Drop shadow (novel)

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Schlagschatten (English: Ghosts ) is a novel by the American author Paul Auster , which was published in 1987 as the middle part of the New York trilogy .

Origin context

Schlagschatten is the expanded makeover of Auster's one-act play Blackouts from 1976.

content

The private detective Blue is commissioned by White to shadow Black. From a one-room apartment rented for him, he can watch Black in the house across the street, who does nothing but write, read and occasionally buy groceries. The action takes place in New York, the time is described as the present, but then specified as February 3, 1947 - Oyster 's date of birth. The case is a mystery to Blue. But he conforms to the apparent necessity and duty of the commission. Several months pass without any significant changes. Black meets a woman, walks through Brooklyn, visits a bookstore. Blue buys the book that the other person is reading: Walden , but cannot find access. In vain does he seek advice from his teacher and fatherly friend, Brown. Various anecdotes and stories are woven into the text and blues reflections: Walt Whitman's broken brain; the case of coroner Gold looking for a missing boy; the unfortunate engineers of the Brooklyn Bridge; the black baseball player Jackie Robinson ; Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tale of Wakefield . His suspicion that Black is himself his client is slowly growing. He succeeds, partly in disguise, in establishing conversations with Black. When Black leaves his apartment, Blue enters and steals sheets of a manuscript. They are Blues' own weekly reports. Blue looks for Black in his apartment, Black threatens him, Blue knocks him down and steals the correct manuscript. The ending remains open, but says that everything happened as planned.

analysis

Cast Shadow is the most abstract and least accessible text in the trilogy. In sober language and extremely reduced text, Auster describes the search for meaning and questions of identity within the structural form of a classic detective novel. Auster uses this for the construction of a postmodern abstract cabinet of mirrors, as well as for a reflection of the self-discovery through literary writing. Blue and Black condition and complement each other and can also be viewed as aspects of the same person (including the author). The initiator is Black, who creates the basic situation; Blue is a blueprint and an opponent who triggers and deepens the mirror effect with his observations. Auster refers explicitly to Henry David Thoreau's book Walden , citing the book several times as a key to understanding cast shadows and the situation of its protagonists. However, without the latter being to be read as a simple repositioning of the natural in the urban context. Playing with perception, masks and ultimately interchangeable names leads to existential questions for Auster, and here a reference to Jacques Lacan's concept of the mirror level can be established: The observation of the observer, the resulting double consciousness, as well as writing about it, leads to deeper ones Knowledge of your own identity? Does identity consist of the image that one's environment forms? A basic theme of Paul Auster, especially in the New York trilogy .

Quote

"In the shadows , the spirit of Thoreau (...) dominates the idea of ​​living a life of solitude, of withdrawing to oneself like a monk - including the dangers that this entails." Paul Auster

expenditure

Reference literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ , Blackouts in From hand to mouth , Rowohlt, Reinbek 1998, pp. 199ff.
  2. ↑ Interview with Joseph Mallia 1987, in Die Kunst des Hungers , Rowohlt, Reinbek 2000, p. 198.