auster met Siri Hustvedt, also a writer, and the two got married in the same year Soon, their daughter Sophie was born Things started to improve considerably for Auster Moreover, after publishing his next work, The New York Trilogy, he became popular worldwide Nowadays, Auster is considered to be “one of the foremost American novelists now writing” (Sim 186)

Paul Auster has published eleven novels, several books of poetry, many essays and translations He has also written a number of screenplays, for example for films like Smoke, Lulu on the Bridge or The Inner Life of Martin Frost

He is usually classified as a postmodern author (Sim 123) Auster often uses features of various genres like, for instance, detective or picaresque novels to explore themes which are typical of his writing Most of his books contain aspects of the author’s own life or references to other literature and they can be described as metafictional, where many of his characters are involved in a certain kind of writing or are writers themselves (Barone 5)

Intertextuality, fragmentation or vicious circles where the author himself enters the book, are some other techniques present in his work Search for identity, coincides, contingency of language, solitude or ambiguity of reality are the key topics of his prose (Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia) Paul Auster still lives and works in Brooklyn, New York

1 The Invention of Solitude

The Invention of Solitude is Auster’s first published prose book Although it has many autobiographical features, it is not a typical autobiography Its aim is not just to describe Auster’s life but, more importantly, to put forward some universal questions Auster himself refuses to consider it as his autobiography and describes it as “a meditation about certain questions, using myself as the central character” (Auster, The Red Notebook 106) It is divided into two sections The first one is called Portrait of an Invisible Man and the second one The Book of Memory The two parts were originally written as two separate books, with a gap of about a year between them Nevertheless, they were published together under the name The Invention of Solitude in 1982

Auster started to write Portrait of an Invisible Man as a spontaneous reaction to his father’s sudden death It is written in the first person and it explores, among other things, the question of solipsism; whether, and to what extent, it is possible to understand other people’s feelings and emotions, whether we can penetrate someone else’s solitude

The Book of Memory was a direct response to the first part It is a confessional collage of thoughts, memories, quotations and meditation upon topics like fatherhood, identity and the sense of life, written in the third person It also tries to define what our solitude means for us and what our self consists of

The Invention of Solitude was the first Auster’s book attracting wider public attention and it opened the gate for his later literary career The reviews were mostly positive, although some were complaining that especially the second part is marred by

“recurrent pointless mannerism” (Merwin) Others pointed out that the abundance of allusions and references is a sign of Auster’s immaturity as a writer, and that the high number of quotes may put off the reader who is not familiar with them (Hamilton) The book, however, introduced the themes and topics that would later appear in most of his books and are crucial for his literary work: “The Invention of Solitude is both the ars poetica and the seminal work of Paul Auster To understand him we must start here; all his books lead us back to this one” (Bruckner 27) It also implies that mixing the real, autobiographical features with the fictional will become one of the trademarks of his prose The book is also important for understanding Auster’s views on solitude

1.1 Portrait of an Invisible Man

The death of his father comes as a big surprise for Auster Even though their mutual relationship could be described as cold and distant, Auster feels the need to explore

it deeper after his father dies He decides to achieve it through writing a memoir: “I thought: my father is gone If I do not act quickly, his entire life will vanish along with him” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 6) This implies that Auster sees their relationship

as unresolved Putting ideas on paper is a way of solving the problem He failed to do so while his father was alive and he feels he must do it now

From Auster’s point of view, his father was an unapproachable, withdrawn kind

of person On the surface, he had led a normal, sociable life but inside he stayed cold, without a real passion for anything around him This must have had a negative impact on his family because he was unable to express any passionate emotions of love for them: “He did not seem to be a man occupying space, but rather a block of impenetrable space in the form of a man” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 7) He had lived in his own solitary world, absent and closed even for the people closest to him In this sense, his existence seemed empty and invisible

After receiving a phone call informing him about his father’s death, Auster comes

to the old, solidly built house where his father had lived alone for fifteen years He finds going through his father’s things both terrible and fascinating The objects he comes across give him the illusion that his father is still there Only after he throws away his father’s ties, does he accept the fact that his father is dead

