auster y la filoofia

8/10/2019 auster y la filoofia

1/19

PAUL AUS TER S CINEMATOGRAPHIC FICT ION S:

AGAINST

THE

ONTOLOGY

OE THE

PRESENT

Timothy Bewes

In the c i nema ... man has lost his soul ; in re turn, however, he

gains his body.

Georg von Ltikacs, Th ou gh ts Towardan Aesthetic of the Ginema

If we agree - with Fredric Jam eso n - that historicising works of literature

is always necessary, recent fiction poses a part icular chal lenge to t ha t

a p p r o a c h ;

not,

primari ly, because

of the

difficulty

of

ga in ing cri tical

distance on the contemporaiy period, but more importantly, because the

ideaof contempo ranei ty , of the present , hasrecently becom e implicated

as never before in the way weread literature. The first task in historicising

contemporaiy fiction,

will suggest, sh ould be to historicise the very concept

of contemporaneity. This, paradoxically, means beginning to dissolve the

ideological

and

historical congelation that

is

implied

in a

phrase such

as

the cultural logic of late cap italism .My a rgument in this essay will be that

po stm ode rnity , the most influential recen t theorisation of the pres ent , has for

the m ost part constitutedan obstacle to this historicisation of co ntem por aneity ;

that it

has,

moreover, privileged the pres ent

as

a principle that, ineffect, stan ds

outside itsown historicity. Jam eso n s powerful diagnosis of a certain spatial

turn

in the

pos tmodern

has,

unde r

the

sign

of

historicisation , functioned

to ciystallise a sense of the contem poraiy assuch - something that may be

subjected to scrutiny and ana lysis . Jam eson s diagnosis , furthermore, is l. Ki-edricJameson.

. 1 II 1 I r tr 1 Postmodertii. im, or Th e

Itself premised

on an

already spatialised concept

of

t ime:

If

experience

and

culturalu cofijite

expression still seem largelyapt in the cultural sph ere of the m ode rn , writes Cnpitalism Dmliani,

( , , , f. . . . . . . , N C , Oiike Universi ty

Jameson, they are altogether o?/ac and anachron istic in a post m oder n p|.gj.j |yg| u,,

age, where , if tem por ality stillhas itsplace it would seem better to speak of th e

writing of it than of any lived experience. ^ The synonymy ofd isplacement 2.

ibid.,

emphasis

and anachronism

in

this sentence

is

em blematic

of

a spatio-temporal logic

at work, in wbich histoiy is conceived as a succession of discrete p resents,

separated by rup ture s , crises and epistemic breaks . Jam eso n s spatial

turn , in other words, is here presupposed rather than derived; or, to put it

ano ther way,the argtmient that temporal experience has been replacedby the

spatial is a self-fulfilling on e, a tautology.

The claim that postmodernity

has

ended,

and the

question

of

what will

follow it, are similarly dependent upon this spatialised understanding of

t ime and temporality; indeed, Jameson himself has recently begtin to talk Modernity: ssay o


2/19

4.

Geoi-g von Liikacs,

'Thoughts Tovvai'd

an Aesthetic of the

Cinema', Janelle

Blankenship (trans).

Polygraph

13(2001):

p l 5 .

spatialised n otionofthe postm odern as an e poch that maybesucceededby

anythingatall.Tothisend, Iwill consid er thepostm odern ontologyof the

present (as Icallit)alongside earlier attem pts totheorisethecon tempora iy

- mo st notably, Ge org L ukacs s The heory of the Novel which puts foi-ward

an epochal notion of absolute sinfulness as the defining principle of tbe

novel form - tbe intention being todecant whatisessentialto and credible

inthe postmo dern hypothesis from tbe propensity todelimitit historically.

Interestingly, several years before h e wroteThe heoryo ftheNovel Ltikacsput

forwardaless ontologically gloom y theo ry of aesthetic form ,in ashort article

on theaestheticsofcinema, in which cinema isdifferentiated from thea tre

onthebasisof its presentation of m ove m ent in itself, an eternal variability,

the never-resting changeof things . Cinem a, claims Lukacs, introduc es an

entirely different metaphysics - differentnotonly from the atre ,butfrom the

ontologyofinteriorand exterior, subjectand object, implied in l i terature s

dependence

on the

word.

Inthe lightof this contiguityofcinemaand thenovel inLukacs s early

work,I propose herea readingof two recent fictional works byPaul A uster,

in which the tension between a spatialontology of temporality and a more

sensuous tem porality, liberated from space, is staged asanencounter between

novelisticandcinematic form. Auster,Iargue,is astransfixed by thespatio-

historical na rrative as Lukacs and Jam eso n;

and yet the

captivation by cinema

apparent

in

his recent work

-

albeit ultimately disavowed

in the

texts discussed

here

-

illustrates

the

extent

to

which so-called po stm od ern fiction

is

drawn

towards that which would liberate

it

from that veiy categoiy, conceived

of

asa historical, periodising one.If postmodern narrative strategies are to be

succeeded byanytbing,itwillbe by an entirely different metap hysics ,one

which, however,is imaginatively configured within postmodern theoiy itself,

as wellas inLukacs s theory of the novel,and in theyearning of Paul A uster s

rece nt fictionsfor the immediacy ofcinema.

THE IDEOLOGYOE GONTEMPORANEITY

5.Chai'les

Jencks, Phe

Emei gent Rules',

Postmoderttmn:

A

Reader T h o m a s

Docherty (ed). New

York, Columbia

University Press,

1993,

pp288-9.

The central assertions

of

postmodern theoiy,

in the US at

least, have been

formulatedon thebasisand in theaftermath of Jam eson s spatial turn,and

tbey have tende d similarlytointroducea set of spatially conceived tropes to

the interpre tation of culture. Intertextuality , irony , doub le-cod ing (aterm

coinedbyGharles Jenc ks, referring to tbe peaceful co-existence of different

architectural styles in a single work, and to the ir sim ulta neo us validity ),

self-referentiality , metafiction , have been impos ed upo n literaiy texts

in

particular, with tbe result that postmodern fiction, and postmodernity in

general, have been understoo dinterm s of banality, depth lessne ss, cynicism,

alienation, sterility, political defeat,

the

totality

of

commodification

- in

short,as a set ofcultural practicesinwhich in here thefailureof art and the


3/19

delimitation, to be ranged alongside other such ontologising moments as

Charles Newman's statement that contemporary American literature presents

'the flattest possible charac ters in the flattest possible landsca pe re nd ered in

the flattest possible diction'; David Hai-vey's use of terms such as 'plunder',

'amnesia' and 'spectacle' to describe the relation of postmodern aesthetics to

histoiy; even Ihab H assan's earlier, mo re nuanced diagnosis of po stmo dernism

as a literature of'exh aus tion ' an d 'silence'. Th ese statem ents, at least in their

crudest form, rep resent variations on the claim that the contem poraiy period

is one in whichevents are

no

longerpossible; that history has - in a sense not

nearly so removed from Francis Fukuyama's 'controversial' thesis as these

thinkers imagine - ended.

