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

Investigation of language/ Investigation of the self

For most of the writer-characters in Auster's novels, writing is a means to find themselves, to know who they really are, and consequently to find their place in society. However, as we have seen, almost all the author-characters -at one moment or another- are confronted with the issues raised by language: the inadequacy of the language of words in the representation of the world, or the ineffectiveness of language in the conveyance of thoughts. As a result, the characters, to a large or lesser degree, embark on an investigation of language. Of course, the most obvious example of this is The New York Trilogy, in which the genre of the detective novel offers a parallel structure for the investigation of language. With regard to this idea, critic Alison Russell brings light on the way the Trilogy is an investigation of language:

City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room are essentially retellings of the same story. All three employ and deconstruct the conventional elements of the detective story, resulting in a recursive linguistic investigation of the nature, function and meaning of language. (...) This quest for correspondence between signifier and signified is inextricably related to each protagonist's quest for origin and identity, for the self only exists insofar as language grants existence to it.^187(*)

Indeed, if we consider Gadamer's or Umberto Eco's view, according to which the self is constituted by language, the investigation of language is actually no less than `a quest for origin and identity'. Quinn, working on the Stillman's case, is made aware of the issue of language to such a degree that he soon abandons the case to concentrate exclusively on language, in the hope of finding who he really is. Likewise, Marco's adventure in Moon Palace can be assimilated to a initiatory voyage in the world of words. The reason why so many characters are also writers is therefore clearer. It is not the book in itself which helps one to find oneself, but the necessary interrogation and investigation that the act of writing implies. Notwithstanding, it should be noted that the investigation of language can take on the form of a simple and playful manipulation of words, such as puns or play on words, as Auster explains: «Language is not truth. It is the way we exist in the world. Playing with words is merely to examine the way the mind functions, to mirror a particle of the world as the mind perceives it.»^188(*)

* ¹⁸⁷ Alison Russell, `Deconstructing The New York Trilogy : Paul Auster's Anti-Detective Fiction' (Review of Contemporary Fiction, Winter 1990.)

* ¹⁸⁸ The Invention of Solitude, page 161.