What Auster tries to do is to give his feelings some form, to organize them through writing them down He attempts to rediscover and reassess his relationship with his father Auster sees his father’s restrained behaviour as something negative and harmful He understands it as an attempt to hide from both himself and the world around him (Barbour 186) His father solitude and remoteness has no positive aspect for Auster:

Solitary But not in the sense being alone Not solitary in the way Thoreau was, for

example, exiling himself in order to find out where he was; not solitary in the way Jonah

was, praying for deliverance in the belly of the whale Solitary in the sense of retreat In the

sense of not having to see himself, of not having to see himself being seen by anyone else

(Auster, The Invention of Solitude 17)

There is no doubt that Auster suffered because his father was not able to show any emotions or passion towards his son According to Auster, the marriage of his parents was not the happy one from the very beginning His mother was already on the verge of leaving his father during their honeymoon Auster imagines his own conception as a result of “a passionless embrace, blind, dutiful groping between chilly hotel sheets” He even goes that far to call himself “a random homunculus” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 19) Eight months later when the baby was coming, his father refused to go to hospital with his wife and went to work She had to be taken to hospital and cared for by her sister He came only for a short visit to see his newborn son and went to work again

Auster’s early memories of his father are those of his absence Even when he did not work and stayed with his family, his father still seemed somehow distracted and absent-minded Auster explains that it was impossible for him to understand his father He could not get close to him; he was not able to penetrate through the emotional vacuum surrounding him As he puts it: “Impossible, I realize, to enter another’s solitude If it is true that we can ever come to know another human being, even to a small degree, it is only

to the extent that he is willing to make himself known” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 20)

Unfortunately for his son, the father seemed not able or willing to reveal what his real feelings were He never spoke about his emotions and refused to look into himself, as

if his inner life was something elusive even for him Instead, he hid himself behind clichés and fixed routines

Auster compares the state of his father’s inner world to the state of the house where his father had lived Since his wife had divorced him, his father occupied the enormous house all by himself for fifteen years until his sudden death He changed almost nothing since the rest of the family had left Auster noticed that: “Although he kept the house tidy and preserved it more or less as it had been, it underwent a gradual and ineluctable process of disintegration He was neat, he always put things back in their proper place, but nothing was cared for, nothing was ever cleaned” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 9) The house reminded of a place occupied by a stranger who stays there for some

time and then leaves it without being anyhow connected with it Auster sees it as a metaphor for his father’s role in the family; he just existed within it, but always stayed on the surface, there was nothing warm or passionate and it disintegrated in the end

After the death of Sam Auster, Paul, his only son, had to take care of his father’s property He went through the things left behind in the house Old clothes, razors, empty tubes of hair colouring, monogrammed toothbrushes: all those things haunted Auster when

he had to deal with them He notes that “there is nothing more terrible, I learned, than having to face the objects of a dead man” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude10) Once those things lost their purpose they have become only symbols of solitude, ghosts and remnants

of the deceased

Among other things, however, Auster finds something very precious for him In the bedroom closet, there are dozens of photographs of his father and the family Auster hopes that the photographs can reveal something about his father, something that can help him find the way into Sam Auster’s inner world It is rather symbolic when he discovers a photo album entitled “This is Our Life: The Austers” but finds out that it is empty inside

Another photograph found there could well serve as a symbol for the first part of the book It is an old trick photograph of his father (see the appendix) It depicts five men sitting round a table in a still position, gazing at each other When we look closer (the photograph is also on the book’s cover), we can see that all of them are identical, but taken from a different angle and put together to make it look as if five men were “conducting a séance” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 33) Throughout the whole Portrait of an Invisible Man, elusiveness and remoteness of his father becomes a recurring theme for Auster The stillness, coldness and artificiality of the picture seem to reflect Sam Auster’s personality as described in the book Everything looks perfect and neat on the surface, but underneath there is a gloomy emptiness and anxiety

