Alternative Americas Paul Auster

Alternative Americas in Paul Auster’s Later Fiction Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

Auster’s “sufficient realism”?  Alternative reality in Man in the Dark  Previous examples: Kepler’s Blood in Moon Palace, Sigmund Graf and the Confederation in Travels in the Scriptorium 

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

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Kepler’s Blood: ◦ Pulp novel written by Solomon Barber. ◦ Indian tribe: “the Humans”, helped by “the Others”, forced to move west by the arrival of the “Wild Men” ◦ White features: result of previous mixture ◦ Part of a web of stories told by Auster in Moon Palace (1989)

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

First interpretation: a clue into Solomon Barber’s personality, an Oedipal attempt to both find and kill the father, “a complex dance of guilt and desire”.  Second interpretation: mise-en-abyme of the main diegesis. Another story of self-discovery, resurrection and salvation that takes place in the West of the USA 

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

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Other representations of the West in Moon Palace: ◦ Iconography:  Real painters: Thomas Cole, Thomas Moran, Blakelock  Fictional painters: Thomas Effing  Impossible to paint “It’s all too massive to be painted or drawn”

◦ Historical:  Real sources: Travel books  Fictional narratives: Uncle Victor, Marco (twice), Thomas Effing (fiction?), Kepler’s Blood: importance of popular westerns in the creation of the myth

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

Result of this amalgam of fictional and nonfictional, but equally doubtful stories about the West: to deconstruct the image of the West, to show that it is a myth, an artistic creation.  The West: a symbolic rather than a physical place: the space where civilization and wilderness meet to create a new country. 

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

Connection between space and time: The West and the American Dream  Juxtaposition of the myth of the old frontier and contemporary events (“it was the summer that men first walked on the moon”, Vietnam war, student riots in Columbia): a critique of the concept of the old frontier: the American Dream gone wrong. 

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

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The role of Kepler’s Blood: ◦ A rewriting of American history from the perspective of the defeated ( another Trail of Tears, the “Humans” vs. the “Wild Men”) ◦ A story of regeneration through mixture and melting (instead of violence): with Europeans, with the Others, with John Kepler. After so much mixture, origins don’t matter: a re-writing of the Melting Pot. ◦ Language as a result of mixture

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

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The role of Kepler’s Blood: ◦ The West as a place of danger, resurrection and artistic creation for the characters ◦ The Moon = the West (landscape, Kepler’s name)

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

Moon as repetition: Critique of the notion of progress, the West and the frontier in American history.  If westerns reenact the American ritual of foundation, Auster is reminding the reader that this foundation is based on a fundamental injustice: the destruction of the world inhabited by Indians. If we do not deconstruct the myths to try to understand them better, the same kind of mistakes could be committed in places like Vietnam.  This critique is made clear by an image and a story: 

◦ Moonlight ◦ Kepler’s Blood

The Moon = the West “Blakelock was painting an American idyll, the world the Indians had inhabited before the white men came to destroy it�

Moonlight

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

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Kepler’s Blood ◦ Another “anti-representational text:” mimetic details undone by the painter’s “lunatic disregard” for realism (Weissenberger), like facts and fiction in Kepler’s Blood ◦ A mise-en-abyme that tells an alternative story of America’s origins from the perspective of the defeated, emphasizes the importance of mixture as regeneration andpresents an alternate reading of myths like the American West, the American Dream and the Melting Pot.

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

Travels in the Scriptorium (2006): Alternative Past  Story-within-the-story: The Confederation: “not the United States as we know it, but a country that has evolved in another way, that has another history”  More ethnic and linguistic variety  Ethnic wars: massacres and exile  Unification as violent and negative  Story presented as a “report” used to start a war by finding a common enemy (the Primitives = Native Americans)

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

Functions of the story: 1. Thematic function (mise-en-abyme).

1. The report: The protagonist (Sigmund Graf) is made captive, he is betrayed by his captors, he is forced to write in order to be free, and he is manipulated. To become part of a plot 2. Travels: The protagonist (Mr. Blank) is made captive and betrayed by his operatives-characters, he is also forced to write and manipulated until he becomes a character (“Mr. Blank is one of us now”) and part of a plot.

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

Functions of the story: 2. Political parable - Creation of a common enemy as an excuse for a “phony” war (against Native Americans, Afghans, or communists, as in previous version in Oracle Night) - Guantanamo-like cells in both stories - Use of manipulated “reports” as an excuse for wars (Butler and Gurr)

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

Man in the Dark (2008): Alternative Present  A re-writing of Travels in the Scriptorium? (a “diptych”) ◦ August Brill instead of Mr. Blank ◦ Alternative present instead of alternative past ◦ Secession of New York City after the 2000 election followed by 15 other states to form the Independent States of America. ◦ Civil War “an imaginary war on home ground. America cracking apart, the noble experiment finally dead”

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

Independent States of America

The “Federals”

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

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Two functions: 1. Political parable Criticism of the contested 2000 election: “a coup by legal and political means” Allegory of a deeply divided country, without a “common language” A reminder of the “war on terror”: “America is at war alright, we’re just not fighting it here. Not yet, anyway” A deep critique of the logic of war and violence A warning: racial and political division might bring about a civil war

1. A psychological clue into August Brill’s obsessions

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

2. A psychological clue into Auguste Brill’s obsessions: August is creating the story ◦ Fantasy of suicide ◦ Sexual fantasy ◦ Fantasy of a world where Titus would still be alive ◦ The story is also the result of 4 other narratives: the films watched by August and his granddaughter Katya

Bicycle Thief

La Grande Illusion

Alternative Americas in Paul Auster’s Later Fiction

The World of Apu

Tokyo Story

Alternative Americas in Paul Auster’s Later Fiction

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

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Four films about ◦ Human relationships: Men vs. women. Women as the ones “who carry the world… while their hapless men stumble around” ◦ War and its consequences: war as a “grand illusion” carried out by men. ◦ Life as “disappointing”, but forgetting your own problems and caring about others is the only way to become a human being again

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

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Four films and a novel about “men in the dark”: ◦ August creating film-like stories in the dark of night ◦ Spectators in a cinema watching films ◦ Men in the dark about real life who abandon their women to pursue “grand illusions”

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

◦ The films and the story lay the ground for the final scenes of the book The truth about August’s relationship with his deceased wife (he had cheated on her and abandoned her for a younger woman) The immature reasons for Titus going to war (need for experiences in order to write about them) and the way he was killed

Titus’s decapitation: August has been trying to escape from the image of Titus’s decapitation.

The real reason for August to watch and create images is to erase those images: “unless I blot out that video with other images it’s the only thing I’ll ever see”

ALTERNATIVE AMERICAS IN PAUL AUSTER’S LATER FICTION Jesús A. González, University of Cantabria, Spain

◦ Linda Hutcheon’s historiographic metafiction: “novels which are both intensely self-reflexive and yet paradoxically also claim to historical events and personages” ◦ Paul Auster may be redefining the term to combine it with dystopia and allohistory (“uchronia”, “counterfactual history”, alternative history”) to express his concern with the American past and present.