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Article: Paul Auster: 'The Invention of Solitude.' (Paul Auster/Danilo Kis)
- Article from:
- The Review of Contemporary Fiction
- Article date:
- March 22, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Review of Contemporary Fiction. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Impossible, I realize, to enter another's solitude.
--Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude
(New York: SUN, 1982), 19.
The thing happens for a second time, says Paul Auster, and that is memory. In our collective memories, it is always the second time around. Isn't that what combats solitude most essentially? That we remember or--then--forget together?
I remember very well being at Edmond Jabes's ("J," says the text) home in Paris that year. Indeed I did ask A if he had translated Mallarme, as he recounts it, and indeed "the fact was" that he had (109). I was glad to have some of this remembering of a son for the New ...