Moon Palace by Paul Auster

“It often happens that things are other than what they seem, and you can get yourself into trouble by jumping to conclusions.” 

Marco Stanley Fogg is an orphan, a child of the sixties, a quester tirelessly seeking the key to his past, the answers to the ultimate riddle of his fate. As Marco journeys from the canyons of Manhattan to the deserts of Utah, he encounters a gallery of characters and a series of events as rich and surprising as any in modern fiction. Beginning during the summer that men first walked on the moon, and moving backward and forward in time to span three generations, Moon Palace is propelled by coincidence and memory, and illuminated by marvelous flights of lyricism and wit. Here is the most entertaining and moving novel yet from an author well known for his breathtaking imagination.

Paul Auster is four for four with me. This is the fourth novel of his I've read and once again he delivered. This is a book that offers unlikely adventure, a bit of mystery, and a whole lot of heartache. As always, the characterization of Auster's main character is incredibly believable, but also unconventional. The plethora of characters and events Fogg is met with are whimsical and odd, but also complex and exuberant, making for a fun and intelligent read. 

As the title implies, the moon is a reoccurring symbol throughout the novel. Fogg's story begins with the summer that man first walked on the moon. In his Columbia apartment he can see the Chinese restaurant Moon Palace from his window. (A restaurant that did exist when Auster when attending Columbia.) Marco's Uncle Victor plays in a band called Moon Men and Moonlight Moods. The moon surfaces on a fortune cookie Marco opens that reads "the sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future." There are endless passages that discuss the moon and it all highlights the idea of constant change, but also constant repetition, the notion of unattainability and absence and an endless searching, for oneself, for meaning, and for a place. It also signifies the passing of time and the continual evolution and development of the self; the person we will be tomorrow may be much different from the one we know today. 

I immediately thought of Uncle Victor and his band, and in that first, irrational moment, my fears lost their hold on me. I had never experienced anything so sudden and absolute. A bare and grubby room had been transformed into a site of inwardness, an intersection point of strange omens and mysterious, arbitrary events. I went on staring at the Moon Palace sign, and little by little I understood that I had come to the right place, that this small apartment was indeed where I was meant to live.

Moon Palace also explores the meaning and implication of "fatherlessness" and the pressures of fatherhood itself. As with most Auster novels, he also examines identity and loss. I think the key to reading Auster is to not read them all at once. I like to keep a steady pace while working my way though his oeuvre. Because his novels are similar in terms of tone, character, and themes, it's best to put some time between his works. Other than that, I really don't have any complaints. This was a great read and Auster is working his way up to become one of my all-time favorite writers.

Publisher: Penguin Ink*, 1990

*This is the first edition Penguin In I've owned and I have to say they are lovely; rough-cut pages, beautiful cover art, and images from the story are incorperated on the inner flaps of the book. One image of a broken umbrella is from my favorite scene of the novel and really, it doesn't get much better than that. 

Paul Auster: Why Philip Roth Is Wrong About the Novel

This video was posted back in 2009, but it seems particularly relevant after Roth's controversial Booker win and later statement that he's "stopped reading fiction".

Paul Auster knows what's up, and this video makes me happy.

Top Ten Sexiest Male Authors

I decided to mix it up for this week's Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. There are many reasons I love being a book blogger - mostly because I have "met" so many great people who share my love for books. But rather than get sentimental about that, I thought it would be fun to give you all a little eye-candy and highlight the best looking authors.

Enjoy!

Ernest Hemingway/ William Faulkner

Jack Kerouac/ Joshua Ferris

Galway Kinnell/ Paul Auster

Sebastian Junger/ Langston Hughes

Frederic Beigbeder/ John Irving

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster

The Brooklyn Follies and I spent four glorious days together. I wish it would have lasted longer, but it had to end sometime. This is one of those books that took me in from the start. Paul Auster has this gift that makes me wish I could abandon all of my commitments and simply sit outside and read his books for days on end.

Brooklyn has long been known for the possibility of second chances since immigrants began flocking to New York in the late 1800's. It seems that this is a timeless curiosity, as Auster implies the borough still has this special hold on it's inhabitants. But here is the thing about The Brooklyn Follies, it's not a book I can summarize in a way that will draw you in unless I give the good parts away. So, you'll have to settle for the generalization that this novel is gracefully strange and compelling, so full of human truths, you can't help but connect with it.