Auster also ascertains another side of his father’s character he had not been aware before Some snapshots from his father’s youth and the time when he was a bachelor show him as a sociable man, always smiling and surrounded by women Therefore, for some people, Sam Auster could have been a witty, cheerful man with an intense social life Yet Auster’s view of his father is a bit more critical: “What people saw when he appeared before them, then, was not really him, but a person he invented, an artificial creature he

could manipulate in order to manipulate others He himself remained invisible, a puppeteer working the strings of his alter ego from a dark, solitary place behind the curtain” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 16)

Even his ex-girlfriends did not know Samuel Auster properly, as it is revealed when they surprisingly get know about each other’s existence They also knew only a part

of him: “He managed to elude them all” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 17)

What Auster acknowledges many times in the book is that it is almost impossible

to understand other people’s mind Our means of understanding are limited With this in mind, Auster ponders whether it is even possible to write about another person (Auster, The Red Notebook 106) We live solitary lives inside our minds and it is up to each individual

if, and to what extent, we let anyone in In this sense, we should not consider Portrait of an Invisible Man a typical biography Rather than that, it is a kind of meditation on a relationship, an attempt to put together memories and feelings and to cope with them via writing them down

During his search for his father’s past Auster finds a snapshot of his grandparents and their family There is his grandmother with his father, who was then a one-year-old baby, and other four children Auster spots that his grandfather is missing and that he had been cut out of the photograph Upset by the discovery, Auster reveals and old family secret, which can explain a lot about his father’s withdrawn and solitary character It is a secret of an old murder that had happened in his grandparent’s family in 1919

Auster's grandmother shot her husband because he had been cruel and unfaithful

to her She had to face a charge of murder but was later discharged and released Nevertheless, the family had move to a different part of the USA and the bonds to the other family members were broken Since then, the family moved constantly This contributed to their isolation: “In a family that had already closed in on itself, this nomadism walled them off entirely There were no enduring points of reference: no home, no town, no friends that could be counted on” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 51) The concept of nomadism and uprooting is often present throughout Auster's works It is as if something from his father’s past was passed on to his son and through him into his writing This feature can be also seen, together with the metaphorical sense of “hunger and yearning”, as one of the reflections of his Jewish origin and background (Rubin 66-68)

This experience must have had some impact on Auster's father Sam Auster was seven at the time of the murder and he remembered what had happened, although he was reluctant to speak about it It may be the key to his personality and it can explain his detached behaviour to some extent Thinking about those unhappy events Auster's remarks:

“I do not think they explain everything, but there is no question they explain a great deal A boy cannot live through this kind of thing without being affected by it as a man” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 38)

Later on, when Sam Auster started his own business, he concentrated on earning money Art did not mean much to him because he could not see any direct link between an aesthetic experience and profit The fact that his son wanted to become a writer and struggled to earn his living by occasional translating, must have been a disappointment for him Paul Auster, however, sees writing as one of the most important things in his life Auster affirms that “writing is no longer an act of free will for me; it’s a matter of survival” (Auster, The Red Notebook 123) Pascal Bruckner writes in an essay about Auster that “his father had denied him the usual outlet of youth: rebellion, because you can’t rebel against a phantom” (Bruckner 27) Nevertheless, writing can be seen as an act of rebellion against his father’s values, as well as an attempt of the writer to define who he is

It is a strange paradox that Auster was able to become a writer due to the money

he inherited after his father had died Until then, he had struggled hard to earn his living and could not fully concentrate on his writing In this sense, the death of his father saved his future as a writer (Auster, The Red Notebook 132) The Invention of Solitude is a way, apart from other things, how to reconcile with his father: “The son would never stop repaying this debt, would never finish reimbursing the deceased, in prose, for his fearsome gift As payment Auster seeks to revive the image of this man he barely knew” (Bruckner 27)

The theme of a sudden inheritance appeared in Auster’s other books too It saves Nash in The Music of Chance (2006) as well as Fogg in Moon Palace (1992) Blending the autobiographic with the fictional is typical of Auster The boundary between the two is often blurred in his works

Another paradox is that although Auster finds out that the writing about his father

is much more demanding and painful than he had thought, he is afraid to finish it: “I want

to postpone the moment of ending….when I step into this silence, it will mean that my father has vanished forever” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 69)

