Jean-Michel Serres, Composer-pianist (Apfel Café Music): Website

11 October 202211 January 2024

Synopsis & Review | The Locked Room by Paul Auster, Faber and Faber, 1988 (Originally Published in 1987)

Summary Synopsis

Fanshawe was the best friend of mine. He was smart, sophisticated and striking but excellent normal boy. Dropped out of Harvard, he became a crew of an oil tanker, then wandered around Paris and South France. And he wrote much of writing such as novels, poetry, dramas and notebooks. But he didn’t want to publish them.

He got back to the United States, then he married Sophie. But he suddenly disappeared from her, after three or four months he had promised he would publish the manuscripts within a year.

Sophie requested me to publish Fanshawe’s manuscripts. Then the Fanshawe’s books earned a great reputation and sold well, so we got a certain amount of money from the books. And I became a kind of agent of his books and wrote articles and reviews about him. I got the job to write a biography of Fanshawe, so I went to Paris and South France for searching the traces of him. Then I lost myself in searching for and thinking about Fanshawe…

Book Review

I think this novel is an autobiographical story of Paul Auster. The story indicates a self-reflection or self-affirmation of Auster himself.

Auster reflected his very hungry youth to Fanshawe, he got on Tanker and wandered around Europe, Paris and the South France. Episodes and histories of the narrator and Fanshawe resemble his real experiences appeared on his autobiographical essay the Art of Hunger. On the other hand, he reflected older him after he had became writer.

The main and exterior story of this novel is the narrator sought Fanshawe’s whereabouts. But the true theme of this novel is Fanshawe’s true intention, and philosophical questions to what are today’s human identity and the meaning and the meaninglessness of life and writing, and considerations on to create a story and its difficulty.

And the title The Locked Room means the locked room of the country house in South France, where Fanshawe had shut himself up. The room is the metaphor of Fanshawe’s locked true intention and mind.

Fanshawe was the alter ego or the other self of the narrator. The more the narrator pursued for and thought about Fanshawe, he felt difficulty and complexity like looking at himself or his doppelgänger. And Auster reflected himself on the two characters. So I think this complexity might be arose from the self-referring act as Auster sees Auster himself.

Different to Auster’s former two novel, this novel doesn’t modelled on detective stories. But this novel is a story of “hide and seek”, to search Fanshawe’s whereabouts and riddles. And the narrator said his act was like a detective. And, so, I think the narrator is not only detective of facts about Fanshawe, but also it seeks Fanshawe’s mind and true intention.

There’s a triple self-reflection or self-affirmation and story-telling structure was constructed by each one of Fanshawe, the narrator and Auster, I think. The narrator described things about Fanshawe. Auster described things about the narrator (and Fanshawe). By this self-reflection structure, this novel expresses and asks an answerless question of what are writing and the self.

This novel is slippery one. For example, there’s no description of content of Fanshawe’s writings, and there are no answer, result and destination. Also this novel is a writing about writing or a novel about writing novel. And words of Fanshawe’s red notebook was “their final purpose was to cancel each other out“ (§ 9, p. 313), also the notion can apply to this novel, the content of this novel is to cancel each other out. So there was no answer and solution, and only a state of contradiction was remain. No answer should be the answer of this novel and the consequence of the New York Trilogy.

The storytelling is very excellent and thrilling, also the philosophical considerings about writing and existence are significant. Auster succeed in compose this beautiful and thoughtful story by his real experiences. He splendidly expressed worth, delight agony and misery of writing and life.

Details of the Book

The New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
Faber & Faber, London, 2 Jun 2011
320 pages, £5.99
ISBN: 978-0571276554
Contents:

City of Glass
Ghosts
The Locked Room

Synopsis & Review | City of Glass from the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, 1985

Summary Synopsis

The trigger was a wrong number. A mystery writer in NY, Daniel Quinn accepted the case of Peter Stillman, as a private detective Paul Auster. Virginia Stillman, the wife of Peter Stillman, requested him to watch the same name father, Peter Stillman would discharge soon, the former professor of Columbia University wrote a book of extraordinary and occultist religious theory. He shut up his son in a room for nine years.

