The Brooklyn Follies

THE BROOKLYN FOLLIES

INTRODUCTION
Biography : Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947 in New Jersey) is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction, and the search for identity and personal meaning.
"My dream was always to write novels. Absolutely. From the beginning. Writing novels gives you the opportunity to explore all sides of yourself--more than anything else I can think of." After graduating from Columbia University in 1970, he moved to Paris, France where he earned a living translating French literature. Since returning to the U.S. in 1974, he has published poems, essays, novels of his own, as well as translations of French writers.
Historical and Literary Context : Post-Modern movement.
Main works and main themes :
The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), and The Brooklyn Follies (2005).

I- THE PLOT
- meets Tom
- meets Harry
- Lucy arrives ( turning point )
- The Hotel Existences ( the perfect place one longs for, just like Eldorado in Candide )

II- NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE and STYLE
The narrative is based on sudden and randomly happening events and coincidences. "It is a book about survival" as Paul Auster says.
Nathan Glass tells the story ( first person narrative story ), and is much like Auster ( difficult divorce, solitary life, NY ). Nathan and Auster = writers who care a lot about literature. “One should never underestimate the power of books.” (p302)
what kind of narrator ? focus on all the narrative strategies: focalization, narrative
voices, double enunciation (irony), (obtrusive narrator/ outsider/ biased/ neutral and objectice, highly
subjective, stream-of-consciousness technique)
Dramatic effects, immediacy, pace and tempo : Succession of events, surprises. Metafiction, stories within the story -> suspense (“I also got more than I’d bargained for. Its name was Trouble,and when I reach the point in my story when I was introduced to Mr. Trouble, I will give a full account of what happened.”(p97) and then (p.117)

“And yet – and what can be more mysterious about human life than this yet ? – we got along like gangbusters.”

“Doors slammed; polite requests were greeted with sour derision; belligerent shouts resounded from the third floor; grumps devolved into sulks, sulks devolved into storms, storms devolved into tears; …”(p283)

Insinuates the idea that all the big writers and philosophers on which our history of literature is based on are all fake. “Aeschylus, Homer, Sophocles, Plato, the whole lot of them. Invented by some clever Italian poets during the Renaissance. Isn’t that just the most wonderful thing you’ve ever heard ? The great pillars of Western civilization, and every one of them a fake. Ha !” (p125-126)

lexicon, register, level of style , syntax and figures of speech
Realism, romanticism, psychological realism, impressionism, symbolism, allegory
>>>> Quote the text ! choose striking quotations

III - CHARACTERS AND CHARACTERIZATION
Auster’s protagonists often go through a process that reduces their support structure to an absolute minimum: they sever all contact with family and friends, go hungry, and lose or give away all their belongings. Out of this state of "nothingness" they acquire new strength to reconnect with the world.
“But in the end, he manages to resolve the question for himself - more or less. He finally comes to accept his own life, to understand that no matter how bewitched and haunted he is, he has to accept reality as it is, to tolerate the presence of ambiguity within himself.” - Auster

-Nathan Glass ( 60 ans ) ( wife called Edith )
“Me. The bitter, solitary man who had crept home to Brooklyn less than a year earlier, the burnout who had convinced himself there was nothing left to live for – knuckle-headed me, Nathan the Unwise, who could think of nothing better to do than quietly wait to drop dead, now transformed into a confidant and counselor, a lover of randy widows, and a knight-errant who rescued damsels in distress.”(p284)
-Tom Wood ( 30 ans )
-Harry Brightman/Dunkel ( rich ex wife Bette Dombrowski and daughter Flora, schizophrenia ) ( Alec Smith who dies and Gordon Dryer Harry’s lover who makes fake paintings of Smiths’ ).
-Marina Gonzales ( works at the Cosmic Diner )
-Aurora
-Lucy ( 9 ans )
Comes in only in chapter 16 but is very important : “Once he roused himself from his bed and stumble across the room to open the door, his life took a new and startling turn.” The author insists : “To put it bluntly, everything changed for him, and it is only now that my chronicle of Tom’s adventure begins to take flight.”
She is silent at first : “ A few nods and shakes of the head, but no words, no sounds, no effort to use her tongue at all.”
-David ( new husband of Aurora ) and the reverend Bob
-Rachel ( Nathan and Edith’s daughter )
-Nancy Mazzucchelli ( B.P.M )
-Honey Chowder and Stanley
-The Wilsons

“It’s not that I’m ashamed of who I am – but my God, I tell myself, what a family it is. What a motley bunch of messed-up, floundering souls. What stunning examples of human imperfection. A father whose daughter wants nothing to do with him anymore. A brother who hasn’t seen or heard from his sister in three years. And a little girl who’s run away from home and refuses to speak.” (p174)

The main characters and their function (heroes/anti-heroes; minor characters / foils /social types/
caricatures/ Flat or round characters/ stock characters / humours/ allegories…)
How are the characters introduced ? (method of characterization)

IV - SETTING / SOCIAL or HISTORICAL Context
The function of the setting / symbolical/ allegorical/ realistic / oniric ….
Brooklyn : the small apartments and the insignificant streets of New-York reflect the conditions of the characters -> their wandering, their solitude… It is a realistic setting.
The Chowder Inn : (p166) this inn represents happiness far from the city, in a deserted land, where they all could be happy. Tom finds Honey there but Harry’s death makes them leave, and leave behind their idea of buying the Inn. This setting is rather oniric.

V- MODE : Comedy /tragedy/ HUMOUR PARODY
Study the comic and humorous devices

V- MAIN THEMES / INTERPRETATION
- errance
- finding identities, meaning of life.

The story of Kafka and the little girl who lost her doll (p153)

CONCLUSION :
Personal appraisal : arguments
Influence on other writers