A m ore recen t version ofthishistorio grap hy of critical decline is found in

the work of Walter B enn M ichaels, who, in

The Shapeofthe

Signifier identifies

a broad shift, across a range of recent works of fiction, literai-y theory and

political philosophy, from talking about class and ideology to talking about

'culture' and 'identity'. The characters in novels such as Bret Easton Ellis's

Glamoravia and Don DeLillo'sMaoII - and by extension their authors - says

Michaels, are not animated by 'deep disagreements at tbe level of ideas'; in

fact they don't have any ideas. ' The interest these texts have in terrorists,

for example, is not ideological, but 'ontological' - their concern is not with

'doing the right thing' but with 'the question of whether we are living our

lives to th e fullest'

SS

p i76).For Michaels, indeed, politics itself

h s

become

'ontologised'. This shift has been paralleled by a new commitment to the

'materiality' of the sign in literaiy studies, which Michaels presents as a

movement away from interpretation and authorial intention, and towards

a conception of plural meanings, yoked to the plurality of subject positions

encountering the text; this reorientation amounts in effect to the abolition of

meaning and its replacement

by

a concept of experience. His thesis, developed

largely in reaction to the set of 'postmodernist' critical practices described

above (although in fact sha ring th eir basic assum ptions ), is tha t tbe 'm aterial

turn' and tbe rejection of intentionality form an alliance that is essentially

contradictoiy; for to emphasise 'experience' is, for Michaels, ultimately to

negate the 'materiality' of the text for the primacy of the subject.

Micbaels here opposes the particularity of individual 'needs and desires'

- a phrase he lifts from Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's mpire - to the

suppo sed universality and transce ndentality of'beliefs'. Th e most provocative

formulation of bis argument is the following, characteristically invasive

challenge to his reader: 'If you think that difTerences in belief cannot be

described as dilTerences in identity, you m ust also think that texts mean what

their authors intend' {S SpplO-11). Yet, like his und ersta nd ing of exp erience

and materiality, the distinction between beliefs and desires is an ontological

one in Micbaels

{SS

p 178) - wbich is to say that it is ahisto rical, r oo ted in th e

present as a unitaiy categoiy, fenced in on either side by the past and the

future, and in the separa tion of subject (experience) an d object (m ateriality).

6. Cliai ' les Newman,

'Wlial's Left Oiil of

Lileiatui 'e ' , NeuiYork

Times,

12/07/1987,

late edilioii, sec. 7,

p i ; David1-laiTey

The Coudition of

Postmoiteniily: A )i

Enquiry into Ihe

Origins of Cultural

Clmnge, Oxford .

Basil Blackwell,

1989,

p.^4; Ihab

I-Iassaii, Th e

t)ismemheniieiit of

Orpheus:ToTuardn

l-\>slniodeni Literature

(Second lidilion),

Madison, Wisconsin,

University of

Wisconsin Pi ess,

1982,

p2fi8.

7.

Vfellei- Benn

Michaels, 77S/inyM

of the Siguifter:

1967to the Knd of

History (henceforth

SS), Princeton and

Oxford, Princeton

Utiiversity Press,

2 0 0 4 ,

p i 7 3 .


4/19

8.

Georg

LiikAcs, Th e

Theory ofthe Novel:A

Historico-Philosophical

Essayon the forms of

Great Epic Literature

(henceforthTofN),

Anna Bostock

(trans), Cambridge,

MA, MIT Press,

1971,

plO3.

9. Jean-Francois

Lyotard, 'Answering

the Question: What

Is Postniodernism?',

R^gis Dm'and

(trans),

Ttie

Postmodern

Condition: A Report

on

Knowledge,

Manchester,

Manchester

fact the opposite is true: beliefs are material entities; they do not involve

transcendental claims until they are themselves on the verge of obsolescence

- until, as Georg Lukacs says, the world is 'released from its paradoxical

anchorage in a

beyond

that is truly present .^ When they are constitutive of a

society, beliefs are

materially present

to consciousness. Th us , even th e so-called

'decline' of belief or ideology, their 'replacement' by 'culture' or 'identity'

- what Michaels calls elsewhere the transformation from the pohtical to the

biopolitical(SS pi74) - this too, insofar as it exists at all in the generalised,

historical sense that Michaels thinks it does, is a set of beliefs as materially,

sensuously

present to consciousness as the 'religious' faith tbat animated

societies in earlier periods.

' In ideological s t ruggles ' , wri tes Michaels ( indicat ing the cold war

period), 'victory is imagined as tbe triumph of one political and economic

system over another; no new bodies are required. In ontological struggles,

victory is the defeat of one body by another; in the ontological struggle

not against some other body but against what is (hence against even one's

own body), victory will be 'change' , the destruction of what is and its

replacem ent by som etbing new ' (S S pi73). Yet Michaels 's perception of

this 'ontologisation' of ideology - the most ' ingenious' version of which,

according to Michaels, is the recent transformation of poverty from a

class into a 'way of being' in Hardt and Negri's

mpire

{ SS pl81) - is only

possible on the basis of Michaels 's own ontologisation of the present. In

his analysis a catego rical - tha t is to say, ep och al - difference sep ara tes, say,

the (contemporary) concept of religion 'as a kind of identity' from tbat of

religious belief'as

belief

(SS p l7 0 ). M ateriality, ideology an d

belief

however,

are impoverished terms in Michaels 's analysis, delimited conceptually and

historically from consciousness, desire, and identity.

In contrast to all these thinkers, and following the work of Jean-Francois

Lyotard, I will approach the postmodern not as signalling the end of the

possibility of the event, but as the occasion of the event. This perspective

requires a suspension of the spatialised relation to time as broken up into

unitary epochs and transitions; an interrup tion of tbe idea ofthe pos tmo dern

as a generic or typological category that is applicable to particular texts and

authors; a rejection of the diagnostic and interpretive critical model for a

kind of reading that is bound tightly to its ownhistorical m om ent; an d a

resumption of attention to the ways in which the work is engaged with the

question of its possibility.

According to Lyotard, the defining quality of the postmodern work is

that it is un de rtak en in tbe absence of rules, and 'in ord er to formu late the

rules of whatwill have

beendone.

He nce th e fact that work and text bave the

characters of an event ... . Lyotard is concerned less witb anatomising the

features of a particular artistic form or period than with the idea ofthe work

as forged o n the div ide between possibility an d actuality - or, as he form ulates


5/19

the modern. Read alongside Jameson, Harvey, Michaels, et al, the most

striking characteristic of Lyotard's formulation, and of the essay as a wbole,

is the absence of any constative statements that relate to the 'present'. For

Lyotard, there is no 'state of the world' as such: the p rese nt is not an ope rative

categoiy in bis work, andThe Postmodern Conditionis not a theorisation of the

contemporaiy Indeed, the 'slackening' reldchement)that Lyotard observes to

be part of the 'color of the tim es'' is not a quality of the po stm od ern , but what

detracts from it - a reified and period ising thin king tha t diagnoses a prese nt

constituted by crisis, impossibility, and a general sense of the un prec ede nted .

Tbe implication of Lyotard's phrase 'the loiles oiwhatwill have beendone ,and

of his conception of the postmodern work as an 'event' irreducible to any

moment in time - irreducible, that is to say, to any single historicisation - is

that tbe 'prese nt' do es not have any substantial actuality except in retrospect;

except, that is to say, in imagination.

In this essay, then, the work of Paul Auster, whom Peter Biooker has

described as 'pure p os tm od ern ist ' , will be read not as a mo re or less

adequa te treatment of 'pos tm ode rn' themes and techniques; nor as evidence

of a decline, in works of literature, from realist representation into

self-

conscious awareness of its impossibility; nor,pace Walter Benn Michaels, as

a lapse from a world organised ideologically to one organised ontologically;

but rather, in terms ofitspositive, material qualities: as a body of work tbat,

precisely in its most cerebral and reflective a spects, is far more than a som bre

meditation upon a world from which it is constitutively removed. Auster's

work is engaged, rather, witb its own possibility. His fictional works appear

to stage tbe impossibility of tbe novel, and tbe failure of the literary as sucb

- and yet, I shall argue , it is the idee fixe of postmodernity tbat has taught us

to limit bis texts in tbis way. Auster materialises a struggle witb possibility

itself:

the strugg le to produ ce, in a situation in wbich tbe rules of pro duction

are not given. Tb e 'm ateriality' of iswork, tben, has n othin g to do with what

Michaels dismissively refers to as 'the space between the words and letters, th e

quality of tbe p aper, an d so forth' {SSp5), and eve iytbing to do with tbe event

of tbe work's production and reception : the sensuous dynam ic of possibility,

impossibility and actuality that is inseparable from tbe consciousness of tbe

work as sucb. Furtbermore, this dynamic is manifest, sensuously present in

Auster's work, as a ti utb worthy

of belief

in all its immediacy.

