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

Worlds within the word

If the words put together then form sentences and chapters and books, thus composing a world or a universe, Auster, through his approach to words, seems to show that there exist worlds within the word. Therefore this conception implies a movement opposite to the one of the Library of the Universe. Indeed, in the concept of the Library of the Universe, the word is somehow the base of the construction of the Universe. Here, the movement regresses from the word towards the worlds included in it. In City of Glass, Quinn encounters Stillman, a linguist who declares to Quinn: «Most people (...) think of words as stones, as great unmoveable objects with no life, as monads that never change.»^166(*) Indeed, the `stones' are a material used to build larger structures, like a gigantic library for example. But, as Quinn answers, the stones are not perpetual: «stones can change. They can be worn away by wind or water. They can erode. They can be crushed. You can turn them into shards, or gravel, or dust.»^167(*) Therefore, Auster suggests that the word is not the minimal entity. On the contrary, he asserts that the word can be further deconstructed, for the word is itself a container. What is striking is that Stillman's metaphor of words as stones is echoed in Moon Palace where Marco makes a similar observation:

Everything was constantly in flux, and though two bricks in a wall might strongly resemble each other, they could never be construed as identical. More to the point, the same brick was never really the same: it was wearing out, imperceptibly crumbling under the effects of the atmosphere, the cold, the heat, the storms that attacked it, and eventually, if one could watch it over the course of the centuries, it would no longer be there.^168(*)

So, if the words are `stones' or `bricks', they are nevertheless not perpetual, they can change according to what is around them, as Auster explains in The Invention of Solitude: «As in the meanings of words, things take on meaning only in relationship to each other. `two faces are alike' writes Pascal. `Neither is funny by itself, but side by side their likeness makes us laugh.' The faces rhyme for the eye, just as two words can rhyme for the ear.»^169(*) Auster's approach to words follows this principle. This explains why he is so fond of puns, the most famous one being the triad «room, tomb, womb»^170(*), which is a fundamental key to his universe. But this kind of pun also appears in his work of fiction. When Anna Blume introduces herself to the rabbi in In The Country of Last Things, he says: « `Blume. As in doom and gloom, I take it.' `That's right. Blume, as in womb and tomb. You have your pick.'»^171(*) Naturally, Stillman the linguist cannot resist punning on Quinn's name:

`Hmmm. Very interesting. I see many possibilities for this word, this Quinn, this...quintessence...of quiddity. Quick, for example. And quill. And quack. And quirk. Hmmm. Rhymes with grin. Not to speak of kin. Hmmm. Very interesting. And win. And fin. And din. And gin. And pin. And tin. And bin; Even rhymes with djinn. Hmmm. And if you sat it right, with been. Hmm. Yes, very interesting. I like your name enormously Mr Quinn. It flies off in so many directions at once.'^172(*)

Watching carefully the words that Stillman associates with Quinn, it is puzzling to notice that a lot of these words are actually tied up with Quinn's character. As François Gallix explains in his critical work on Moon Palace, «Auster seems to be showing that if all words can be punned on, it is only because each word contains another world of words, in a metaphysical mise en abyme that reflects the human mind as much as it is a flight of fancy on the reader's part.»^173(*)

* ¹⁶⁶ City of Glass, page 75. (my italics)

* ¹⁶⁷ Ibid.

* ¹⁶⁸ Moon Palace, page 122.

* ¹⁶⁹ The Invention of Solitude, page 161.

* ¹⁷⁰ The Invention of Solitude, page 160

* ¹⁷¹ In the Country of Last Things, page 101

* ¹⁷² City of Glass, page 75

* ¹⁷³ François Gallix, Lecture d'une OEuvre, Moon Palace de Paul Auster (Paris : ed. du temps,1996), page 110.