Moon Palace

Moon over Manhattan ( engl. Moon Palace ) is a novel by American author Paul Auster, who first appeared in 1989. The German translation is by Werner Schmitz.

Background

The novel portrays the search for the young Marco Stanley Fogg for his identity. Paul Auster can play this quest for meaning alternately in the big city of New York and in the "Wild " West of the USA. Against the background of the late 1960s in the U.S. with all the special features and events such as the moon landing or the Vietnam war important motives of the novel is the search for the unknown father, the importance of the moon and the role of the West Movements ( New Frontier ) in American history. The narrator in Moon Palace is also the protagonist who looks back in 1986 to his youth. Striking are some biographical similarities with the author, for example, were both (born 1947) at Columbia University in New York, lived for a while in this town, shared a passion for baseball and chatted with the translation of French texts into English over water.

Content

  • First Chapter: Marcos fatherless childhood, the accidental death of the mother, living with his uncle Victor, whose death and Marcos failure at college
  • Financial problems, hunger
  • Homelessness and vegetating in Central Park
  • Rescue by the chance acquaintance with a Chinese girl named Kitty Wu and his college friend room
  • Relationship with Kitty Wu and start working as a Reader in the wealthy Thomas Effing, an older, self-centered, blind Lord
  • Writing down Effings life story and obituary; his death
  • Marcos together with Kitty Wu and the meeting with Effings son Solomon Barber
  • The realization that Solomon his father and his grandfather was Effing
  • Solomon Barber's story
  • Separation of Kitty Wu, after their abortion
  • After Solomon's death march to the Pacific coast and the beginning of a new life

Trivia

  • The painter Ralph Albert Blakelock lived actually incurred by 1847 until 1919. Researched by The hero figures correspond historically accepted facts.
  • The Bluff City in Utah, who appears in the novel, there really is.
  • The historical references to the Move -west movement are correct for the most part, such as the allusions Effings on the history of the Donner Party.
New Frontiers program Bluff (Utah) Integrated Authority File
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