This will not happen, however Paul Auster’s relationship with his father will stay partly unresolved and the theme will keep haunting Auster, as his apparent from his later novels In an interview, Auster confessed that he still thinks a lot about his father (Contat) Although their relationship was painful and complicated, there is no doubt that Paul Auster loved him deeply

1.2 The Book of Memory

Although the second part of the book also deals with the father–son relationship, it differs from the first section in many aspects Firstly, Auster decided to write it in the third person, referring to himself as A In many ways, The Book of Memory is even more personal and that is why it was more difficult for him to put it together He explains that “in order to write about myself, I had to treat myself as though I were someone else” (Auster, The Red Notebook 106) It enables him to distance himself from the text and to be more honest and open

Secondly, it explores new topics and offers different points of views on the role of solitude The crucial theme, however, is a search for identity Auster tries to find out who

he really is; he wants to go through the pieces that his self is made of He examines the role

of our memories and the past in our lives, as well as the nature of chance a coincidences in our lives For him, “the book wasn’t written as a form of therapy; it was an attempt to turn myself inside-out and examine what I was made of” (Auster, The Red Notebook 136) The theme of solitude links the second part of the book with the first one, but now, Auster concentrates more on his own solitude and its creative potential (Barbour 186)

Auster sees writing as a solitary activity: “Every book is an image of solitude….its words represent many months, if not years, of one men’s solitude.” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 145) Every writer uses his own methods and ways of writing In Auster’s case, writing takes place in his room, alone, just with a pen and a notebook or a piece of paper

Aloneness can stimulate one’s imagination and creativity (Buchholz 222) Artist’s room is a dream place, which encourages the mind to roam in time and space and to explore distant worlds (Barbour 190) The author becomes someone else; he becomes a part of his story The bonds with the outer world must be cut for a while so that some new ideas can emerge

From the reader’s point of view, reading someone’s book means sharing the author’s solitude for a moment Both the reader and the writer live within the same story but each of them can perceive it from a different perspective The worlds they live in are different, yet there definitely is some kind of bond present: “Reading literature creates a

kind of companionship that preserves the solitariness of writing and reading” (Barbour 193) Auster feel that connection most strongly when he translates poetry He projects his own feelings and thoughts onto someone else’s work:

Even though there is only one man in the room, there are two A images himself as a kind of ghost of that other man, who is both there and not there, and whose

book is both the same and not the same as the one he is translating Therefore, he tells

himself, it is possible to be alone and not to be alone at the same moment (Auster, The

Invention of Solitude145- 146)

Writing the The Book of Memory is similar for Auster It is a collage of voices, of his “ghosts”, that have their say in his writing He is and he is not alone It is him and it is not him who writes the book: “That book has dozens of authors, and I wanted them all to speak through me In the final analysis, The Book of Memory is a collective work” (Auster, The Red Notebook 144) Moreover, this postmodern form of a textual fragmentation can give the reader more freedom in the way the text is perceived at the expense of author’s control It is the reader who can decide “which paths to follow, assembling the text according to her own desires” (Geyh XXIV)

Sharing stories also plays an important role for his relationship with his own son Daniel Auster’s marriage with his first wife, Lydia Davis, was gradually collapsing at the time when he was writing The Invention of Solitude The couple lived separately and Auster could see his three-years-old son only occasionally (Kreutzer) Although they do not see each other very often, Auster wants to make sure that he will not repeat the mistake of his father He does everything possible to assure his son of his love Auster wants to redefine and reinvent the meaning of solitude and tries to use it more creatively He hopes that his solitude will not have the destructive effect on Daniel

By sharing some of his experiences of aloneness with his son, he wants to provide the conditions for Daniel to develop his capacity to be alone (Barbour 189) Children need some time alone as well as the assurance of their parent’s love Being together but having chance to fulfil one’s need for privacy, can maintain our relationships healthy Our capacity to be alone in adult life has its origin in our childhood when the infant has an experience of being alone in the presence of the mother or the father Parents

should spend some time with their children without playing or focusing their attention on them all the time The child will then learn how to cope with his own solitude later on The ability to be alone without being anxious is also an aspect of emotional maturity (Storr 18-20)

