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The Music of Chance: Aleatorical (Dis) harmonies Within "The City of the World"
- University of Pennsylvania Press
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The Music ofChance: Aleatorical ,Dis)harmonies Within lIThe City of the World" Tim Woods In a poignant moment of gradually dawning consciousness in Paul Auster 's novel Ghosts in The New York Trilogy, the quasi-detective figure Blue begins to reflect upon the circumstances in which he finds himself: The picture is far more complicated than Blue ever imagined. For almost a year now, he has thought ofhimselfas essentially free.... Now, after the incident with the masked man and the further obstacles that have ensued, Blue no longer knows what to think. It seems perfectly plausible to him that he is also being watched, observed in the same way that he has been observing Black. If that is the case, then he has never been free. From the very start he has been the man in the middle , thwarted in front and hemmed in on the rear. (55-56) Characteristic ofhis abiding interest in the way our narratives ground our perspective, and constitute dialectical relationships ofpower, this passage demonstrates Paul Auster's preoccupation with the fictions ofpower and the power of fictions. In many of his novels, Auster's focus falls on the single or isolated individual's efforts to realize a degree ofindependence and freedom. The struggles against the restrictions of individual freedoms often result in specific epistemological and ontological anxieties, frequently precipitating crises of confidence in what separates reality from appearance for the various protagonists. The intricate relationships of text, narrative, and authority are explored in The New York Trilogy, resulting in the perplexing relationship between Quinn and Stillman in City ofGlass, and the tangled power perspectives of Blue in Ghosts. Auster also explores the manner in which language invades and structures sound and silence in his poems in Disappearances, the working out of the 144 Tim Woods tense and difficult father-son relationship in The Invention ofSolitude, the embattled and complex triangular relationship ofEffing, Fogg, and Kitty in Moon Palace, and the futurist critique of a totalitarian society in In the Country ofLast Things. In all these texts, Auster has concentrated on the function ofpower, especially on its constitutive and oppressive effects. Ghosts continues with Blue recognizing that some form of action is called for to rectify his position ofinsecurity, and through an image ofthe master-slave relationship, he envisages himself like a slave stumbling onto a vision of his own freedom. He imagines himself somewhere else, far away from here, walking through the woods and swinging an axe over his shoulder. Alone and free, his own man at last. He would build his life from the bottom up, an exile, a pioneer, a pilgrim in the new world. But this is as far as he gets. For no sooner does he begin to walk through these woods in the middle of nowhere than he feels Black is there too, hiding behind some tree, stalking invisibly through some thicket, waiting for Blue to lie down and close his eyes before sneaking up on him and slitting his throat. It goes on and on, Blue thinks. Ifhe doesn't take care ofBlack now, there will never be any end to it. This is what the ancients called fate, and every hero must submit to it. There is no choice, and if there is anything to be done, it is only the one thing that leaves no choice. (222) This is an allegorical passage suggestive of Thoreau's spontaneous encounter with nature recorded in Walden.! In Auster's parodic allusion, the threat of hidden physical violence lurking to waylay the heroic pioneering figure in the wilderness, and the realization that Blue is locked into some inescapable relationship of struggle with Black, forces a speculation on the cause of events. Blue's paradox is that ifhe has any chance at all, it is that he must accept fate and his determined course of events; and ifhe has no choice, it is because he is subject to fate. This submission of agency, the recourse to fate and the implied unalterable succession of events, opens another theme that preoccupies the writing ofAuster: selfdetermination , inevitability, agency, and chance. The metaphor of the heroic pioneer seeking a pure space for freedom and independence, where someone can control every chance, is also an attempt to master death. Yet the subject is never autonomous. The "escape" from the unmasterable becomes an undermining ofthe centered self, an upsetting of the self-determining subject, an exile from oneself. The proximity of death is forever with us, and causes...