Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Introduction: A Clash of the Comparable
- Chapter I The Creation of the American in Paris: The American
- Chapter II The Splendor and Misery of the American Scientist: L'Ève future
- Chapter III The American Woman and the Invention of Paris: The Custom of the Country
- Chapter IV The Expatriate Idyll: The Sun Also Rises
- Chapter V Truths and Delusions: The Cold War in Les Mandarins
- Chapter VI Embracing American Culture: Cherokee
- Chapter VII An American Excursion into French Fiction: The Book of Illusions
- Chapter VIII Rerouting: Ça n'existe pas l'Amérique
- Chapter IX L'Américaine in Paris: Le Divorce
- Conclusion: Stasis and Movement
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Chapter VII - An American Excursion into French Fiction: The Book of Illusions
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Introduction: A Clash of the Comparable
- Chapter I The Creation of the American in Paris: The American
- Chapter II The Splendor and Misery of the American Scientist: L'Ève future
- Chapter III The American Woman and the Invention of Paris: The Custom of the Country
- Chapter IV The Expatriate Idyll: The Sun Also Rises
- Chapter V Truths and Delusions: The Cold War in Les Mandarins
- Chapter VI Embracing American Culture: Cherokee
- Chapter VII An American Excursion into French Fiction: The Book of Illusions
- Chapter VIII Rerouting: Ça n'existe pas l'Amérique
- Chapter IX L'Américaine in Paris: Le Divorce
- Conclusion: Stasis and Movement
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Ideas have a much shorter life in France than in the United States.
(Jean-Philippe Mathy, French Resistance, 36)Auster is an American entirely oriented toward Europe.
(Pascal Bruckner, cited in Dennis Barone, Beyond the Red Notebook, 31)My stories come out of the world and not out of books.
(Paul Auster, cited in Aliki Varvogli, The World that is the Book, 6)Our lives are no more than the sum of manifold contingencies.
(Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things, 30)If there is one solid and non-negotiable principle in the American novel, it is that something must happen.
(Warren Motte, 73)Cherokee marked a departure from the frequently voiced fear that traditional French cultural practices had been severely weakened by the influx of American pop culture. Jean Echenoz demonstrated in his text that French literature was perfectly capable of absorbing and transforming American influences, then incorporating them into the contemporary French novel. Paul Auster's writing, here represented by The Book of Illusions, also challenges overly facile assumptions about American cultural dominance by providing a different perspective on Franco-American literary relations, and the balance of power between the two nations in these areas. Initially, this may appear a surprising claim, since The Book of Illusions is set entirely in the United States, and there is no mention of France or anything particularly French. Yet French literature and culture are assumed by many critics on both sides of the Atlantic, but particularly in France, to have been a major, if not the principal influence on the American author. This reverses the more common tendency to see the United States as playing the predominant role in cultural exchanges between the two countries. Since the Gallic presence in Auster's work is often proclaimed, and then justified, with the airiest of arguments, one function of this chapter will be to pinpoint, in the course of analyzing the novel, specific elements in The Book of Illusions that reflect the influence of French literature. In the concluding paragraphs, I will speculate concerning a possible reason why French critics stress the importance of French elements in Auster's work.
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- Frères EnnemisThe French in American Literature, Americans in French Literature, pp. 179 - 205Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018