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Synopsis & Review | Moon Palace by Paul Auster, Faber and Faber, 1989

Summary Synopsis

Marco Fogg was born in Boston. He lost his parents in his childhood. So his uncle Victor brought him up. He managed to graduate Columbia University in a very poor and harsh condition, to keep a promise to uncle Victor. Then he had stayed the Central Park as a homeless for a month, he was founded and helped by Kitty Wu and Zimmer, and he recovered.

Then he found an odd job at the student department office of Columbia. The job was to go with a strange blind old man, Thomas Effing a friend or a speaker, and to hear his life full of ups and downs and to write his autobiography. The autobiography had finished, Effing passed away on purpose.

Marco sent a copy of the autobiography to Effing’s estranged son Solomon Barber, then he visited to New York to see Marco…

Book Review

Paul Auster’s 5th long novel published in 1989. And the first full-scale long novel by Auster. A story of young man, and it describes and traces his adolescence and its hard life by his first person viewpoint. And it includes many sub-episodes of sub-characters, then they connects finally. I think parts of this story might be based on Auster’s real experiences.

The first grand narrative by Paul Auster. There are many characters, scenes and episodes and various elements. The New York Trilogy and In the Country of Last Things are preparation for full-scale writings. This novel is one of consequence of Auster’s former works from The Invention of Solitude to In the Country of Last Things. In this novel, profound self-searching or think of identity and good storytelling are wonderfully combined.

In the begging, this novel is only a story of a miserable and lonely young man and his self-searching. But many episodes connects and this story develops a grand family history of three ages. Then Macro solved his riddle and found family roots.

Effing’s talks in chapter 4 and 5, are long, dull and hard to read like the cave Effing stayed. Effing’s job and talks are a kind of spiritual trial for Marco. Thorough this trial, Marco’s mind grew up, he spent a happy time for a while and he found the key to solve the riddle of his family like to see a light from a dark cave.

For twenty-years, I had live with an unanswerable question, and little by little I had come to embrace that enigma as the central fact about myself. My origins were a mystery, and I would never know where I had come from. This was what defined me, and by now I was used to my own darkness, clinging to it as a source of knowledge and self-respect, trusting in it as an ontological necessity. (p. 286)

This description is the most important one of this novel, I think. This is the meaning, the message or the thought of this novel. Loneliness, hardship and to have nothing were Marco’s identity, pride and restraint for Marco. Marco had been lived by this negative identity or motivation. Also his riddle of roots were solved, so he unexpectedly lost even this negative identity and motivation, and he must live from zero. At the same time, he lost all his family, blood relations and friends.

The Moon is the most appeared symbol in this novel. For example, Moon Palace, egg, uncle Victor’s bands Moonlight Moods and Moon Men, 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing and Ralph Albert Blakelock’s Moonlight. I think it is the metaphor signifies light in the darkness, or hope in tragedy. In the end, Marco must live from zero but his mind was relived and he found the hope of life, his adolescence ended and his new life started to begin.

Details of the Book

Moon Palace
Paul Auster
Faber & Faber, London, 5 Feb 2004
320 pages, £8.99
ISBN: 9780571142200

Synopsis & Review | The Locked Room by Paul Auster, Faber and Faber, 1988 (Originally Published in 1987)

Summary Synopsis

Fanshawe was the best friend of mine. He was smart, sophisticated and striking but excellent normal boy. Dropped out of Harvard, he became a crew of an oil tanker, then wandered around Paris and South France. And he wrote much of writing such as novels, poetry, dramas and notebooks. But he didn’t want to publish them.

He got back to the United States, then he married Sophie. But he suddenly disappeared from her, after three or four months he had promised he would publish the manuscripts within a year.

Sophie requested me to publish Fanshawe’s manuscripts. Then the Fanshawe’s books earned a great reputation and sold well, so we got a certain amount of money from the books. And I became a kind of agent of his books and wrote articles and reviews about him. I got the job to write a biography of Fanshawe, so I went to Paris and South France for searching the traces of him. Then I lost myself in searching for and thinking about Fanshawe…

Book Review

I think this novel is an autobiographical story of Paul Auster. The story indicates a self-reflection or self-affirmation of Auster himself.

Auster reflected his very hungry youth to Fanshawe, he got on Tanker and wandered around Europe, Paris and the South France. Episodes and histories of the narrator and Fanshawe resemble his real experiences appeared on his autobiographical essay the Art of Hunger. On the other hand, he reflected older him after he had became writer.

The main and exterior story of this novel is the narrator sought Fanshawe’s whereabouts. But the true theme of this novel is Fanshawe’s true intention, and philosophical questions to what are today’s human identity and the meaning and the meaninglessness of life and writing, and considerations on to create a story and its difficulty.

And the title The Locked Room means the locked room of the country house in South France, where Fanshawe had shut himself up. The room is the metaphor of Fanshawe’s locked true intention and mind.

Fanshawe was the alter ego or the other self of the narrator. The more the narrator pursued for and thought about Fanshawe, he felt difficulty and complexity like looking at himself or his doppelgänger. And Auster reflected himself on the two characters. So I think this complexity might be arose from the self-referring act as Auster sees Auster himself.

Different to Auster’s former two novel, this novel doesn’t modelled on detective stories. But this novel is a story of “hide and seek”, to search Fanshawe’s whereabouts and riddles. And the narrator said his act was like a detective. And, so, I think the narrator is not only detective of facts about Fanshawe, but also it seeks Fanshawe’s mind and true intention.

