In «Moon Palace » written in 1989, Paul Auster explores familiar themes that have become central in his work : the quest for identity, peregrintion, the city of New York, the history of the United States, art. The writing is fluid and carries the reader along effortlessly. Our group found the novel captivating.
The narrator is M.S. Fogg: Marco ( for Marco Polo), Stanley (for Livingstone), Fogg (for Phileas), who at the very outset issues the reader a warning :
"There is not much to tell about my family. The cast of characters was small, and most of them did not stay around very long. I lived with my mother until I was eleven, but then she was killed in a traffic accident, knocked down by a bus that skidded out of control in the Boston snow. There was never any father in the picture, and so it had just been the two of us, my mother and I ". And from there on, we embark on a journey, and follow Fogg's narrative which takes place in 1969 - the year when man first walked on the moon.
At first, the reader is plunged into the life of MS Fogg : He was brought up by an uncle, a musician by trade. After his uncle's death he is left with an inheritance of a collection of books - which Fogg uses as furniture - along with his uncle's overcoat and clarinette. Fogg refuses to work and becomes a homeless person in Central Park. He is saved by the love of Kitty ; he regains strength, finds work and is hired as a live-in nurse by an old and eccentric handicapped man : Thomas Effing.
And here we find ourselves plunged into the life of another character. But who is the real Thomas Effing? « So much of his character was built on falsehood and deception, it was nearly impossible to know when he was telling the truth. He loved to trick the world with his sudden experiments and inspirations, and of all the stunts he pulled, the one he liked best was playing dead. » (p 98)
How many lives did he have ? Artist, then lonely wanderer in the Western-like decor of the American desert, forging a new identity, and finally a monstruous character, « a seething little mass of resurrected strength ». (p98)
The life of the third character we meet - the sorrowful and monstruously obese Solomon Barber. is no less extraordinary.
The stories of these three characters are interwined, become embedded, forming a narrative composed of barely believable situations which are links connecting the three protagonists : sons who do not know who their father is, fathers who refuse fatherhood, mothers who've been abandoned. A narrative haunted by the quest for one's roots and for a missing father. A fanciful narrative which abounds in incredible siatuations, pitted against a backdrop of real concrete references , as real as the first steps of man on the moon, the Vietnam war, « Moonlight », a painting of the Far West by Thomas Moran, r still, the work of the electrical engineer for Tesla.
The unique atmosphere created in this book owes to to the way the plot advances : chance and coincidence guide the narrative and play a crucial role in shaping the events in the story . And it is Auster's talent and the whole art of storytelling that makes it believable. And we are irresistibly drawn into a chain of « incredibly extraordinary » intertwining narratives.
Moon Paalce is a compelling novel ; the language is simple, clear, beautifully rendered, especially in the magnificent descriptions of the American West.
One criticism however: Aside from Mrs Hume, «the one who took care of the « body work» » (p103) the female characters, especially Kitty, are insufficiently developed and lack substance.