The Invention of Solitude
The Invention of Solitude (English: The Invention of Solitude ) is a partly autobiographical, partly more essayistic prose by American author Paul Auster, which was published in 1982.
Context of origin
In January 1979, Paul Auster's father dies unexpectedly. For oyster it is a certain crisis phase of his life. Financial difficulties incriminate him, the marriage with Lydia Davis is on the verge of separation, the common two year old son Daniel suffers a severe lung disease.
Content
The book is structured in two parts, which are interdependent and complement each other.
The first part of the book, Portrait of an invisible, created in 1979 as a direct response to the death of his father, an attempt by the processing of family history and positioning of one's position in his father's life.
Auster describes the approach and evidence search in the parental home, where the father lived after the divorce over fifteen years alone. Marriage, generally dealing with women and children is influenced by distance and inaccessibility. Samuel Auster is a married bachelor, a pig gender, who always seems absent and just before departure. ( The figure of the distant father will always reappear in Auster's work. ) His parents are Galician Jews who immigrated from Europe. With the study of the legacy eventually unfolds a large part of family history.
Chance plays as common in oyster, also a role here, and it is revealed that Auster's grandmother has shot her own husband in a drama of jealousy. The woman still holds her family together, the sons closer and found in later years a common real estate business. At their best time, the brothers oyster have over 100 apartment buildings. Here also the unknown father, who wears rents, or the children of poor tenant discloses gives discarded clothing of his son. In the end, only a few houses remain, nevertheless, Paul Auster can protect the inheritance for some time his literary activity.
The second part of the book, The Book of Remembrance will be completed until 1982 and is applied essayistic. Oyster switches from first-person narrator in the third person and counterpointed the straight line constructed narrative of the first part. The text is fragmentary, traversed by memorabilia, poems and quotes ( Flaubert, Freud, Collodi, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc.), in many passages speaks of the well-read critics by the poet. Auster reflects on death and the things of the (family) life and tries to increase the own biography into generally valid. It is at the same time but also a reflection on the writing itself
Classification in the body of work
The invention of solitude marks the transition from Paul Auster's poet, translator and critic for prose poet. This is the first of his autobiographical works.
In the second part of the book already suggests the postmodern refraction later novels. Thus, the invention forms of loneliness is an important element in the work of the author, not least as a direct precursor to his well-known New York Trilogy.
Expenditure
- The Invention of Solitude Sun Press, New York 1982, ISBN 0-915342-37-5 Translation: The Invention of Solitude. Dt. by Werner Schmitz. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1993, ISBN 3-498-00033-0