Pensa alla soddisfazione, spiegavo loro, di ficcarsi a letto sapendo che stai per sognare sulla letteratura americana dell’Ottocento. (6)

Una stanza spoglia e sudicia si era convertita in un luogo di interiorita’, in un punto cruciale di strani presagi e misteriosi eventi arbitrari. Continuai a tenere lo sguardo fisso suul’insegna del Moon Palace, finche’ piano piano capii che ero arrivato al posto giusto, che in quell’appartamentino era veramente il luogo dov’ero destinato a vivere. (23)

Le nostre vite sono determinate da molteplici contingenze, - dissi, cercando di essere il piu’ possibile conciso, - ogni giorno combattiamo contro simili shock e accidenti al fine di mantenere il nostro equilibrio. E’ una lotta a cui, due anni fa, per motivi al tempo stesso personale e filosofici, ho deciso di rinunciare. Non perche’ volessi uccidermi - non deve pensare nulla del genere -, ma perche’ ritenevo che abbandonandomi al caos del mondo, lo stesso mondo avrebbe potuto finire per rivelarmi un’armonia segreta, una forma o una struttura che mi avrebbe aiutato ad approfondire me stesso. Il punto era accettare le cose come sono, andare alla deriva con il fluire dell’universo. (89)

Il sole e’ il passato, la terra il presente e la luna il futuro. (106)

Al centro della tela - nel preciso centro geometrico, mi parve - c’era una luna piena di perfetta rotondita’, un pallido disco bianco che illuminava tutto quel che c’era sopra e sotto: il cielo, un lago, un grande albero dagli eterei rami e le basse montagne sull’orizzonte. (150)

Non si puo’ sapere in che punto della terra ci si trovi, se non in rapporto alla luna o a una stella. (167)

La seconda coazione era piu’ sottile, eppure esercitava su di lui un’influenza ancora piu’ forte, riassumendosi nel concetto che alla fine i materiali di cui disponeva si sarebbero esauriti. Il numero dei tubetti di colore e delle tele di cui disponeva non era illimitato: se voleva continuare a lavorare, doveva consumarli. L’esito finale l’aveva pertanto avuto presente fin dall’inizio. Gia’ mentre dipingeva quei quadri era come se sentisse il paesaggio svanire davanti agli occhi. (185)

Ah! Come se le coincidenze esistessero. (212)

Non riesco a vederti nelle vesti di un bibliotecario, Fogg.
Riconosco che e’ strano, pero’ credo di esserci portato. In definitiva le biblioteche non appartengono al mondo reale. Sono posti separati, ricettacoli del pensiero puro. In quel modo posso continuare a vivere sulla luna per tutta la vita. (233)

A tanto si riduce tutta questa storia, pensai. A una serie di occasioni mancate. (269)

… bastava che continuassi a camminare per capire che mi ero lasciato alle spalle me stesso, che non ero piu’ la persona di un tempo. (327)

Poi dalle alture fece capolino la luna. (328)

( )

"It was the summer that men first walked on the moon. I was very young back then, but I did not believe there would ever be a future. I wanted to live dangerously, to push myself as far as I could go, and then see what happened to me when I got there. As it turned out, I nearly did not make it. "

The overriding theme of this novel is redemption. Can someone who has sunk so low as that they have eat other peoples' discarded food ever make a life for themselves.

Marco Stanley Fogg is a child of the sixties, and has had a tough start in life, no known father and a mother who was killed by a bus when he was a young boy, brought up by an uncle who lived a hand to mouth existence as a musician. This novel covers the early years in Fogg's life, a life steeped in tragedy and loss. Beginning during 'the summer that men first walked on the moon', and moving backward and forward in time to span three generations propelled by coincidence and memory.

In fact Auster rather than trying to shy away from coincidences makes a feature of them, deliberately stretching the reader's credulity to the limit. The book centres around three characters, who through accidents of birth are blood relatives and yet no one knows about it until its far too late.

Fogg is a dreamer drifting through life, directionless with no ambitions and unable to properly manage his money. I really liked how Fogg uses his uncles boxes of books as furniture when he first moves to Manhattan and as he reads the books so his furniture slowly disappears, " each time I opened another box, I simultaneously destroyed another piece of furniture. My bed was dismantled, my chairs shrank and disappeared, my desk atrophied into empty space. My life had become a gathering zero, and it was a thing I could actually see: a palpable, burgeoning emptiness. Each time I ventured into my uncle’s past, it produced a physical result, an effect in the real world. The consequences were therefore always before my eyes, and there was no way to escape them.”

Moon Palace is such a great mix of sadness and humour. There were a lot of witty and sardonic sections, everything about this book is such a mix of contradictions and my mood swung along with it. Overall I found it a witty novel, filled with many unexpected coincidences that is also remarkably easy to read. ( )

One of my favourite books. I love the main character with his unique upbringing. The story reads fast yet is philosophical. The old guy and the whole story about the cabe in the dessert was hilarious. And then there are even more turns to this story. ( )

Not a review as such, but I have always had a strong but vague feeling that Moon Palace is a reworking of Willa Cather's The Professor's House, but I have never pursued the idea with any rigor nor have I checked to see if others have thought the same.

At any rate, the Cather is wonderful and Moon Palace is one of the few Auster novels that is wholly free from the Important Novel of Ideas strain that mars, however slightly, even very good Auster novels. ( )

Again, another Auster, and the only question you’re left with is why he bothered writing it. Composing this review by copying and pasting chunks of my review of The New York Trilogy from 2009 seems not only appropriate, it is in fact downright necessary.

At the time, I said “For the life of me though, I couldn’t figure out what that story was really meant to be.” I said the writing was “engaging” and that a couple of themes stood out. “The first is identity. ” and “then there’s the recurring theme of chance and causality.”

I nevertheless concluded that “taken as a whole, it didn’t add up for me. Intriguingly written in places for sure, but not really satisfying.”

Auster does with themes and style what Tartt does with plot and character: reheat leftovers and serve them as if they’re freshly baked. If you’ve not fully explored a theme in an entire (albeit short) eponymous trilogy, then you’re probably not going to contribute an awful lot more with another short novel.

Perhaps I’m being harsh on an author’s choice to spend years of his life exploring a theme, but his novels seem so devoid of anything tangible that, for me, they’re like fast food: easy to digest but failing to nourish. Pretty soon, you find yourself hungry for something truly satisfying and wishing you’d chosen more wisely. ( )