Confinement in Paul Auster's Moon Palace and the New York Trilogy

II. TELLING STORIES

A THE WRITING OF THE BOOK

1/ Writing for myself

Motivations

For Austerian characters, confinement in limited spaces is closely interwoven with the act of writing. Indeed it happens that a great majority of Auster's protagonists write in rooms, the room being for them the matrix of artistic creation as well as an essential element in the art of hunger performed by Auster's heroes. But what does push the characters to write? What should be established at the very outset is that when the characters start writing, they are all somehow in a situation of distress, of disorder. When Quinn, in City of Glass, begins to get out of his depth in the Stillman's case, he buys a red notebook in the hope that if he writes everything down, he will be able to stabilize the situation: «In that way, perhaps, things might not get out of control»^83(*) Writing is therefore an attempt to restore order. In In The Country of Last Things, Anna Blume begins to write her novel letter just after Isabel (her only friend in the City of Destruction) has died and all her possessions have been stolen. In this moment of great personal despair, writing becomes a refuge and a substitute for personal contact. For all Auster's writer-characters, there is a common motivation that drives them to start writing: a feeling of urgency. Anna Blume writes «Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming urge to pick up one of the pencils and begin this letter. By now, it is the one thing that matters to me: to have my say at last, to get all down on these pages before it is too late.»^84(*) In Leviathan, Peter Aaron hurries to tell his story before the FBI agents find out the truth on their own. In Moon Palace, Effing decides to write his obituary because he realizes that time is short before he dies: «I'm running out of time and we've got to get started before it's too late.»^85(*) In The Invention of Solitude, written shortly after his father's death, Auster writes «I thought: my father is gone. If I do not act quickly, his entire life will vanish along with him.»^86(*)

A paradoxical necessity

«Firstly and finally, all along the line, you write because there is something you WANT to write, HAVE to write, for yourself.»^87(*) This quotation by Harold Pinter seems to indicate that writing is the result of a need, of an inner necessity that drives you to write for your own sake. However, according to Auster, there is a paradox in the act of writing. You start writing with the intention to stabilize things, to find relief, and, as you write, you discover new problems and new sufferings. Yet, painful as the act of writing may be, you keep on writing and you even dread the moment when you will have to stop writing. In The Invention of Solitude, writing about his dead father, Auster declares: «Instead of healing me as I thought it would, the act of writing has kept this wound open.»^88(*) In an interview, Auster makes this paradox explicit: «l'écriture est sûrement une maladie. On écrit pour combler un manque. Quelque chose ne va pas. On écrit peut être pour se guérir. Je ne sais pas.»^89(*) It can be said that the pain that resurfaces from the act of writing participates in the necessity to keep on writing. It is even through this masochistic seeking for pain that the writer makes art, the art of hunger. The necessity to keep on writing is also motivated by the fear to end one's writings. Quinn, in City of Glass is all the more in anguish as he realizes that he is running out of pages in his notebook. Auster, in Portrait of an Invisible Man, writes that he wants «to postpone the moment of ending»^90(*). The moment they end their book is synonymous with death for the characters (as for Quinn for example), that is why they hold on so much to their writing: «After that, Sam's book became the most important thing in my life. As long as we kept working on it, I realized the notion of a possible future would continue to exist for us.»^91(*) In an interview, Auster explains the ambiguous relationships he cultivates with the act of writing: «It's an activity I seem to need in order to stay alive. I feel terrible when I'm not doing it. It's not that writing brings me a lot of pleasure -but not doing it is worse.»^92(*)

* ⁸³ City of Glass, page 38.

* ⁸⁴ In The Country of Last Things, page 79.

* ⁸⁵ Moon Palace, page 128.

* ⁸⁶ The Invention of Solitude, page 6.

* ⁸⁷ Harold Pinter, an introduction to Plays Two, called Writing For Myself, page IX.

* ⁸⁸ The Invention of Solitude, page 32.

* ⁸⁹ In La Solitude du Labyrinthe, interview with Gérard de Cortanze. 02/03/1992, page 141.

* ⁹⁰ The Invention of Solitude, page 65.

* ⁹¹ In The Country of Last Things, page 114.

* ⁹² An Interview with Larry Mc Caffery and Sinda Gregory in The Red Notebook, page 116.