LUKACS, TH EO RIST O F TH E POSTMODERN

For Lyotard, the question 'and what now?' is not one that succeeds the

postmodern, but is precisely tbe question

of

it: 'Tbis is tbe miseiy [of] the

painter [faced] witb a plastic surface, of the musician with the acoustic

surface, tbe miseiy tbe thinker faces witb a desert of tbougbt, and so on'. '

Tbe postmodern is for Lyotard apreconditionof the m odern , not a symptom

of its exhaustion. Tbe postmodern, he says, [is what] takes place not only in

10. Ibid.,

11 . Itier Bi-ooker.

Nfny York

Fictiotis:

Modernity,

I bstmodenii im, The

New Modem, L ondon

and New York,

Longni.in, 1996.

pl48.

12. Jcan-Fran(;is

Lyotaixl,

'The

Sublimeand the

Avanl-Garde .

The Continental

Aesthetics Header,

Clive Cn/eanx (ed).

London and New


6/19

13.

Lyotard, in the m od e r n , pu t s f o r wa r d th e un p r e s e n ta b le in p r e s e n ta t io n

i tsel f .

iiswenng,op. ci.,

j

s i tua t ion i s on e o f a c o m ple te d i s junc t ion be tw e e n wha t we a r e a b le to

c o n c ei v e a n d o u r m e a n s o f p r e s e n t a t i o n :

We have tb e Ide a of tb e w or ld ( the to ta l i ty of w hat is ), bu t we do n ot bav e

the c a pa c i ty to s how a n e x a m ple o f it. W e ha ve the ide a o f the s im p le ( tha t

w b i c h c a n n o t b e b r o k e n d o w n , d e c o m p o s e d ) , b u t w e c a n n o t i l l u s t r a t e i t

wi th a sens ib le ob jec t wh ich woul d be a case of i t . We can con ce iv e t be

inf in ite ly grea t , the inf in i te ly powe r fu l , bu t every pre sen ta t ion of an objec t

de s t ine d to m a ke v i s ib le th i s a bs o lu te g r e a t ne s s o r pow e r a p pe a r s to u s

14.Ibid., p78. p a in fu l ly ina d e qu a te .

W ha t Lyo ta r d de s c r ibe s a s the s i tua t ion o f the pos tm od e r n a r t i s t a n d wr i t e r

is r e m a r ka b ly s imi la r to the h i s to r i c o - pb i lo s oph ic a l r e a l i ty o f the nove l , as

de s c r ibe d by Luka c s in The Theory of the Novel. Fo r Luka c s , the nove l a pp e a r s

a t a po in t whe n f o r m a n d c on te n t - Lyo ta r d s fa c u l ti e s o f p r e s e n t in g a n d

c onc e iv ing - a r e s p li t a p a r t , a c on d i t io n he c ha r a c te r i s e s wi th the ph r a s e the

e poc h o f a bs o lu te s in f u lne s s {TofN pl52). T b e nove l , he says , i s th e ep i c of

an age in whicb tbe ex tens ive to ta l i ty of l i f e is no longer d i rec t ly g iven , in

wh ic h the im m a n e n c e o f m e a n in g in l if e ba s be c om e a p r o b le m , ye t wh ic h s t il l

th inks in t e r ms o f to ta l i ty TofN p 5 6 ) . The Theory of the Novel, w r i t t e n in the

ye a r s p r i o r to the ou t b r e a k o f tbe F i r st W o r ld W a r, ha s tbe r e pu ta t ion o f a t e x t

ove r wh e lm e d by the s e ns e o f c on te m po r a ne i ty . H owe ve r , th i s is l a r gely d ue

to Luka c s s own a fte r wor d on tbe book , wr i t t e n m uc h l a ter , in 196 2 , in wb ic h

h e c o n d e m n e d t h e b o o k - a n d t h e p h r a s e a b s o l u t e s i n fu l n e ss i n p a r t i c u l a r

- for wbat he ca l led i ts e th ica l ly- t inged pess imism vis -a -v is tbe present

{TofN

p i 8 ) .

Tb e a f t e r wor d wa s pub l i s he d a s a p r e f a c e to the 1 968 G e r m a n e d i t ion ,

a n d to tbe s ub s e q ue n t Eng l i s b t r a ns la t ion in 1 97 1 , a n d i t is the on ly p la c e in

th e book wb ere tb ere is any b is tor ica l spec ific i ty a t a l l .

T b e b o o k w a s w r i t t e n , s ay s L u k a c s i n 1 9 6 2 , i n a m o o d o f p e r m a n e n t

d e s p a i r o v e r t h e s t a t e o f t h e w o r l d {TofN p i 2 ) . T b e F i rs t W o r l d W a r b a d

ju s t b r oke n ou t - the f i r s t wa r invo lv ing e ve r y ma jo r wor ld powe r - a nd wa s

a c c o m p a n i e d b y a s u d d e n e s c a l a t i o n in p o p u l a r n a t i o n a l i s t s e n t i m e n t w h i c h

c a s t the Eu r ope a n l e f t in to a s t a te o f c r i s i s . I n te l l e c tua l s , s a ys Luka c s , we r e

c a u g h t b e t w e e n h o r r o r a t t h e w a r it s el f a n d h o r r o r a t t b e o n l y a v a i l a b l e

s o l u t i o n t o t h e w a r : W e s t e r n i n t e r v e n t i o n . T h i s i s t b e s i t u a t i o n w h i c h

- d i s ta n c i n g h ims e l f f r om tb e pb r a s e - he c a l l e d in 1915 a bs o lu te s in f u lne s s :

a b s o l u t e , s i n c e t h e r e i s n o a c c e p t a b l e s o l u t i o n t h a t m i g h t b e a r t i c u l a t e d

in pos i t ive t e r m s ; s in f u lne s s , be c a us e al l t a lk o f inn oc e n c e , o r bone s ty ,

o r r e d e m p t i o n , is r e n d e r e d o b j e c ti v e ly fu t il e a n d d e l u d e d . T b e w o r l d b a d

p r o ve n to be s o c om ple t e ly a n d u t t e r ly fa l se , a c c o r d i ng to Luk a c s , tb a t a ny

a va i l a b le s o lu t io n wa s d i s c r e d i t e d s imp ly by tbe f a ct tba t i t wa s s p e a k a b le

wi tb in i t . I n s o f a r a s a s o lu t io n m ig h t e x i s t , i t m a y on ly be a r t i c u l a te d by


7/19

In the main text, by contrast, there are almost no historical references at

all,

and certainly no referential specificity to the phra se 'th e epoc h of ahsoltite

sinfulness'. What the later Lukacs casts as the real historical impasse behind

his own early work is presented in the work itself as an aporia at the heart

ofthe novel form as such. In the novel, he says in TheTheory ofthe Novel

aesthetics is permanently separated from ethics - which is not to say that

ethics is absent from the novel, but that the novel's ethical substance is tied

inseparably to conte nt. Ethical comm unication is limited to the pontification

of its characters, or the commentaiy of its narrators. The novel gives form

to the ethical dimension, but only by separating itself from what Lukacs calls

'the immanent meaning ofthe objective world'{TofNp84). Form and content,

then, become severed from each other in the novel: it is this condition of

separation, rather than any particular moral deficit, or sudden historical

break, that in 1915 Lukacs signifies with the term 'absolute sintlilness'.