Children should be given an opportunity to be alone in order to get in touch with their inner feelings They often have their special hiding place, for example a spot in their bedroom or in a garden, where they can retreat if they feel such a need Nevertheless, all children need to feel secure and be aware of their parent’s love They should also have a chance to spend some time alone to use their imagination (Buchholz 155-156) Storytelling

is one of the natural ways how to achieve it

Throughout the book, Auster often mentions reading stories to his son One of these stories is the story of Pinocchio Pinocchio’s separation and the reunion with his father Geppetto is symbolical for Auster Pinocchio saves Geppetto from the belly of a shark and becomes a real boy It can be seen as a metaphor applicable to Auster and Daniel, but also to Auster’s relationship with his own father

Daniel, too, relishes his time alone It gives him chance to retreat into a world of fantasy and it helps to trigger his imagination: “I have to be alone to think,” he says to his father (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 139) Accordingly, his father needs some time alone to arrange his ideas and write them down Daniel shares his father’s interest in stories Through reading stories, they create a bond between them

The link between the author and the reader is very important for Auster on a more universal level Both the author and the reader live in their separate worlds, but they still share what they have in common for that moment; the story He experiences the same while reading to Daniel:

Auster interprets the act of reading as a form of companionship based on the shared solitude of author and reader The oxymoron `shared solitude´ represents an

idealized fusion of aloneness and communion It is a union of opposites that may be

logically absurd, but expresses a spiritual yearning for synthesis or reconciliation of the

tensions of human existence Auster’s way of describing the writing and reading of

literature strives to reconcile solitude and relationship to others He tries to reconceive

solitude as not solipsistic isolation but the necessary condition for a more meaningful form

Auster sees his writing as a connector with the world He also imagines that, in the future, his son would read his book and he hopes that it would help him to express his emotions and feelings that his son cannot understand so far

Through the process of writing The Book of Memory, Auster’s son Daniel got seriously ill His diagnosis was a severe pneumonia with asthmatic complications, and he could have died if he was not moved to a hospital quickly Daniel had to stay in the hospital for some time, and his parents visited him regularly The horror of the possible death of his son causes a change in Auster’s perceptions of his own life: ”…it was only at that moment,

he later come to realize, that he finally grasped the full scope of his own fatherhood: the boy’s life meant more to him than his own; if dying were necessary to save his son, he would be willing to die (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 116) Moreover, it reminds him

of his own mortality and responsibility

At the time of writing the second part, Auster lived alone in a little room in 6 Varick Street His marriage had collapsed and his prospects were rather bleak (Kreutzer) The room becomes a central point of his life Here, he decides to use his solitude creatively and employ writing as a tool of introspection and self-examination According the tone of the book, we can feel that it was not a happy period of his life for Auster It is as if the reality of the outside world ceased to exist for him: “It is a hermetic season, a long moment

of inwardness The outer world, the tangible world of materials and bodies, has come to seem no more than an emanation of his mind” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 82) His quest is of a spiritual nature He feels it has to be done in order to get further with his life:

The world has shrunk to the size of this room for him, and for as long as it takes him to understand it, he must stay where he is Only one thing is certain: he cannot

be anywhere until he is here And if he does not manage to find this place, it would be

absurd for him to think of looking for another (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 83)

The room serves as a microcosm, as a place of imagination It is a place of resurrection and of a new start It is “a kind of mental uterus, site of a second birth” (Bruckner 28) But before that, Auster must undergo a painful process of self-exploration,

he must dig deep into himself In this respect, his enclosure is not a nihilistic escape from the world leading to oblivion, because its purpose is positive: to reconstruct the self through

exploring all the thoughts and inner voices that immerse in his mind He must focus upon his inner world to find out what it consists of (Rubin 64)

The notion of enclosed spaces is a paramount theme in Auster’s works It later reappears in The New York Trilogy and Moon Palace (1992), but the theme can be traced in almost all of his novels They are places of a profound significance For Auster, enclosed spaces are the places of a change, or, at least, places where the characters try to get answers for the questions that haunt them Nevertheless, the goal is not always achieved because there simply are not any definite answers

