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Paul Auster: Cinema and Literature PAUL AUSTER: CINEMA AND LITERATURE MIHAELA POPUŢA West University of Timişoara Abstract: The present paper examines Paul Auster’s relationship with cinema and literature, and observes how the stories he creates may or may not differ in the two mediums. With this purpose in mind, the paper focuses on Auster’s most known cinematic narrative, Smoke, to show how his stories become representations of collective consciousness. Keywords: cinema, literature, memory, narrative 1. Introduction The encounter with the film milieu was an auspicious one for Auster, since it enlarged his understanding of the world and its many functions. It brought into question the idea of truth and falsity, as well as that of identity and understanding of the Other. In an interview from 2013, the author explained to the audience the relationship we have with film, through his own experience. What he was saying is that we live in a world of lies, and we ingest these fabrications every minute, without thinking twice. Each lie is propaganda of some sort or another and, at the end of the day, our business is to turn lies into truth, to distort the image in such a way that we can accept it and live with it. Thus, lies become reality, or more precisely parallel worlds. The different universes we create are as numerous as we are, and individuals are taught to look for them from infancy. They are transformed into islands of joy and tranquility, which let us wonder and rest. People need art in order to be able to tell the truth. They need stories so that they can express that which is hidden or obscure. Movies give rise to the dichotomy real-false and force us to think about it and treat it as possibility. As an ardent film lover, Paul Auster considers that movies do not pollute the brain, but rather give it more food for thought. Due to this, he makes a point of combining the two mediums, literature and cinema, in his stories. Subsequently, his narratives are very visual in their depictions of impossible everyday situations, as well as of the environment these situations occur in. In truth, the author employs cinematic narratives to draw the reader’s attention upon the ways the remembrance process functions. To this effect, his stories are embedded in the collective consciousness of his readers. One B.A.S., vol. XXIV, 2018 208 by one, Auster’s novels display a fascination with the intimate and what it means to be human. His interest is piqued by the ordinary as much as by the extraordinary. Auster is concerned with that which we share with others; that which makes us similar. As such, it is sufficient to examine his stories in order to see that, if anything, the author makes a point of writing about himself as another. Doing so, Auster demonstrates that everyone can write about anyone. The difficulty of writing stands not in the characters, but in the medium and the relationship one has with the world around. That is why Auster’s narratives are created around stories that focus on the collective nature of life and on the individuals’ shared memories, the latter being the most powerful visual tools at hand to transform literature into film. 2. Cinema and literature To this day, Paul Auster has been credited for four movies: Smoke, Blue in the Face, Lulu on the Bridge, and The Inner Life of Martin Frost. Some of them were collaborations, while others were solely written and coordinated by himself. The first two, Smoke and Blue in the Face, came out in 1995 as the result of director Wayne Wang’s persistence in the resolution that Auster’s writings are screen suited. Smoke came out of an unanticipated request from Mike Levitas, the editor of Op-Ed page of the New York Times, who was in search of a short story to publish on Christmas Day. (Hutchinson 2013:50) Auster had never presented his public with a short story before, and was quite at odds with this project mostly for the reason that he had no idea what to write about. He just continued to ruminate on the issue and then, out of a sudden, he got inspired by the Dutch cigarettes he was smoking. Without any effort, the story developed bringing to his mind the man he had bought the cigars from, the place, the time, and so on. Auster simply went with the story and pondered on the ways in which we bind relationships with others. We pass by so many individuals per day, and we talk to some, just for a minute or so, and then we move on. This does not make us friends, yet somehow we get to know one another. These ties make us feel more alive and render life bearable by giving us names and purposes. So, we become connected in so many ways, that we do not even realize it, until it is too late. This was the spark that ignited Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story, which would be later transformed into a movie with one sequel entitled Blue in the Face. Smoke’s narrative is far from the stories the author has accustomed his readers with. I believe that the movie succeeds in bringing the audience even closer to reality than Auster’s novels do, mainly because it reflects urban life and the collective consciousness of its subjects so well. According to Mark Brown (2007:127), “Auster presents a mode of urban living, not in the dystopian mold that we’ve been used to […] but more in the way of affirmative and positive relationships of communal support through informal social groupings; that is family and friends.” Interestingly enough, apart from the groupings depicted in The Brooklyn Follies (2005) and Sunset Park (2010), the other similar gatherings were usually forced upon the characters. Smoke and Blue in the Face appear to be amid the rare narratives that allow 209 HUMAN, POSTHUMAN complicity among Auster’s characters. Furthermore, the characters are of all ethnicities, which indicates Auggie’s open-mindness. Such is the power of the setting that both stories revolve around Auggie Wren’s tobacco shop and the individuals who populate it. That is why the shop is as important to the story as the characters are, because it renders the reality of Brooklyn. Auggie even points out its status as a place of tolerance and social solidarity in one of the scenes: Sure, it’s a dinky little nothing neighborhood store. But everybody comes in here. I mean, not just the smokers. The kids come in, the school kids, for their candy […] old Mrs. McKenna comes in for the soap opera magazines […] Crazy Louie for his cough drops […] Frank Diaz for his El Diario […] fat Mr. Chang for his crossword puzzles. I mean, the whole neighborhood comes in here. It’s a hangout and it helps to keep the neighborhood together. Go twenty blocks from here, twelve-year-old kids are shooting each other for their sneakers. I mean, you close this store, and it’s one more nail in the coffin. You’ll be helping to kill off this neighborhood. (Auster 2003: 257) The story which links the two mediums is not too complicated, at least not as complex as some of the other narratives Auster has written. Paul Benjamin, a customer of Auggie’s, and a writer, has lost his wife in a shooting outside the tobacco shop. The other regulars hear the story from Auggie and suddenly some kind of relationship starts to evolve between them. We then find out that Auggie has been marked by that death too, and we are introduced to his story. It appears Paul is not the only artist in the group. Auggie’s hobby is photography. He has more than four thousand pictures of the same place, namely the corner of the street on which his tobacco shop is located. They are all taken at the same early hour when Auggie opens the store, and they have been his way of capturing life in the past ten or so years. In one of the important scenes in the movie, Auggie shows Paul these pictures. Truly amazed and a little taken aback by this hobby, Paul looks through Auggie’s album seeing only similarities between the pictures: same street, same people, same black and white setting. Auggie on the other hand, is more aware of the subtleties in light or characters. In his mind everything is still in motion. There is here a refined allusion Auster makes to still and motion pictures; a comparison of sorts to the still pages of a book and the moving images on a screen? Or is it that he simply reiterates what he was saying in The Art of Hunger about poetry and prose: “poetry is like taking still photographs, whereas prose is like filming with a moving camera.” (Auster 1997:303) This would shed light upon the way he constructs his narratives as always moving towards something, and as a consequence, never-ending. At any rate, the comparison is easier to notice when we think about Paul’s job as a writer and Auggie’s as a discoverer of stories. Auggie’s character is different from Paul’s because he can see beyond the images. While Paul creates the stories of his fictional characters, Auggie just catches them visually. He does not need words to render them visible, he just needs people and situations. His enterprise is more of a documentary order, a voyeuristic one. Just B.A.S., vol.
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