When you've lived as long as I have, you tend to think you've heard everything, that there's nothing left that can shock you anymore. You grow a little complacent about your so-called knowledge of the world, and then, every once in a while, something comes along that jolts you out of your smug cocoon of superiority, that reminds you all over again that you don't understand the first thing about life.

Of the Auster I've read, this is my favorite. If you enjoy an interesting and suspenseful story with a deeper meaning behind it, you will certainly enjoy this book. If you identify with themes of redemption, second chances, and the power of human connections, then read this. There are also wonderful bookish details embedded throughout that I can't imagine any bibliophile would be disappointed with this novel.

She had the story, and when a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists.

Publisher: Picador, 2006

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

I read my first Auster only a few weeks ago and decided he was fantastic; I love when a writer can combine a captivating page-turner with beautiful writing and truths I can relate to. My second of his novels- The New York Trilogy - did not disappoint. Once again I was delighted and disturbed with the world Auster offered me - a combination that appeals to me.

Stories happen only to those who are able to tell them, someone once said. In the same way, perhaps, experiences present themselves only to those who are able to have them.

From what I understand, The New York Trilogy is Paul Auster's signature work. As the title suggests, the book is a set of three, loosely-interconnected novels that each take place in New York City: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room. Each tome is similar in theme - each of the story's main characters act as detectives searching for understanding.The set of novels offers a non-linear structure that adds to the dimension of intrigue and quite frankly, it works. With the exception of the second tome, I found myself wanting more and had difficulty putting it down. Auster manages to explore the idea of identity, change, language and life experiences in an authentic way.

In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.

This is a book that is best read slowly, to take it in as it was meant to be taken in. Sentence, paragraphs and stories interweave and connect to reveal a very post-modern novel that is full of existentialism and the metaphysical. After reading two Paul Auster novels I can understand why readers complain that he reuses ideas in older books to writer new ones. There were many similarities between The New York Trilogy and The Book of Illusions, namely in character and content. I still think Auster is great, but I am going to give myself a break before I read more of him. I don't want to overdo it and decide my captivating author has become banal.

Publisher: Faber First, 1987

The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster

I've heard great things about Paul Auster but didn't pick up one of his novels until earlier this week. It was another one of those instances when I wasn't sure what I wanted to read next so I began to read a page or two from books sitting on my TBR pile; 45 pages later I realized I had chosen Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions.

This book follows David Zimmer, a man coping with the recent loss of his wife and two sons. He is incredibly depressed and relying heavily on alcohol to numb his pain when late one night he sees a television show that details the history of the silent movie industry. One clip that is shown, written and directed by Hector Mann, makes David laugh. He realizes this is he first time he has laughed in nearly two years, and makes up his mind to find out more about Hector Mann. What follows is a story that becomes increasingly complex, a dark suspense full of intrigue, sex and corruption. 

Auster writes in a way that is fluent and engrossing. From beginning to end I was fascinated with both the story and the way Auster's words worked to communicate that story. In addition, Paul Auster relates the power and point of silent films in a way that gives meaning to the medium that I had never considered:

Most silent comedies hardly even bothered to tell stories. They were like poems, like the renderings of dreams, like some intricate choreography of the spirit, and because they were dead, hey probably spoke more deeply to us now than they had to the audiences of their time. We watched them across great chasms of forgetfulness, and they very things that separated them from us were i fact what made them so arresting: their muteness, their absence of color, their fitful, speeded-up rhythms. They stood between us and the film, and therefore we no longer had to pretend that we were looking at the real world. The lat screen was the world, and it existed in two dimensions. The third dimension was in our head.

In these ways, literature acts almost as silent films do, allowing the reader to add his or her own dimension with their imagination. These meditations, combined with Auster's incredible ability to understand the human mind at it's darkest moments, make this a book well worth reading. This is a novel about pain and mortality, sin and redemption, about art and the artistic muse, and explores the role of the artist capturing something that is greater than himself. I look forward to reading more Paul Auster.  

Publisher: Picador, 2002