The Urban Essential Solitude of the Hunger Character: A Blanchotian Reading of PAUL Auster’s Moon Palace

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to analyze Paul Auster’s Moon Palace through the lens of philosopher and critic Maurice Blanchot, whose literary theory provides a theoretical frame to study this novel as a fictionalization of the construction of the literary space. Paul Auster’s influence of Maurice Blanchot’s poetics starts with Auster’s experience as a translator of some of Blanchot’s texts, a job that contributes to the influence French literature has in Auster’s work. I argue that Paul Auster’s Moon Palace fictionalizes Maurice Blanchot’s literary theory by introducing a central character, Marco Fogg, who implicitly performs the role of character-author and progressively transforms himself and his own world into a fictional one. In order to accomplish this task, Auster leads his central character to different stages of inspiration and creation comparable to the ones defined by Blanchot in his theorization of the literary space. Whereas most of the critics point at isolation and hunger as a rebellious behavior provoked by the existential crisis of the character, I analyze them as creative stages in the protagonist’s fictional transformation. By introducing this creative process in his fiction, Auster creates a particular Austerian metafiction in which characters become the protagonists, creators and readers of their own urban fictional space.