Paul Auster was born in New Jersey (USA) in 1947. After graduating from Columbia in 1970, he went to France where he worked as a translator. He also started writing fiction, some of which was published in American journals. He moved back to the US in 1974 and since then has written novels, poems and essays.
The New York Trilogy and literary recognition
He first won acclaim for a series of detective stories published together as The New York Trilogy (1987): the first volume is City of Glass, the second one Ghosts and the third one The Locked Room. In an interview, Auster explained that "learning to live with ambiguity […] is the essence of The New York Trilogy. He adds: "I don't even know if I think The New York Trilogy is very good." The series is described by a critic as "very much the quintessential postmodern work of fiction". Auster himself once declared that he is interested in "inventing new ways to tell stories."
Major works and literary evolution
Moon Palace came out in 1989, The Music of Chance in 1990, Leviathan in 1992, etc. More recently, the novel 4 3 2 1, was published in 2017. The book tells the story of Archie Ferguson, who lives four different lives. Time Magazinesummed it up perfectly well: "The concept behind the 866-page tome boils down to one life, lived four ways." A review of the novel in the Guardian explains that the character's "four selves go their separate ways, each with his own experience of childhood, adolescence, friendship, love, sport and school". The journalist then compares the novel to Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken. Indeed, who has never wondered "what if I had done things differently ? How would my life have turned out ?"
Film work and screenwriting
Paul Auster has also written several screenplays, notably Smoke (1995), Lulu on the Bridge (1998), which he also directed, and The Inner Life of Martin Frost (2007).
This novel has been described as a quest or an odyssey which starts on the east coast of the United States and ends in California. The beginning of the novel is set in New York, during "the summer that men first walked on the moon".
The main character and narrator
We learn in the opening paragraphs that the main character and narrator, a young man named Marco Stanley Fogg, has, in his own words "hit bottom". As a matter of fact, the first paragraph outlines the narrator's story. He is penniless and "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…" He describes this period as "the beginning of my life" after having "walked across the desert…"
Marco's background and journey
Marco S Fogg's mother died when he was quite young and "there was never any father in the picture". Marco is raised by an uncle, a clarinettist with "a penchant for aimlessness and reverie". After his uncle dies, leaving Marco his collection of books, the young man becomes homeless and ends up sleeping in Central Park until he is rescued by friends.
Then he moves in with Thomas Effing, a mysterious old man in a wheelchair, whom he is supposed to look after. Little by little Effing tells him the story of his life. They become close and Effing starts worrying about his young assistant "You're a dreamer, boy, "he said. "Your mind is on the moon, and from the look of things, it's never going to be anywhere else […] once I'm gone, you'll be right back where you started." (chapter 5)
The revelation and plot development
Effing knows he is going to die soon and has Marco help him write his obituary. He also asks Marco to make sure he gets in touch with his long-lost son, Solomon Barber (Barber being Effing's real family name). When they finally meet, the identity of Marco's father will be revealed. At this point, the reader cannot but agree with the critic JR Kornblatt who wrote that the plot "is held together by unlikely coincidences" and that it "is so unbelievable, its narrator often has trouble being convinced by it himself."
The ending
The novel ends with Marco S Fogg, again alone but this time he is in Laguna Beach (in California) with only "413 dollars in my pocket". Now that he has left everything behind and that he has reached the west coast, he can say that "This is where I start, I said to myself, this is where my life begins.'' (chapter 6)
Critical quotations about Moon Palace
Joyce Reiser Kornblatt's analysis
Joyce Reiser Kornblatt, a critic and professor of literature wrote in The New York Times that ''Moon Palace plays with recognizably Auster concerns - lost fathers abound, the narrative investigates itself, psyches collapse and, repeatedly, life reveals itself to be a series of lost chances. […] the motifs are extremely familiar the beleaguered orphan, the missing father, the doomed romance, the squandered fortune, the totemic power of the West, the journey as initiation."
Other critical perspectives
Michael Freitag, another critic, describes the plot as "a series of picaresque adventures".
A critic in Publishers Weekly wrote that " Auster's highly literate tale teases the boundaries between fiction and actuality while exploring the process of writing itself."
The Daily Telegraph describes Moon Palace as a "brilliant amalgam of fantasy and interior monologue…"
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