'Absolute sinfulness' {vollendeten Silndhaftigkeit is a quotatio n from Fichte,

from a series of lectures entitled

Die Gmndzuge

Des Gegenwdrtigen Zeitalters

delivered in Berlin over a hundred years belore Lukacs was writing, in 1804-

05,

and translated into English with the title 'The Characteristics of the

Present Age'.' ' From the perspective of his own 1962 preface, then, Lukacs,

in 1915,

is

wrenc hing out ofcontex t a phras e originally used to designa te th e

post-Enlightenment period, and reapplying it to 'his own' traumatic present.

What the later Lukacs is criticising in his younger self in other words, is a

tendency to ontologise and transcenden talise the pre sent - as in the assertion

underpinning the work, that 'there is no longer any spontaneous totality

of being'

{TofN

pp l7 -1 8) . Yet Lukjics's retrospec tive self-critique arguably

participa tes in that 'ontolo gisation ' even as it deplo res it. His altei^word inserts

the text into a traumatic 'present' caught between nostalgia and utopianism,

and offloads a 'naivety' and an 'abstractionism' upon it that, he says, 'we

have every right to smile at'

{TofN

p20). How ever, it is far from clear t hat the

paralysing historical sense that the older Lukacs attributes to the youn ger is

essential to the overall schema put fonvard in

The

Theory

ofthe

Novel or even

that it is substantially present in the thesis at all,

I will atte m pt a media tion of the tem por al framework of

The Theory

ofthe Novel

in order to reorient the text away from its spatio-temporal

nostalgia for premodern literary forms - remnants of a time when (in

the famous opening paragraphs of Lukacs's work) 'everything . , , is new

and yet familiar ' ; when 'each action of the soul becomes meaningful

and rou nd ed in [the] duality [of world and

self]:

complete in meaning

- in

sense

- and co m ple te For the sen ses ,,, '

{TofN

p29) . The 'nostalgic '

ele m en t in Lukacs's text, I shall argue , is a purely speculative categ ory

organising the 'h istor ico-philosophical ' d imension of his argument. By

suspending its periodising aspects, it may yet be harnessed in the service

of

a

potential unity of material and spiritual, residing not in any lost past

1.5,

See

Joiiann

Co ltlieb I'lclite, Hie

Cliaracteristics of the

Present. Age', IVoni

The Popular

Works

ofjohann Gottlieb

Fichte.

William

Smith (trans, '1th

lulitioii), London:

Ttiibnei-, 1889,1)17:

'The Present Age

,,, stajids iti that

Kpoch ,,, which

chanicteiised

as the lipoch of

Liberation - directly

fn^m the external

riding Attthoi ity,

- indirectly IVom

the power of Reasoti

as Institict, and

general ly IVom

iieasott in any

fortn; the Age of

absoktte indilTerence

towards all trtith,

atid ol etitire

atid um'estrained

licentionsness: - the

State of completed

Sitifttlness,' Kot'

Fichte, significantly,

this is tiot an

etidpoint, bnt

merely the tliitxl of

five stages on the

foad from instinct

to reason; and he

goes on to qualify

the 'ontological'

itnplications of the

diagnosis: 'I do not

here include all

men now living in

our time, but only

those who at'e trnly

products of the Age,

and in whom it most


8/19

ABSOLUTE SINFULNESS INPAUL AU STER

16 . Paul Auster,Mr

Vertigo {henceforth

MrV ,

New York,

Viking Penguin,

1994, p3.

17 . Paul Auster,

The Book of Illusions

(henceforthBofl),

New

York,

Heniy

Holt, 2002, pi84.

To read Paul Auster

sa

'pos tm od ern ' writer in Lyotard's sense, then , is to read

him

as an

author condemned

to the

historical

and

metaphysical cond ition

that,

for

Lukacs, defines the novel as such. T he image of

world of 'absolute

sinfulness' recurs throughout his writing

-

the moment when night hegins

'to fallonthe world forever', as

M rVertigo

(1994) has it; when imm ane nce ,

the epic unityofsensoiy a nd intellectual e xp erie nce , gives waytothe world

of the novel; when his writer-protagon ists be com e reconciled orresignedto

the novel form - and thecalamity isfrequently da tedto theyear 1927,the

strange consistency serving,

it

seems, to und erm ine any suggestion

ofa

real,

epistemic (temporal-spatial) rupture. Auster's protagonists are always blocked

or aspiring a utho rs, and the novel form is almost always

an

absent presence

- an entity prese nt only as an absence -wi thi n the text.

Mr. Vertigo,

for exam ple

opens

in

1927, the year

in

which

the

protagonist,

a

levitating perform ance

artist, witnesses the horrific m ur de r of two of his friends by the Ku Klux Klan,

the sham e of which signals the end of his performan ces, and precipitates the

events tha t will culm inate inthe w ritingof the book we are reading.

The Boo k of Illusions

(2002)

is,

am ong o ther things,

the

story

ofa

silent

movie actor, Hecto r Ma nn, who disap pea rs in 1929 soon after dispo sing of the

body

of

his pregnant lover, who has been killed by his fiancee. As

a

fugitive.

Hector initially makesaliving asasex p erformer,adevelopment that marks

the m om ent when 'his world [splits]in two', after which point 'his mind and

body were

no

longer talking

to

each ot he r ' . This contrasts with

his

silent

film work, which thenarratorofthe book,arecently-bereaved andblocked

writer nam ed David Zimmer, describes as 'at once eng age d inthe world a nd

observing

it

from

a

great distance'

{Bofl

p35).

David

is

undertaking

a

translation

of

C hateaubriand 's

emoiresd outre-

tombe

durin g the period n arrated by the book, and

- it

turns out

-

is himself

writing a memoir that will only become available after hisdeath : this,of

course, is the bo okweare reading. The narrative concerns David's encou nter

with Hector Mann, andwith thefilmshe hascontinued tomake in secret

on

a

ranch

in

New Mexico

-

films that turn

out to be

muc h mo re like novels

than films, since they rely heavily on voice-over narration, and arecaught

up,for

Hector,

in an

ethical econom y

of

personal expiation and aton em ent.

For Hector, however, absolution will never

be

possible

{Bofl

p278); cinema,

far from lifting

him out of

'absolute sinfulness',

is

rather

the

context

in

which that novelistic condition isexperienced . A uster's conception of the

transition from silenttosound cinema- ashift tha t is usually d ate d to 1927

with thereleaseof

The Jazz Singer

- thus repeats Lukacs's conception ofthe

transition from the world ofthe e pictothat of the novel. Silent cinema, says

David Zimmer, is a dead art, awholly defunct genre that would n everbe

practiced aga in. And ye t. .. non e ofit could possibly grow old. It

w s

thought


9/19

without any thought of a living audience is presented in the book as a way

of paying due penance - for Chateaubriand, who imagines his narrative

posthumously 'accompanied by those voices which have something sacred

about them because they come from the sepulchre' (Bo/7 p67); for Hector,

who makes films only on the condition that they will be destroyed after his

death Bo/7pp207 -8); and for D avidhimself for whose narrative about Hector

Ma nn a nd his films there is so little sui'viving evidenc e, and w hich c onclu des

in thoughts of such corrup ting 'power and ugliness', that he too resolves not

to publish it until after his own death (Bq/7 pp316, 318),

Oracle Night

(2003) is narrated by Sidney Orr, another blocked writer.