In a metaphorical sense, the room serves both as “a tomb” and as “a womb” (Ting) The walls do not have to be seen as a barrier; they can function as a protective shell that enables the mind to roam freely Auster gives his friend S., whom he met while living

in Paris, as an example: “He lived in the tiniest, most minimal space I’ve ever been in And yet, he probably had the biggest mind of any person I’ve ever known, and he managed to inhibit that space as if he were utterly free” (Irwin)

In The Book of Memory Auster often refers to other writes like for example Thoreau, Hölderlin, Emily Dickinson and Anne Frank All those writers mentioned in the book, have one thing in common Although for various reasons, they all spent some time in confined spaces It was a cabin for Thoreau, a tower for Hölderlin and rooms or apartments for Dickinson and Frank They all had some, though very different, experience of solitude Their writing, too, often draws on their seclusion That is why Auster feels affiliated with them

Visiting Anne Frank’s room in Amsterdam was a direct impulse for writing The Book of Memory When he entered the room, he found himself overflowed with emotions:

“…not sobbing, as might happen in response to a deep inner pain, but crying without sound, the tears streaming down his cheeks, as if purely in response to the world It was at that moment, he later realized, that The Book of Memory began” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 87) There is no doubt that the book has its origin in a sense of dissatisfaction and

a deep anguish Auster wants to fulfil his yearning for finding his place in the world by writing a literary work (Rubin 62)

Auster’s penchant for confined spaces is not limited to rooms Many times, he refers to the story of Jonah in a belly of a whale, as well as to the story of Pinocchio and his

father, imprisoned in a belly of a shark He describes these stories as metaphors, as reflections of situations similar to his own life Auster understands the Book of Jonah as the most dramatic story of solitude in the Bible It is interesting, that it is also the only one written in the third person The parallel with The Book of Memory is obvious Jonah refuses God’s command to speak to the Ninevites and decides to escape on a ship But God sends a tempest on the ship which does not stop until Jonah is thrown into the sea There, he is devoured by a great fish Jonah stays in its belly for three days until he reconciles with God

In the belly of the fish, solitude equals silence, as his refusal to speak leads to his disaster

As Auster puts it:”Who seeks solitude seeks silence; who does not speak is alone; is alone, even unto death- Jonah encounters the darkness of death” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 134) Jonah, however, does not die, but finds his way back to life through introspection and praying to God, and is finally released back onto dry land The fish was sent not to punish Jonah and kill him, but to give him another chance Jonah has to go through that experience of dying and vanishing in order to prepare for new life Then, he is ready to speak and start again It is interesting, how Auster reflects on that moment: “In the darkness of solitude that is death, the tongue is finally loosened, and at that moment it begins to speak, there is an answer And even if there is no answer, the man has begun to speak” (Auster, The Invention of Solitude 134)

Similarly, Auster hopes to find his way back to life, but in his case, he uses writing instead of praying as a means of introspection (Barbour 192) His writing is supposed to provide the answers For him, the crucial question is- Who am I, and what is

my place in the world? He also acknowledges that he may not get the answer but the important thing is to look for it

In the same way as Jonah spent some time in the belly of a whale, Auster’s spends his time in the room in Varick Street That is where his seclusion takes place Exploring his thoughts, he discovers a strange paradox Being physically separated from others does not mean being alone completely He finds out that the more he is alone in a physical sense, the bigger and more understandable is his mental connection with others All our thoughts, memories and feeling have their origin in a connection with something, objects or people From this point of view, it means that we are never alone mentally: “The more intensely you are alone, the more deeply you plunge into a state of solitude, the more deeply you feel

that connection It isn’t possible for a person to isolate himself from other people” (Auster, The Red Notebook 144)

By “other people”, he means more than his family and people around him He applies the term to people from the past as well, to all the voices that speak inside him and have some influence on his live

No matter how apart you might find yourself in a physical sense- whether you’ve been marooned on a desert island or locked up in a solitary confinement- you

discover that you are inhibited by others Your language, your memories, even your sense

of isolation- every thought in your head has been born from your connection with

others…….That is why that book is filled with so many references and quotations, in

order to pay homage to all the others inside me (Auster, The Red Notebook 144)

