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

The sign and communication

On the one hand, Benveniste declares that the language of words, because of its arbitrariness, hinders any direct and natural relationship between the world and the man as well as among men. On the other hand, Emmanuel Lévinas, in Totalité et Infini writes: «L'essence du langage est la relation avec autrui.»^228(*) These two assumptions sum up the paradoxical function of language in communication among men. Indeed, this system of symbols is indispensable to communication, yet it seems obvious that that this system is flawed and actually hampers communication. Communication, or rather bad communication is a central motive in Auster's work. Besides, this theme is somehow embodied in a figure which is recurrent throughout his novels: the deaf mute. In City of Glass, while he is waiting for Stillman at Grand Central Station, Quinn buys a pen from a deaf mute and it is with this very pen that he will write in his red notebook. In Ghosts, Blue goes to see the same film twice in two days, it is called Out of the Past. The memory of this film lingers on in his mind, especially the end «with the deaf mute boy»^229(*). In Moon Palace, when Effing asks Marco to go and see Blakelock's painting at the Brooklyn Museum, he tells him: «Pretend you're a deaf-mute if someone talks to you.»^230(*) So, for Auster, deaf mutes symbolize bad communication, it is therefore no coincidence if they appear in novels where bad communication is a fundamental element. Another figure of bad communication is Peter Stillman junior. As a result of his father's linguistic experiments, he is almost completely unable to communicate even though he knows the language of words: «Wimble click crumble chaw beloo. Clack clack bedrack. Numb noise, flaklemuch, chewmanna. Ya, ya, ya. Excuse me. I am the only one who understand these words.»^231(*) This final remark by Stillman junior is not without recalling an observation that Anna Blume makes about the people in the City of Destruction: «Each person is speaking his own private language, and as the instances of shared understanding diminish, it becomes increasingly difficult to communicate with anyone.»^232(*) The phrase `speaking his own private language' should ring a bell in the mind of the reader of City of Glass. Indeed, during their first meeting, Stillman and Quinn discourse upon Humpty Dumpty, and Stillman eventually declares: «Humpty Dumpty sketches the future of human hopes and gives the clue to our salvation: to become masters of the words we speak, to make language answer our needs.»^233(*) Yet, as Martin Gardner explains in the notes of Through The Looking Glass: «if we wish to communicate accurately, we are under a kind of moral obligation to avoid Humpty's practice of giving private meanings to commonly used words.»^234(*) Therefore, though imperfect, the sign is indispensable to communication between men. And, to try -like Stillman or Humpty Dumpty- to counteract the arbitrariness of the sign prevents any possible communication. So, the sign appears as an unremoveable barrier.

* ²²⁸ Emmanuel Lévinas, Totalité et Infini. (Paris : Librairie Générale Française, 1998), page 227.

* ²²⁹ Ghosts, page 161.

* ²³⁰ Moon Palace, page 130.

* ²³¹ City of Glass, page 17.

* ²³² In The Country of Last Things, page 89.

* ²³³ City of Glass, page 81.

* ²³⁴ Martin Gardner (editor), The Annotated Alice (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), page 270.