Quinn watched Stillman during two weeks, but he was wandering around a constant area of town only. Quinn tried to talk to Stillman but his talkings were incoherent. A day, Stillman suddenly checked out of the hotel he stayed, so Quinn lost track of Stillman…

Book Review

City of Glass is Paul Auster’s major debut novel originally published in 1985 and the first volume of his New York Trilogy.

A thirteen chaptered novel borrows the style of detective stories. And a snobbish postmodernist or avant-garde literature contains various elements and signs, many fine little interesting episodes and mentions of classical literature. It describes confusion, complexity, difficulties and emptiness of the contemporary huge metropolitan city, New York, and deconstructs the grand narrative, the significance and the form of traditional novels.

My first impression, I think this novel resembles Auster’s next novel Ghosts which also borrows the form of detective stories. Both of them is the story the main character was perplexed, confused and manipulated by a mysterious and confused person(s), and the storyline and elements are resemble.

Almost works by Paul Auster and contemporary novelists have a structure as to seek a riddle or something, and to try to solve questions and riddles. Auster indicated the structure itself on this novel in a symbolic form.

In some parts, Auster indicates his literary thought and philosophy of writing. For him the ideal form of novel is practical detective stories has full of meaning and no vainness. And Quinn was interested in the relation among stories and their combinations. And words are has no fixed meanings. Words and stories should be made by people’s activities as writing. But Stillman Sr. denied the thought of contemporary language theory, he think it was the fall. On this novel Quinn gathered fragments of things, wrote a red notebook and resulted in construct a his story. I think the Auster’s thought of writing is like behalf of Wittgenstein’s language game and Sartre’s existentialism, also it includes the postmodernist theory of deconstruction. It is an active and pragmatic policy of writing put emphasis on physicality, reality and 　contingency or randomness.

This novel is an excellent story of stories and writings. The stories in this story splendidly consists this story. And this novels is a self-reference novel. Quinn, a writer “Paul Auster” and the narrator are writers, the characters may reflect Paul Auster himself, and the notion what are writing, story and words is an important element in this novel.

And I think an outstanding characteristics of Paul Auster’s novels is there were many or some impressive, colourful and vivid scenes and interesting, intellectual and integral descriptions and little fine and funny episodes such as the notion about New York, mystery novels and detective, the description when Quinn bought a red notebook, the summary of The Garden and the Tower: Early Visions of New World by Peter Stillman, the portrayals of Grand Central Terminal and a writer, Paul Auster’s talking his essay on Don Quixote. They calls a harmony and an elaborated image like music, especially like a symphony or a concerto.

This novel is not an armchair story, is a story in the city and in motion or moving. I think Auster’s policy of writing a novel is novels should be written in motion or moving and in the city. The main characters of Auster’s novels moved, fought with difficulty, struggled in the real world or a restricted situation, and the stories progress. So it’s Auster’s practice of language game which was mentioned by Wittgenstein. Also in Auster’s novels, characters play their own language games construct words and stories.

And a sub theme of this novel is a struggle of the view to words and language between Quinn and Stillman Sr.. The former is a contemporary practical language theory like Wittgenstein’s language game or the Saussurean semiology. The latter is like the classical historical language study pursues Proto-Indo-European such as Wilhelm von Humboldt and Jacob Grimm.

But Quinn was defeated in the struggle and couldn’t solve the question and find the answer. Readers thought about and experienced the story with Quinn. But the the questions and the riddles were not solved, so this novel involuntary asked the readers about the problem of contemporary people’s emptiness and confusion. And this novel has no conclusion and answer of the question. Many riddles and questions remain. So I think no conclusion is the answer or conclusion.

Details of the Book

The New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
Faber & Faber, London, 2 Jun 2011
320 pages, £5.99
ISBN: 978-0571276554
Contents:

City of Glass
Ghosts
The Locked Room

Synopsis & Review | Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami & Philip Gabriel, Vintage Books, 2001 (originally published in 1999)

Summary Synopsis

Sumire is a close friend of mine. She dropped the university at her sophomore year to become a novelist. And she visited my apartment on weekends, she showed me her manuscripts. I love her, but she didn’t have love feeling for me. At a time, she came across a merchant lady Miu, she became an assistant of Miu, then Sumire couldn’t write a novel.