On purc has ing a blue noteb ook at a stationeiy store, Sidney is finally able to

begin a new work of fiction, a story about a disenchanted publisher named

Nick Bowen, who one day receives the manuscript of an unpublished novel

entitled 'Oracle Night', written - in 1927 - by a woman long dead, by the

name of Sylvia Maxwell, The manuscript - a novel within a novel (within

a novel) - impresses Nick by its demands for 'total surrender in order to

be read, an unremitting attentiveness of both body and mind'. * Its central

character is a First World War veteran named Lemuel Flagg who suffers

seizures during which be is able to see the future, the terrible knowledge

of which causes him to com mit suicide. An other surrogate author-figure

in Sidney's novel is a former taxi-driver named Ed Victory, whom Nick

encounters when, inspired by a parable related in Dashiell Hammett 's

The alteseFalcon,

he abandons his life in New York and, on a whim, flies

to Kansas, Ed was a member of the allied liberating forces in Europe at

the end of the Second World War, and he characterises his experience on

entering Dachau in April 1945 to Nick Bowen as follows: 'That was the

end of mankind ,,, God turned his eyes away from us and left the world

forever'

{O N

p92). After the war, Ed began a project which he calls 'The

Historical Presei vation B ureau' - a collection of tele ph on e directorie s from

around the world, kept in an underground lock-up in Kansas City - as a

way of dealing with the enormity of the horror at Dachau, In

Oracle Night

too, then, the events take place in a world of'absolute sinfulness', with the

unb earab le know ledge of what man is capable of, and an awareness of th e

impossibility of rendering that horror in literature. Soon after we hear the

fictional Ed's story - a day after Sidney

writes

the story

Sidney himself

comes across a newspaper stoiy about a prostitute giving birth over a toilet,

discarding the baby and then returning to her client, which causes him to

experience the same extreme sensations:

This is theworst story I have ever

read

. . . I und ersto od that I was readin g a story about the end of m ankin d,

that that room in the Bronx was the precise spot on earth where human life

had lost its meaning'

{O N

pi 15), The episode is an objective correlative,

perhaps, of Sidney's own difficulties in finishing his novel; after reading

the Bronx stoiy, he is unable to make any more progress, and the stoiy is

abandoned, with his character Nick trapped in the underground Bureau

18,

ftuil Ausler,

Oracle ight

(heiicefoitli ON),

New York, H eiiiy

Holt,

2003,

p66.


10/19

ORACLE

NIGHT

I have written elsewhere of the envy that Auster s novels enterta in for m ore

sensuous and immediate forms of aesthetic experience: music, painting,

levitation, even (inTimbuktu canine sen se-perception ( Novel as an Ahsence ).

In

The

Book

of Illusions

an d Oracle

Night

the most consistent counterpart to

the novel is cinem a, altho ugh the attitu de towards it of both books is deeply

ambivalent. In Oracle Night for example, Sidney is invited to submit a

treatm ent for a film ada ptatio n of H.G. Wells s

The

Time Machine

-

a purely

comm ercial ente rpris e, it is mad e clear. Wells s idea of t im e travel , as Sidney

is aware, is predicated on a spatialised conception of time, and as such is

incohe rent: for once peo ple from the future began to influence events in the

past and people from the past began to influence events in the future, the

nature of time would change. Instead of being a continuous progression of

discrete mom ents inc hing forward in on e direction only,

it

would crumb le into

a vast, synchronistic blur {O N p i2 2 ). Yet, for th e sake of the fifty tho us an d

dollars on offer, Sidney outlines a scenario in which the inventor of the time

ma chine , in the year 1895, travels forward in time to 1963, and me ets a girl

from the twenty-second century who, thank s to the further technological

development of his invention, has been able to travel back in time. The two

fall in love and decide to stay together, beginning from the year 1963; they

bury their time m achines in a meadow, thereby precludin gthe very technologica

development that made theirm eeting possible.Auste r s conc eit is a ges ture, at lea

towards a non-spatial temporality; however, the proposal is rejected by the

Hollywood production com pany as too cerebral (07V pi 87 ), a ju dg m en t

that is apparently consistent with the novel s final affirmation of literature

over cinema. At the end of the book, Sidney s friend and fellow au tho r Jo hn

Trause tells him in a posth um ous letter - a voice from the sepulch re - I do n t

want you to have to waste your time fretting about movies. Stick with books.

Th at s where your future i s . . . {ON

p229).

On read ing the note, Sidney hears

Jo hn s living voice talking from the othe r side of dea th, from the oth er side

of nowhere ... Is wJoh n s ashes streaming o ut of the urn in the park that

morning ... I had my face in my hands and was sobbing my guts out... Even

as the tears po ured out of me I was happy, ha pp ier to be alive than I had ever

been before. It was a bappiness beyond consolation, beyond miseiy, beyond

all the ugliness and beauty of the world

{O N

p242-3).

Writing is here imagined as attaining everything that Auster longs for:

presenc e, immediacy, sensation, the simultaneity of past, presen t and future.

However, behind that aspiration on behalf of writing stands cinema - in

particular, that idea of cinema as human will expressing itself through the

human body put forward in The Book of Illusions: a form constructed from

a syntax of the eye, a gra m m ar of pu re kinesis {Boflpi5 ). A uster s works,

it seems, are defined by a wish that the novel might achieve the imm ediacy


11/19

follows: Ev eiyo ne in them looked alive, bri m m ing with energy, pre sen t in

the moment, a part of some eternal now that had gone on perpetuating

itself for close to thirty years

{O N

pp37-8). Yet what becomes clear in that

final paragraph ofOracleNight is that Auster does not believe in the case he

is tiying to m ake. In its amb ivalent relation to cinema, Auster s work shows

itself to be driven by the lure of sensuous immediacy, and yet, in that veiy

fixation, finds itselfrearticulating the spatio-temporal nostalgia ofthe novel

form as such - con de m nin g itself to what is, accordin g to Lukacs, the ethical

division between form and content in the novel. After all,

OracleNight

is itself

a piece of writing; if the level of immediacy that Auster yearns for in writing

were possible, why argue the case for it?

A more convincing statement of bel ief in Oracle Night is found a few

pages earlier, when Sidney refiects on the recent travails that have beset him

- a catalogue of the events we have been reading about, foremost among

which is the failure of his Nick Bowen n ovel. H ere , arguably, Au ster s work

looks directly and less anxiously at the historico-philoso phical conditions of

literaiy production e mblem atised by the novel form, and produces som ething

closer to a materialisation o fthe consciousness ofthe work, organised aroun d

the struggle with possibility:

I tried to write a stoiy and came to an impasse, I tried to sell an idea for a

film and was rejected ,,, I was a lost man, an ill man, a man struggling to

regain his footing, but un der nea th all the missteps and follies I com mitted

that week,

knew somethingIwasn t awareofknoiuing.At certain mo men ts

during those days, I felt as if

my

body had become transparent, a porous

membrane through which all the invisible forces ofthe world could pass

- a nexus of airborne electrical charges transmitted by the thoughts and

feelings of others, I suspect that condition was what led to the birth of

Lemuel Flagg, the blind hero of Oracle Night a man so sensitive to the

vibrations around him that he knew what was going to happen before

the events themselves took place, I did n t know, but eveiy thou ght tha t

entered my head was pointing me in that direction. Stillborn babies,

concentration camp atrocities, presidential assassinations, disappearing

spouses, impossible journ eys back and forth throu gh time. The future was

already inside m e, and I was pre pa ring myself for the disasters th at were

about to come,

{O N

pp222-3, emphasis ad ded)

Know ing things withoutknoTving that we know them:

this is the co ndition that

Lukdcs characterises as that of the epic, and it denotes a world in which

bein g an d destiny [that is to say, actuality and possibility], ad ven ture and

accomplishment, life and essence are ,,, identical concepts

{TofN

p30) . Th e

greatest historical exam ple, acco rding to Lukacs, is the works of Hom er, who

found the answer to the questio n of how life can beco m e essence before the


12/19

if enigmatic ones) but no riddles, only forms but no chaos {TofNp31) .

