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MASARYK UNIVERSITY the Role of Solitude in Paul Auster's Prose

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MASARYK UNIVERSITY the Role of Solitude in Paul Auster's Prose MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature The Role of Solitude in Paul Auster’s Prose Bachelor Thesis Brno 2008 Author: Supervisor: Richard Tetek Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D. 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 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D., for her patience, kind guidance and worthy advice. 3 Contents Introduction 5 0.1 Paul Auster’s Biography 6 1. The Invention of Solitude 8 1.1 Portrait of an Invisible Man 9 1.2 The Book of Memory 15 2. The New York Trilogy 22 2.1 City of Glass 23 2.2 Ghosts 30 2.3 The Locked Room 34 Conclusion 39 Resume 41 Bibliography 42 Appendix 46 4 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. 5 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). 6 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. 7 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. 8 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).
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