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UNIVERSITE DE CAEN BASSE-NORMANDIE
Unité de Formation et de recherche
des Langues
Vivantes Etrangères
Département d'anglais
Confinement in Paul Auster's
Moon Palace and The New York
Trilogy.
Travail d'Etude et de Recherches
présenté pour l'obtention de
La MAITRISE
Par
Alexis Plékan
Directeur d'Etudes:
Madame Dominique Delasalle
Session de novembre 2001
I wish to thank Dominique Delasalle for her interest in my ideas
and my parents for their support.
To Sophie,
«he remembers speculating that perhaps the entire world
was enclosed in a glass jar and that it sat on a shelf next to dozens of other
jar-worlds in the pantry of a giant's house.» Paul Auster, The
Invention of Solitude, page 168.
? January 24/25, 1995. (detail)
Signed on recto, lower right, in red felt-tip pen:
`LB'.
Red felt-tip pen, red ballpoint pen on cardboard.
9 x 11 ? inches.
LOUISE BOURGEOIS, The Insomnia Drawings.
Zurich: DAROS. 2000.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 9
I. SPATIAL CONFINEMENT
A SOCIAL DEATH
1
Disconnection.....................................................12
The room and the tomb....................................12
The
island....................................................13
Metaphoric rooms...........................................14
2
Starving.............................................................16
Depletion.....................................................16
Flirting with
death...........................................16
The monk and the hermit...................................17
B TOWARDS ORIGIN
1 The
Room...........................................................19
The
shelter...................................................19
The
retreat...................................................20
The search for THE place.................................21
2 The
Womb.........................................................22
The experience of the cave...............................22
Jonah or the resurrection..................................23
Gestation : birth or miscarriage..........................23
C SEARCH FOR HARMONY
1 Success and
Failure..............................................25
The new
man.................................................25
Reconnection.................................................25
Obliteration..................................................26
2
Art....................................................................27
The room : the matrix of artistic creation...............28
The artist in
exile...........................................29
The hunger
artist.............................................30
II. TELLING STORIES
A THE WRITING OF THE BOOK
1 Writing for
Myself...............................................32
Motivations..................................................32
A paradoxical
necessity.....................................33
Writing : moving inward and outward...................34
2 The
Book...........................................................35
Books and notebooks.......................................35
The creation of another world.............................36
The limits of the
book......................................37
B ENCIRCLING FICTION
1 The Russian-doll
effect..........................................38
Moon Palace and The NewYork Trilogy :
archipelagoes of
stories......................................................38
Bridges between the spheres of fiction...................39
Stories about
story-telling..................................40
2 Auster's fiction : a `City of the
World'......................42
The characters : literary
creations.........................42
Fiction: prison. Fate: manipulation........................43
To get out of the house of fiction.........................44
C THE AUTHOR-CHARACTERS
1 A search for
Authorship........................................43
Characters in quest of their authors.......................46
Characters in quest of their fathers.......................47
Investigating.................................................47
2 Seeking for
Authority............................................48
Playing the puppet-master.................................48
Control over life and death................................49
Who controls whom ?.......................................50
III. LANGUAGE
A WORLDS AND WORDS
1 Constitution of
worlds...........................................53
The Library of the Universe...............................53
Worlds within the word....................................54
Language makes us / our world...........................56
2 Between the world and the
self................................58
The inadequacy of the word................................58
The rift between thinking and writing...................59
Investigation of language /investigation of the self....60
B ATTEMPTS AT MASTERING LANGUAGE
1 To go back to the
origins.......................................62
Babel..........................................................62
Giving names to things.....................................63
Giving names to people....................................63
2 To capture the
essence...........................................67
Factuality : a
failure........................................67
The
achievements............................................68
Blank
spaces.................................................70
C GASPING FOR CORRESPONDENCES
1 Transparency and
liberty.......................................72
Between the man and the world : the sign...............72
Sign and communication...................................73
The need for transparency.................................75
2
Meaning............................................................77
Seeking connectedness......................................77
Beware of meaning.........................................77
Hermeneutics................................................79
CONCLUSION
82
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