The obvious thing to say about the long passage from Auster is that by

writing it he confirms its untru th. Toknowthat one knows som ething that one

is not aware of knowing - to

long

to know without bein g aware of knowing -

defeats the aspiration towards imm anen ce, lifting the en tire structure into the

ethical dom ain of th e should be - in whose des per ate intensity the essence

seeks refuge , says Lukacs, because it has become an outlaw on e art h {TofN

p48).

And yet - as Lukacs says of th e nostalgic relation to the world o fth e epic

- what we]seek to escape from w hen [we] turn to the Greeks cons titutes [our]

own depth an d greatness {TofNpZl . Rea ding Auster with Lukacs enables us

to affirm even that which prohibits its affirmation, and to deny even th at which

forces us to make the denial: the permanent estrangement ofthe world and

the essence . T he final catastroph e of Nick Bowen, trap pe d irrevocably in

an underground lock-up, with his creator unable to devise a credible means

of escape - this com plete failure of form is, perh aps , the m om en t of Auster s

greatest success; or rather, the m eans

by

which the dua lity of aes thetic success

and failure is displaced by a commitment, in principle,to the reconciliation

of form and conte nt, sensation and intellection, mind and body. With Nick s

indefinite incarceration underground, the trajectory on which he has been

embarked since the beginning - the abandonment of a life of convention

and predictability in New York in orde r to learn to accept what s h ap pe nin g,

accept it and actively embrace it {O N p95) - is bro ugh t to a logical ex trem e.

T he trajectory is tha t of Auster himself:away from the ethos oft he novel and

towards what Lukacs calls the im m ane nt me anin g of the objective world .

Impasse is transformed from a (spatio-temporal) historical condition into a

condition of possibility itself

LUKACS S AESTHE TICS OF CINEMA

For Lukacs, the novel by def ini t ion stands outside i ts own ethical

pronouncements; in the novel we know things, and we know that we know

them. Knowledge and experience are commensurable, but only at the cost of

the sensuous intimacy of that know ledge. In the world of the novel, belief has

becom e (to use Walter Ben n Michaels s word) trans cen den tal . Its norm ative

me ntality is irony because th e novel is ethically reflective; ethicscan onlytake

the form of an oug ht , a should b e which is always profoundly inartistic

{TofN

p85 . Such ethical pontification, organised aro und th e interioiity oft he

individual, and th e expression of his or her trans cen den tal hom elessnes s ,

is harne ssed to the word, and is differentiated from art , which, wheth er

literary or visual, has a sensuous actuality. Thus Dostoevsky - whose works

depict the world in an imm ediate form rem ote from any struggle against

what actually exists - did not, according to Lukacs, write novels - unlike,

say, Tolstoy, whose pol em ical and nos talgic works exemplify th e forma l


13/19

an answer to the 'problems' that had seemed to him,when he waswriting

TheTheory oftheNovel, 'insoluble' (To/N pi 2) ;he is referring, ofcourse, to

his 'conversion' toBolshevism, Yet, eventolookfor asolution, toconceiveof

the situation

of the

novel

in

terms

of

'problems' requiring

a

'solution',

is an

approach that emergesout ofa 'novelistic' ethic,and - ithardly needs saying

- aspatialised temporality, 'An epic hero c onstructedoutof what should be' ,

writes LukScs in1915, 'will alwaysbe but ashadowof theliving epicman of

historical reality,his shadow but never his original

image,

and hisgiven worldof

experience andadventurecanonlybea watered down copy of reality, neve rits

coreandessence' TofNp48).It is difficult, reading this sentence,not tothink

of cinem aasits contrap osition, particularlyin itstheorisation by An dre Bazin,

who,in The

Ontology of the Ph otographic Imag e',

writes: The

photographic

i m a g e is theobjec t itself, theoh^ecx.reed

rom the conditions of time

andspace

that

govern

it.

Bazin continues: Nomatterhowfuzzy, distorted,ordiscolored,no

m atter how lacking

in

documentai-y value

the

image may be,

it

shares, by virtue

of the veiy process ofits becoming, thebeingof the modelofwhich it is the

reproduction; it themodel'. *

Lukics himself remained faithful to the historical-revolutionary solution

he discovered in 1917 for therestof his life. However, several years before

he wrote

The

Theory

of

the

Novel,

heenter tained a quite different, 'aesthetic'

solution, onethat predatesthedawning 'historical' consciousness app aren tin

that work,and that, furthermore, impliesaconception ofcinematic time that

is quiteatodd s withthe'spatio -tem poral' ethos of the novel.In alittle know n

essay entitled 'Thoughts Toward

an

Aesthetic

of the

Cinema', published

in

1913,

Lukacs outlines

a

precocious philosophy of cinematic form

as a

vehicle

of thekindofunbroken, sensuous intimacy between soulandworld that,in

The

Theoryofthe

Novel,

he would later ascribe to the epic.^ In this earlier

essay,hebegins by comparing cinematotheatreinterms of the veiy different

inflections which each givesto thenotion ofpresence,and thepresent.He

writes that thelack of [a] pre sen t istheprim aiy characteristic of the cinema',

as oppose d to thetheatre, inwhich thestageis an 'absolute present'.^' This

lack ofapresent is nodefect of the cine ma ', writes Lukacs. 'Th isis itslimit,

itsprincipium

stilisationis\

And he

goes

on to

outline something like

an

idea

of the immanence ofcinema:

Not only in their technique,butalso in their effect, cinematic images,

equal in their essence tonature,are noless orga nicandalive than [,.,]

imagesof the stage. Only they maintain alifeofa completely different

kind. In aword, they beco me fantastic. This fantastical ele m ent is not

a contrast to living life, however, it isonly a newaspect of the same:

a life without thepresent , a life without fate, without reasons, without

motives,

a

life without measure

or

order, without essence

or

value,

a

life without soul, of pure surface, a life with which the innermost of

19,Andr^ Bazin,

riie Ontologyof

the Photographic

Image',

Wliat

K Cinema?

vol,

i. Hugh Gray

(trans),

Berkeley,

CA, University

of

Calilornia I'less,

1967,pl4.

20 ,Formore details

on thec ireujiistances

of the essay's

publication,

see

Janelle Blankenship,

'Futurist Fantasies:

Liik^cs's Karly Essay

Tho nghts 'Iowaixl

an Aesthelic ofthe

Cinema ',

hAygraph

13 (2001): pp 21-36.

21 .

Uik.'ics,

'Thoughts', op.

cit.,

ppl3-14.


14/19

22 .

Ibid., pl4.

23 .

Ibid., p

5

{emphasis added).

24,

Andre Barin,

Th e Ontology of

the Photographic

Image ,

What

Is

Cinevui ?

Vol.

1

Hugh Gray

(trans), Berkeley,

CA, U niversity

of California

Press,

1967,

p p 9 - 1 6 ; Leclisse

Michelangelo

Antonioni (dir),

Italy, 1962; Gilles

Deleuze,Cinema 1:

Th e

Movement-Image,

Hugh Tomlinson

and Barbara

Habbeijam (trans),

London, Athlone,

1986.

som ethi ng far off an d internally distant. T he world of the cin em a is

thus a world without background or perspective, without any difference

in weight or quaiity, as oniy the present gives things fate and weight,

iight and lightness,^^

For Luiiacs, he re, cinem a has non e of the deathiy irony of tiie novei; the

ethical quality of cinema is precisely the absence of ethics assuch; or rather,

the inseparability ofthe ethicai from the real, the inseparabiiity of possibility

from actuality, (The sam e idea is expre ssed in Je an Luc Go da rd s famous line

abo ut the cine ma , an inte rtitie in his fiimLe Ventd est: Ce n est pas une image

juste,

c est jus te u ne image, ) Everything is possible , says Lukacs further:

this is the worldview ofth e cinem a , and because it technically expressed

absolute reality [,,,] in every individual moment, the validity of possibility

is cancelled o ut as a category opposed to reality. T h e tw o c a t e g o r i e s b e c o m e

equal. They assum e one identity, Everything is true an d real, is equally

true and equally real, T his is the teaching ofth e shot seque ncing of th e

cinema .^

Writing, then , over thirty years before A ndre Bazin wrote Th e On toiogy of

the Photographic Image (1945), fifty years before Michelangelo Antonioni

made

Leclisse

(1962), and seventy years before Gilles Deleuze published

The

Movement-Image

(1983),^ Lukacs puts forward a theo iy of the cine m a as

having a sensuous, immediate relation to temporality

itself

The cinema, for

Lukacs in 1913, is eveiything that the novel is not. In fact, cinema is closer

to how Lukacs came to see the epic: as having none oft he formal, historical

and ethical melancholy associated, for Lukacs, with the novel.