Miu and Sumire went to France and Italy on business, on their way home, they dropped in a Greek island as a vacation. At the Greek island, Sumire suddenly disappeared. I went to the Greek island requested by Miu, but we can’t find Sumire. A day, I found two texts in a floppy disk written by Sumire…

Book Review

This novel ninth long novel by Haruki Murakami, and the third romance novel follows Norwegian Wood and South of the Border, West of the Sun, originally published in 1999. But he has not written a romance long novel again until now. Also, this novel is an unusual romance novel that describes today’s persons who have no existence or reality who can’t fall in love really, seriously and passionately.

This novel is a story about Sumire, and the substantial main character in this novel is Sumire. The main descriptions of the first half of this novel are descriptions about Sumire from the viewpoint of the narrator like Nick Carraway in the Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald, and talks about Miu of which the narrator heard by Sumire. Sumire is an interface or a narrator of the narrator, to see the world and to understand himself. And the narrator narrates the story which is not a neutral and fair act. There are choices, selections and interpretations by the narrator. I think the narrator is one of the readers who interprets the story like the concept of death of the author by Roland Barthes.

The name ”Sputnik Sweetheart” is the secret nickname of Miu named by Sumire. So Sputnik Sweetheart is Miu, and Sputnik (means "traveling companion” in Russian) is Sumire. Sumire and Miu are beings like a satellite or Sputnik, lost existence, reality and lively feeling. Their hearts were shunted by an iron shell and went away from others by centrifugal force. And Sumire and Miu can’t express or perform true moving or emotional expressions by art. In this novel, a few times it mentioned the word “lesbian (love)”. But rather than it, I think this novel expresses women’s platonic love and intimate friendship.

The subtheme of this novel is writing, writing novel and story, and what are story and writing. Writing and story for Sumire (and today’s people in this novel), the methods fill in the gap with between reality and self or own mind. For Sumire, writing novels is the meaning of life, but she had no reality, existence and true genius or talent as an artist. From the time Sumire met Miu, Sumire did not have to fill in the gap with the reality, because Miu is a being on the other side and was a fine pianist but hadn’t true genius, equal to Sumire. So by her fate and experiences, she can’t complete a novel she wanted to write and must disappear in her youth.

I think the description of chapter 5 is Murakami’s literary and philosophical reflection and question on self and his thought of writing novels. And this novel is a reflection on Murakami himself through Sumire, and through Sumire through the narrator. The narrator partly lived in Sumire’s story, and the narrator’s meaning of life is the story of Sumire. So Murakami made and lived the story of the narrator and Sumire, wrote and implied his thought of writing by this novel.

And, physicality or embodiment is a key to this novel. In this novel, the narrator by Murakami played sport first time. Sumire and Miu are persons who lost their physicality, so they can’t do and feel real or sexual love. It may be the notion of Murakami, as literature or writing needs physicality.

I think this novel resembles Murakami’s first romance Norwegian Wood very much. The relationships, Toru Watanabe-Naoko-Reiko and the narrator-Sumire-Miu resemble. Also, positioning of characters, the structure of story and locations, last phone call, Reiko and Miu abandoned playing piano, Naoko and Sumire are the beings lost existences and emotionally unstable, they resemble. And Norwegian Wood is tragic, humid and melancholic. Instead, this novel is dreamy, light, dry and refreshing. So I think Sputnik Sweetheart is the 90’s variation of Norwegian Wood, the story around 1969-1970. And the structure of many elements made the story and its content and meaning, so I have resembled but different feeling by the two novels.

This novel is one of the fine works of Murakami, and a dreamy and wonderful but mysterious "romance" novel written by Murakami's original style.

And this is a structuralist novel that consists of the structure of the story and positionings of its elements as characters, places and notions. The narrator is a usual (and empty) person, but the structure, its elements, their positioning and his view make the story and the meaning. But also this novel is an existentialist novel that expresses the nothingness of existence of people today. But Murakami didn't write answers such as Sumire's whereabouts and what is a story and writing. He left answers and considerations behind readers.

Details of the Book

Sputnik Sweatheart
Haruki Murakami (Author), Philip Gabriel (Translator)
Vintage Publishing, London, United Kingdom, 3 October 2002
240 pages, £8.99
ISBN: 978-0099448471