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

The island

It is worthwhile to stress an image that is often linked to the room in these two novels: the island. It conveys several notions: remoteness, isolation and captivity. Why are these notions commonly linked to the island? Of course it is because an island is by definition a patch of land surrounded by water. To what extent is this image of the island relevant in the study of the disconnecting function of the room? Simply because it brings out a significant element, the environment of the room. However, as the rooms are not always actual geographical rooms, likewise the image of the island is mainly metaphorical. The cave in which Effing takes shelter in the middle of the desert is an image of an island in the middle of an environment that can be qualified as hostile because of its barrenness . Another hostile environment that represents the antinomy of the desert is New York in which there is an actual island: Manhattan, in which there is another island (metaphoric this time) Central Park, in which there is eventually a last island: Marco's cave. The word island itself also appears in Moon Palace and The New York Trilogy with the phrase traffic island. Curiously enough, it seems to be the same one referred to in both novels: « One of the traffic islands in the middle of Broadway»^8(*) «Quinn posted himself on a bench in the middle of the traffic island at Broadway and 99^th street.»^9(*)

Columbus Square, where Fanshawe lives, hidden in his locked room, «consisted of ten or twelve houses in a row, fronting on a cobbled island that cut it off from the main thorough fare.»^10(*) Again, the image of the island reinforces the impression of isolation and remoteness.

After some time on their island, the characters' appearance invariably alters, up to resembling the most famous castaway in literature, Robinson Crusoe. Indeed, Quinn, watching his face in a mirror for the first time in weeks of disconnection, takes note of this. «More than anything else, he reminded himself of Robinson Crusoe.»^11(*) In The Locked Room, it is precisely Robinson Crusoe that the young Fanshawe is said to be reading. In the same story, Auster devotes one page to an anecdote about a 16^th century French soldier called La Chère who was banished to a «solitary island» where he was left starving. In The Book of Memory, Auster, remembering his one year-stay in a maid's room in Paris writes: «This was life as Crusoe would have lived it: shipwreck in the heart of the city.»^12(*)

The image of the island is thus recurrent in these two novels. It emphasizes the hostility of the environment (be it urban or desert) that the characters have left behind to find safety on their island. It also brings out that, while they are on their island, the characters are completely unreachable even when their island is right in the heart of such a megalopolis as New York. Eventually, with the image of the castaway, Auster puts the stress on the impact of disconnection upon the man's mind and body.

* ⁸ Moon palace, page 203.

* ⁹ City of Glass, page 58.

* ¹⁰ The Locked Room, page 304.

* ¹¹ City of Glass, page 120.

* ¹² The Book of Memory, in The Invention of Solitude, page 91.