Yet the significance of Lukacs s essay on cinem a is less to tbe c inem a as

such, perhaps, than to the mentality of the novel. After all, the essay itself

is

adistinctly ethical -

that is to say, novelistic - reflection; according to its

own prescriptions, the cinema could not help but regard its earnest avowals

ironically, Lukacs s essay shou ld be read, th en , as an ind ex o ft h e me ntality

that \s preoccupied with tbe novel - the anxiety that forms

and isfonned

byth e

novel, the me ntality of the writer a nd theo rist of fiction, Lukacs s essay is

especially relevant in the contemporaiy context, where the cinema so often

app ears as a solution to the dilem ma s an d problem atics of fiction

itself:

besides

the recent works by Paul Auster I have been discussing, we might think of

texts such as Salman R ushdie sThe Satanic Verses E,L, D octorow sCityof God

Dennis Coo per s Period, or W,G, Seb ald s Austerlitz,each of which betrays

an attraction to cinema as the model for a fictional practice that works to

introduce som ething like Lukacs s imag ined renewed epic - a form bou nd

to the historical m om en t in such a way tha t the world is drawn ,,, simply as

a seen reality {TofN p i5 2) , Th e term seen {geschaute is here a distraction


15/19

and, particularly, time, are

viateriallypresent

In cinema, time, for Lukacs as

for Deleuze an d Bazin, is exp erien ced outsid e the linear, spatialised and

imperialist conception of it - the conception reprod uced in all pe riodising

accounts of the postmodern.

Certainly, Auster's

The Book of

Illusions, at least at the beginning, looks

longingly towards cinema as a symbol of eveiything that writing is unable

to achieve. Cinema, in other words, is inserted into

The Book ofIllusions

as

a potential

solutio i

to the ethical-aesthetic incommensurability that defines

the novel as such. However, this conception of cinematic possibility is so

'novelistic', so deeply implicated in an economy - b otb ethical and tem pora l

- of expiation and rede m ptio n, th at it is unab le to release Auster's work from

the structural 'irony' to which Lukacs condemns the novel as such; in fact,

cinema in Auster functions to bind his work even more firmly to the novel.

Nevertheless, the encounter staged between cinema and the novel in Lukacs's

early writings, as well as in Auster's most recent fiction, enables us to read

even that failure 'cinematically', following a logic ofthe postmodern 'event',

in Lyotard's sense , in which the qu estion of success or failure is displace d by

that of possibility itself

THE BOOKOFILLUSIONS

As has a lr eady be en n o t ed , au thor - f i gures p ro l i f e r a t e i n Aus t e r ' s works , an d

in The Book of Illusions as much a s any . Bes ides Dav id Z immer and Hec to r

M ann , whose p ro j ec t o f c i nem at i c a t on em en t beg ins i n 1939 (' ju s t a f t er t he

G e r m a n s i n v a d e d P o l a n d ' ) (B o/7 p 2 1 2 ) , a n o t h e r a u t h o r - s u r r o g a t e a p p e a r s a s

the cent ra l charac ter of one of Hector ' s f i lms . The Inner Life of Martin Frost,

made i n 1946 ,

The Inner Life of Martin Frostis the on ly f ilm th at Da vid ha s t im e to watch

a f t e r be ing summoned t o t he r anch - be fo re Hec to r d i e s and t he f i lms a r e

des t roy ed - an d the only on e , therefore , tha t he desc r ibes in de ta i l . T h e f i lm

was shot a t the ranch, and as David begins to watch, he f inds i t imposs ible

to separa te the ' f i c t ional ' images f rom the ' rea l i ty ' of the i r fami l iar se t t ing,

' I was supposed to read them as shadows, but my mind was s low to make the

ad jus tm en t . Aga in an d ag a in , I s aw them as t hey were , no t a s t hey were m ea n t

t o be '

{BofI

p24 3) . Mar t in Fros t, the pro tag on is t of th e f ilm, is a novel i s t , w ho

arr ives to s tay a t 'Hector and Er ieda 's ranch ' whi le they are on vacat ion; thus ,

t he i dea , wh ich Baz in and L ukacs sha re , o f c i nema ' s d i s i n t eg ra t i on o f t he

d i s t i nc t i on be tween o r ig ina l and r ep roduc t i on , pos s ib i l i t y and ac tua l i t y , a r t

an d l ife - tha t i s to say, c in em a 's ch al le ng e to ontolog y itself- i s p layed wi th

expl ic i t ly in Hector ' s f i lm, and yet , perhaps , only played wi th , Eor Deleuze ,

the sam e qual i ty is wh at enable s c in em a to ma ter ia l i se t im e in a 'c iys ta l l ine '

f o rm, me an ing t ha t t he ' i nd iv is i b l e un i t y o f an ac tua l ima ge an d i t s v i r t ua l

image' - the vir tual i ty of the actual - becomes manifest as such, '* ' ' In such j ^^ op cit p78


16/19

27 .Ibid., p26 4; see

Immanuel Kant,

Critiqueof Pure

Reason

F. Max

MuUer (trans, 2nd

revised edn). New

York, Macmillan,

1915, p34.

28 .

Auster's

pseudonymous

detective novel,

entided

Squeeze

Play is included as

an appendix in his

otherwise non -

fiction collection

Hand to Mouth: A

Chronicle of Early

Failure. N ewYork

Henry Holt 1997.

29.Deleuze, nne-

hnage.op. cit., p69.

Almost immediately on arriving, despite his intention to 'do no thin g, to live

the life of a sto ne '{BofIp24 5), M artin Frost hegins work on a new story, inspired

hy the desert landscape arou nd him. O n awakening, his first m ornin g, he finds

the mysterious C laire,abeautifial philo soph y stu den t, asleep in his bed ; after the

initial shock they quickly fall in love. Passages from Claire's r eading of Berkeley

and Kant, on sense percep tion a nd the impossibility of objective know ledge, are

worked into the narrative in Claire's delivery (for example, from Kant: 'if we

dro p ou r subject or the subjective form of our senses, all qualities, all relation s

of objects in space and time, nay space and time themselves, would vanish').^'

The scenario is not dissimilar to a subplot of a film Auster himself scripted,

entitledSmoke(1995), in which a writer nam ed Paul Benjamin (a na m e Auster

once took asa

nom deplume

to publish a detective novel) * accepts an app aren tly

hom eless boy as a guest in his Brooklyn apa rtm en t after the boy saves his life.

Both films - the real and the fictional - include relatively conventional uses

of mo ntage , in which cinema tographic shots of the writer ban ging away on a

typewriter (Martin Frost an d Paul Benjamin respectively) are jux tap os ed with

actions which may or may not be anything more than a scenario bein g played

out in the writer's head and on his page.