The question is, though, whether we can find our genuine self in that myriad of voices Some argue that it is not possible to attain because the self “resists categorization” (Bruckner 31) The search for it “is an eternal quest, without guaranteed results, which can never achieve closure” (Bruckner 32) The quote would well correspond with Auster’s findings about the nature of the self He does not find all the answers but writing the book helps him to overcome a difficult period of his life

2 The New York Trilogy

The New York Trilogy is Paul Auster’s first book of fiction It was written soon after The Invention of Solitude and it explores and evolves similar themes It consists of three parts: City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room The three novellas of the trilogy were originally released separately in 1985 and 1986, but they were later published collectively

as The New York Trilogy in 1987

Although it was at first difficult for Auster to find a publisher and he received seventeen rejections, it later earned him international acclaim There is also a comics adaptation of City of Glass, done by David Mazzucchelli and Paul Karasik in 1994

It is not easy to define the genre of the novel It has been described as

“postmodernist detective fiction” (Sim 126), “a surreal detective novel” (Begley) or “a meta-anti-detective story” (Sorapure72) Although it uses some elements characteristic for detective genre, it cannot be considered as a typical detective prose Auster explains: “I felt

I was using those elements for such different ends, for things that had so little to do with detective stories, and I was somewhat disappointed by the emphasis that was put on them…I tried to use certain genre conventions to get to another place, another place altogether” (Auster, The Red Notebook 108-109) Using pastiche is one of the typical features of postmodern literature In Paul Auster’s case, genres like detective fiction can provide “ready-made forms, ideal for postmodern miscegenation” (Sim 126)

Unlike detective fiction, The New York Trilogy does not provide a solution and explanation to the case at the end of the book It leaves more space for the reader and, in this respect, it can be more demanding Or, as Auster puts it: “If a true follower of a detective fiction ever tried to read one of these books, I’m sure he would be bitterly disappointed Mystery novels always give answers; my work is about asking questions” (Auster, The Red Notebook 139) Therefore, it is interesting that City of Glass was nominated for an Edgar Award for best mystery novel (Geyh 443)

2.1 City of Glass

The theme of solitude is closely linked with the question of identity in City of Glass Quinn, the main character of the book, spends his time alone in a small New York apartment His wife and son died a few years ago, and his life lost its sense Quinn escapes into his solitude and lives in his own world, occupying the space between reality and fantasy He seems to have no ambitions anymore; he does not consider himself an integrated personality Presumably, he hopes to get rid of his pain and distress together with his old identity His life takes place inside his head: “although in many ways Quinn continued to exist, he no longer existed for anyone but himself” (Auster, The New York Trilogy 4) Then, one night, there is a strange phone call, which will turn Quinn’s life upside down

This is the starting point of the novel Again, there is a writer, this time called Quinn, alone in a room Again, he tries to find his place in the world The situation reminds that of The Invention of Solitude, but this time the reader gets more; he gets a story City of Glass deals with similar questions as The Invention of Solitude, but Auster’s approach is different He decides to write a story that still draws on his personal life, but this time he shifts it into a fictional world For Auster, however, both the “normal” and the “fictional” world are ambiguous and pregnant with the unexpected and unpredictable Our world can

be as absurd and incomprehensible as the world of fiction Therefore, there is no need to define the exact border between the two (Auster, The Red Notebook 117)

At the time of writing City of Glass, Auster’s life has undergone many changes He had met Siri Hustved, his future wife, and fell in love (Auster, The Red Notebook 141) The tone of City of Glass, however, is far from optimistic The feelings of loss and deprivation are still visible, together with a sense of alienation to the outer world Auster explains: “In many ways, I think of City of Glass as an homage to Siri, as a love letter in the form of a novel I tried to imagine what would have happened to me if I hadn’t met her, and what I came up with was Quinn Perhaps my life would have been something like his… “(Auster, The Red Notebook 142) Quinn thus represents Auster’s possible future if he had not met Siri