What's Behind The MOON (PALACE) ? (Moon Palace - Paul Auster)

Member Name: MALU

Product:	Moon Palace - Paul Auster
Date:	09/12/01 (821 review reads)
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Paul Auster, born in 1947, is by far the best looking novelist of his generation. He’s tall, slim, has full black hair and grey-green eyes, he’s all around attractive. (It’s MY op, ain’t it?)

If you think the outward appearance of an author irrelevant, let me tell you, it’s not when it comes to motivation. Teachers are just as silly as their students when they get a task with a deadline, believe me, I know.

I HAD to read the novel Moon Palace by Paul Auster for a teachers’ training course on the subject of reading matter for German A-level students who have chosen English as their main subject, was informed about the date three months in advance and started reading three days before Day X. I finished at 11 p.m., couldn’t quite make up my mind on what to think about the book (I was prejudiced as I had already read The New York Trilogy and disliked it, sorry, Deany!), went grumpily to the course and found a seat just opposite a poster showing Paul Auster. I decided at once to give a man looking like that a second chance!

I’d like to invite you to come with me to my course in which I’m going to apply all the clever things I‘ve learnt; if you behave, you can sit at the back (definitely no chewing gum, I’m adamant!) We’ve got two lessons today, 90 minutes, that should be enough to give you some ideas on what the novel is about.

As starters we’re going to listen to two songs which prepare us for two of the many themes of the novel. The first is Gloria Gaynor’s “I am what I am”. We won’t interpret the whole song, only the line ‘I am my own creation’. It leads us directly to the protagonist’s signature which he decides to use at the age of 15 (after he’s tried out several different versions) ‘MS Fogg’ “delighting in the fact that the initials stood for manuscript.” “Every man is t
he author of his own life...The book you’re writing is not yet finished. Therefore, it’s a manuscript. What could be more appropriate than that?”

The invention of ‘realities’ instead of a pseudo-realistic concept of a chronological sequence of events and the abolition of the principle of causality in favour of the principle of coincidence is a characteristic of postmodernist literature. Short episodes are presented, seemingly unconnected, partly incoherent, on different levels of time, determined by chance and coincidence.

Unfortunately none of my students could get hold of Eminem’s video clip ‘The way I am’, a perfect example of this postmodernist view of life, here transported into the world of music.

The author does not take the readers by their hands and lead them through the story, through a biography from cradle to coffin, they must find meaning themselves, based on their own personal experiences. This kind of approach leads, logically, to as many different interpretations as there are readers. The ONE TRUTH doesn’t exist any more. (Has it ever?)

The teachers who held the training course had already read the novel with their students the year before and told us that they had reacted very positively. For them a reality like the one presented by Auster offers no problems, they’ve already understood that there’s no certainty for them, not in their personal lives, not in their future careers. It’s the older teachers who have to struggle with the concept of postmodernism! It’s the older people who become dizzy when watching a video clip, the young ones have become used to the bits and pieces, to the patchwork which constitutes their lives.

The next song is Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle” which deals with a man who hasn’t got time for his son. He can’t be present at his birth, can’t celebrate his birthda
ys with him, doesn’t go with him on graduation day because he’s busy. The refrain is ‘I’m gonna be like you, Dad, you know I’m gonna be like you.’ The fourth stanza shows that the child’s innocent wish has become reality: the retired father calls his son who tells him that he hasn’t got time for him. ‘He’d grown up just like me, yeah/My boy was just like me’.

‘Unparentness’ is another important theme in the novel, its importance stressed by a parallel construction; the main protagonist finds his father who doesn’t know his father, either. Later we’ll read some background information on the history of the family in America, the absence of the father figure and the problems of a ‘sibling society’.

Now we should start occupying ourselves with the text proper, we’ll begin with the synopsis. What? How can we do the synopsis before reading one word? Ah, you think the students have already read the whole book and the teacher wants to test if they’ve done their homework. No, they haven’t read the book, on the contrary, they were told not to do so!

Let’s look at the first paragraph:
“It was the summer that men first walked on the moon. I was very young back then, but I did not believe there would ever be a future. I wanted to live dangerously, to push myself as far as I could go, and then see what happened to me when I got there. As it turned out, I nearly did not make it. Little by little, I saw my money dwindle to zero; I lost my apartment; I wound up living in the streets. If not for a girl named Kitty Wu, I probably would have starved to death. I had met her by chance only a short time before, but eventually I came to see that chance as a form of readiness, a way of saving myself through the minds of others. That was the first part. From then on, strange things happened to me. I took the job with the old man
in the wheelchair. I found out who my father was. I walked across the desert from Utah to California. That was a long time ago, of course, but I remember those days well. I remember them as the beginning of my life.”

If there has ever been an ingenious first paragraph, here it is! Don’t tell me that it doesn’t arouse your curiosity and the wish to go on reading. Obviously we can expect a story full of adventurous, even dangerous happenings, a love story, a father-son story, something about the American West, the American dream maybe?, and at the end of all that the protagonist feels that he’s at the BEGINNING of his life!

We already learn something about the technique the author uses, he’s created a narrator looking back on his youth, presenting the events and commenting on them. As he’s a creation, too, we must watch out for what he says, is he reliable, does he present the events truthfully or does he manipulate and influence us through his comments, willingly or unwillingly?

The novel is told on at least two levels of time, the narrator’s and the young man’s one, we can guess that there will be more when it comes to the father-son story, which must lead us into a past before the past.

The story is not freely suspended, but anchored in the history of the United States, we’ll have to study what was going on at that time besides man’s first walk on the moon, we’ll have to find out in how far ‘ history’ and ‘his story’ depend on each other.

A critic has characterised Auster’s style as ‘lean, fluid, vigorous, and delightfully lucid.’ Indeed, the first paragraph is a proof that he’s right. There are no baroque phrasings, no incomprehensible imagery. Short main clauses are used with the subject ‘I’ at the beginning. This leads to the assumption that this ‘I’ determines the action, i.e., h
is life, later, however, we learn that that is an illusion, that the protagonist is not the subject but the object of accidental events.

Have you heard the bell ringing? I have! I hope it has come across that I’m fascinated by the novel; maybe I could put a spark of interest in you. If so, good, if not, good as well. If a teacher’s mood were dependent on the response they get, there wouldn’t be many happy teachers around!

I’ll leave you now, I must have a cup of coffee before going to my little ones, the 10-year-old beginners of English. What do we teach them in their fourth month of English? The use of ‘its’ and ‘it’s’! What did you say? You find that more essential than the self-development of a hitherto unknown American and would like to accompany me? Ah, well, come on then, better learn late than never.

You haven‘t forgotten, have you? No chewing-gum!

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