Will's Students, Brennan

[marc issue robinson]

Quoth Kathleen B:

> sound.  The similarity of the author's initials and the initials of our
> narrator, also a writer, is hardly accidental.

Indeed not. This instance of putting a character, who may or may not be
Auster himself, into the story is one of his milder examples. The New 
York
Trilogy opens with the phone ringing in the apartment of the protagonist 
(who
is an author, and who may or may not be *the* author) and a voice asking,

"Hello, is that Paul Auster? Of the Auster Detective Agency?"

- and Quinn, the protagonist/author/narrator/Auster replies,

"There is no-one here by that name"

(But...! But...!???!)

- and Quinn subsequently decides to *impersonate* Paul Auster...

It's been a couple or three years since I read "Leviathan", but as I 
recall,
the narrator has told the Feds a pack of lies to protect his friend, and
within the terms of the book, is reconstructing what he thinks has 
happened;
a different story, which serves a different purpose (and not to be 
confused
with whatever purpose the elusive Paul Auster has, in telling *his* 
story).

You have grasped the essential argument in Auster's work very well - but 
I
don't think "cop-out" is a useful way to look at the enigma which he 
builds
in Leviathan (and his other books). Auster invites skepticism regarding
history, and memory, and story-telling. He casts doubt on the possibility 
of
discovering The Truth, to the extent that he implies that there is no 
Truth
to be discovered... but *something* happened, didn't it?

The French philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard says that it is no longer a
matter of asking what is true, but of asking about each piece of 
information:
how *useful* is it? What purpose does it serve, and according to whose
agenda?

The bottom line, perhaps, is that the word for a thing is not the same 
the
thing itself, the description of an event is never (can never be) 
complete
and accurate and definitive, the *explanation* of an event still less 
so...

...what is a "fact"?

rgds, marc.

-- 

http://pcecef.dph.aber.ac.uk/~sybil/