『기록실로의 여행』에 나타난 대체역사 연구

Abstract

This paper aims to clarify the ways of rewriting another American history(alternative America) in Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster. In Travels in the Scriptorium, readers see an old man in a room sitting on the narrow bed. The reason why I focus on the old man in this work is that he seems like a man having false memory caused by the brain’s flaws which we could see are manipulated by brain surgery. As a result of the surgery, his mind is elsewhere, stranded among the figments in his head as he searches for an answer to the question that haunts him. He cannot memorize anything about himself or things that he did in the past due to the brain’s flaws. He is just confined in the room and forced to finish the story of a report on the desk. The report tells an imaginative story of relation between Confederation and Alien Territories in 1830s which could be replaced by the history of American Indian War. In this kind of situation, Auster shows us the potential aspects of replacing(rewriting) factual history with another one by way of manipulating human memories in terms of brain surgery. In addition, the writer Auster may give warning that we could live in the course of manipulated history, as well as be forced to rewrite alternative history ourselves.