There’s a triple self-reflection or self-affirmation and story-telling structure was constructed by each one of Fanshawe, the narrator and Auster, I think. The narrator described things about Fanshawe. Auster described things about the narrator (and Fanshawe). By this self-reflection structure, this novel expresses and asks an answerless question of what are writing and the self.

This novel is slippery one. For example, there’s no description of content of Fanshawe’s writings, and there are no answer, result and destination. Also this novel is a writing about writing or a novel about writing novel. And words of Fanshawe’s red notebook was “their final purpose was to cancel each other out“ (§ 9, p. 313), also the notion can apply to this novel, the content of this novel is to cancel each other out. So there was no answer and solution, and only a state of contradiction was remain. No answer should be the answer of this novel and the consequence of the New York Trilogy.

The storytelling is very excellent and thrilling, also the philosophical considerings about writing and existence are significant. Auster succeed in compose this beautiful and thoughtful story by his real experiences. He splendidly expressed worth, delight agony and misery of writing and life.

Details of the Book

The New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
Faber & Faber, London, 2 Jun 2011
320 pages, £5.99
ISBN: 978-0571276554
Contents:

City of Glass
Ghosts
The Locked Room

Synopsis & Review | City of Glass from the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, 1985

Summary Synopsis

The trigger was a wrong number. A mystery writer in NY, Daniel Quinn accepted the case of Peter Stillman, as a private detective Paul Auster. Virginia Stillman, the wife of Peter Stillman, requested him to watch the same name father, Peter Stillman would discharge soon, the former professor of Columbia University wrote a book of extraordinary and occultist religious theory. He shut up his son in a room for nine years.

Quinn watched Stillman during two weeks, but he was wandering around a constant area of town only. Quinn tried to talk to Stillman but his talkings were incoherent. A day, Stillman suddenly checked out of the hotel he stayed, so Quinn lost track of Stillman…

Book Review

City of Glass is Paul Auster’s major debut novel originally published in 1985 and the first volume of his New York Trilogy.

A thirteen chaptered novel borrows the style of detective stories. And a snobbish postmodernist or avant-garde literature contains various elements and signs, many fine little interesting episodes and mentions of classical literature. It describes confusion, complexity, difficulties and emptiness of the contemporary huge metropolitan city, New York, and deconstructs the grand narrative, the significance and the form of traditional novels.

My first impression, I think this novel resembles Auster’s next novel Ghosts which also borrows the form of detective stories. Both of them is the story the main character was perplexed, confused and manipulated by a mysterious and confused person(s), and the storyline and elements are resemble.

Almost works by Paul Auster and contemporary novelists have a structure as to seek a riddle or something, and to try to solve questions and riddles. Auster indicated the structure itself on this novel in a symbolic form.

In some parts, Auster indicates his literary thought and philosophy of writing. For him the ideal form of novel is practical detective stories has full of meaning and no vainness. And Quinn was interested in the relation among stories and their combinations. And words are has no fixed meanings. Words and stories should be made by people’s activities as writing. But Stillman Sr. denied the thought of contemporary language theory, he think it was the fall. On this novel Quinn gathered fragments of things, wrote a red notebook and resulted in construct a his story. I think the Auster’s thought of writing is like behalf of Wittgenstein’s language game and Sartre’s existentialism, also it includes the postmodernist theory of deconstruction. It is an active and pragmatic policy of writing put emphasis on physicality, reality and 　contingency or randomness.

This novel is an excellent story of stories and writings. The stories in this story splendidly consists this story. And this novels is a self-reference novel. Quinn, a writer “Paul Auster” and the narrator are writers, the characters may reflect Paul Auster himself, and the notion what are writing, story and words is an important element in this novel.

And I think an outstanding characteristics of Paul Auster’s novels is there were many or some impressive, colourful and vivid scenes and interesting, intellectual and integral descriptions and little fine and funny episodes such as the notion about New York, mystery novels and detective, the description when Quinn bought a red notebook, the summary of The Garden and the Tower: Early Visions of New World by Peter Stillman, the portrayals of Grand Central Terminal and a writer, Paul Auster’s talking his essay on Don Quixote. They calls a harmony and an elaborated image like music, especially like a symphony or a concerto.

This novel is not an armchair story, is a story in the city and in motion or moving. I think Auster’s policy of writing a novel is novels should be written in motion or moving and in the city. The main characters of Auster’s novels moved, fought with difficulty, struggled in the real world or a restricted situation, and the stories progress. So it’s Auster’s practice of language game which was mentioned by Wittgenstein. Also in Auster’s novels, characters play their own language games construct words and stories.

And a sub theme of this novel is a struggle of the view to words and language between Quinn and Stillman Sr.. The former is a contemporary practical language theory like Wittgenstein’s language game or the Saussurean semiology. The latter is like the classical historical language study pursues Proto-Indo-European such as Wilhelm von Humboldt and Jacob Grimm.

But Quinn was defeated in the struggle and couldn’t solve the question and find the answer. Readers thought about and experienced the story with Quinn. But the the questions and the riddles were not solved, so this novel involuntary asked the readers about the problem of contemporary people’s emptiness and confusion. And this novel has no conclusion and answer of the question. Many riddles and questions remain. So I think no conclusion is the answer or conclusion.