As in Smoke the un certainty is quickly settled by theMartinFrostnarrative

although in the opposite direction to Smoke whe re the resolution is on th e side

of the 'actual'. By confirming the

mise en scene

of

The

Inner

Life

of Ma rtin

Fro

as 'the inside of a man's h ead '{BofIp24 3), Auster dissolves the indiscernibility

of actual and virtual in cinema into a merely subjective ambiguity. In such a

case, writes Deleuze, 'the confusion of the real and the imaginary is a simple

erro r of fact, an d d oes no t affect th eir discernibility: the confusion is pro duc ed

solely in som eon e's head' .^'' It is ju st this kind of'psycholog ical' reso lution th at

Lukacs regards as typically novelistic: 'The autonomous life of interiority' he

writes, 'is possible and necessary only when the distinctions between me n have

ma de an un bridgeab le chasm; when the gods are silent and n either sacrifices

nor the ecstatic gift of tongues can solve their riddle ...'

{TofN

p66).

These conceptual relations of the novel arestaged by Auster, of course,

rather than simply reproduced - and the staging is most overt with the

conclusion of The Inner Life of Martin

Frost.

By the tim e Ma rtin finishes

writing his story, Claire is dead, having succumbed to a fever that has been

wors ening correlatively with the progress M artin has been m akin g on his work.

Fu rth erm ore , M artin discovers th at h e is able to revive her, as if miraculously,

by burn ing the pages ofhisstory. Th is circumstance alludes to H ector's plan

to destroy his own films after his death, and is referred explicitly both to a

passage in Luis Bunuel's autobiog raphy yLastSigh where Bufiuel considers

burning the negative of his film UnChienandalou on the place du Tertre in

Montmartre

{BofI

p28 4), and to Ch ateaub riand's ideal of withholding his

Memoiresfrom publication (Hector owns copies of both works) (Bo/7 p2 37-8 ).

It also recalls a story rec oun ted inSmokeby Paul Benjamin, of Mikhail Bakh tin


17/19

scholar M ichael Holquist as an inde x of th e insignificance to Bakhtin of his

own thoug hts 'once they had already been tho ugh t thro ugh '' - that is to say,

of Bak htin's unintere sted nes s in exploiting his thou ghts , once they had sei-ved

their pur pos e. In all of these cases - M artin, Hector, Bun uel, C hate aub riand ,

Bakhtin - the valency ofthe posthumous gesture consists in an indifference

to posterity, and a com mitm ent to the event, life - the intimacy between a rt

and life - rather than to thedocumentation of the event, or artassuch.

In cinema, however, the destruction of the work is unnecessary for the

affirmation of life, for the sim ple reaso n th at - as Lukacs in 1913 was aware

- cinema is not predicated on the notion of presence, of ontology, at all:

'T he essence of the cinema is mo vem ent in itself, an eternal variability,

the never-resting change of things'.'^' The reality of cinema, writes Bazin

in a similar vein, is that of 'the world of which we are a part, the sensoiy

contin uum of which the film takes a spatial as well as tem pora l mold'. '^ T he

state of'indifferen ce' that Auster's characters are in pursuit

of ON

p60 and

ofJp24 5) is achieved by cinemaassuch; there is no need for heroic, egoistic

gestu res. 'T he w orld was full of

holes, '

observes David early on inThe ook

of

Illusions(after he has narrowly escaped shoo ting himself with a loaded gun),

'tiny apertures of meaninglessness, microscopic rifts that the mind could

walk thro ugh , an d on ce you were on the o ther side of one of those holes, you

were free of yourself, free of your life, free of your death, free of everything

that belonged to you'

Bofl

p i

09).

Yet this is a lesson of cinema (or indeed,

the epic) - not of the novel, where, for Lukacs at least, immanence is always

attenu ated by the p rinciple of individuality. 'An emp ty im ma nenc e', he writes,

'which is anch ored only in the writer's experien ce a nd no t, at the same time,

in his return to the home of

ll

things, is merely the immanence of

surface

that covers up the cracks but is incapable of retaining this immanence and

must become a surface riddled with holes'{TofNp92).

InOracleNight, Sidney reflects on the preparation of his Hollywood film

script: 'I didn't want there to be any holes in the story'

ON

pi36). But for

Deleuz e, the power of cinem a is precisely tha t of 'a dissociative force which

would introduce a figure of nothin gnes s , a hole in appearances' .' ' ' Lukacs's

use of the same image to denote the contrary - the betrayal of immanence

- exposes and corrects the 'novelistic' ethos at work in his own passage, as

quoted above. Imm anen ce, after

all,

can be neither 'betrayed' nor 'attenuate d'.

As Lukacs says a paragraph later, the 'intuitive double vision' of the novel

makes it 'the representative art-form of our age', the structural qualities

of which 'constitutively coincide with the world as it is today'

TofN

p93) .

Im m ane nce is not a lost innocence, but awaits us as a category

ofpossibility

to

be wrought out ofthe simultaneity of past, present and future.

END AND CO NTINUITY

30 .

Michael

Holquist,

Introcluclioii ,

M.

M. Bakluiii, Th e

Dialogic Itnagination:

Four Es.say. i,C a i y l

Emei son an d

Michael Holqiiisl

(trans), Austin,

University

of

Texas

Press,

1981,pxxv.

31.Uik,1cs,

riioughts', op. cit.,

p l 5 .

32 .

Anclr(5 Bazin,

Death Every

Afternoon ,

Lilenny

Debate: Texk and

Contexts,

Denis

Hollier

and

JefTrey

Mehlman

(eds).

New

York,

The New

Press,

1999, pi44.

33 .Deleuze,

Time-

Image,op. cit. , pi 67 .


18/19

The preoccupations that drive his fiction are those ofthe novel as such; and

yet those preoccupations are themselves formed, in part, by the app eara nce

of cinem a - as sugg ested by the fact tha t Lukacs s essay on the aesthe tics of

cinema precedes his great work on the novel by two or three years. Even

when dealin g directly with cinema, as in TheBook of

Illusions

Auster does so

as a novelist, looking to cinema w ith envy, as to a prom ise of rede m ptio n that

will achieve the immanence of the epic - the category of possibility that his

metaphysically, historically and ethically-traumatised writer-protagonists have

been consumed by ever sinceCity

of

Glass.Read in the light of Lukacs s early

writing, Auster s fiction seems determ ine d u po n playing out the dem ise of

fiction itself; yet this determination has its contrary structurally embedded

within it.

Th e conjunction of two apparently incomp atible diagnoses, Lyotard s

mode of the postmodern as futur anterior and Lukacs s concep t of absolute

sinfulness , requ ires us to dispens e with th ehistorical thesis of

The

Theory

o

the

Novel -

the link between absolute sinfulness and a particu lar historico-

philosophical mom ent - s well sthe spatio-historical thesis ofth e pos tm od ern

that we fmd in, for exam ple, Jam eso n, H arvey and Michaels: not only the idea

of its contemp orane ity, but also the idea of its recen t obsolescence. B oth theses

reiterate an ontology of the present, emerging from an intense awareness

of the present as such. As long as the novel situates itself in a derivative or

imitative relation to cinema, looking enviously to cinema as a solution to its

own formal disunity, it seems destined to rep eat th e traum atic and impossible

ethical relation to the p rese nt that is consistently staged in Paul Auster s

work. If the re is a lesson in cine ma for fiction, it is, in Deleu ze s wo rds, to

34.Deleuze,

Time-

free [itself] from the mo del of truth which pen etra tes it . Only when the

Image

op.

cit. pi50.

literary text construes such a cinem atic or e pic relation to time in

the b

ofthe writing

itself

as it does , I would argue , in writers such as W.C. Sebald

and Dennis Cooper - only then will it overcome that ontological relation to

the pres ent th at Lukacs calls absolute sinfulness .


19/19

Date post:	02-Jun-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	fer-con
View:	222 times
Download:	0 times

auster y la filoofia

Documents