‘Things that thing’
Evija Trofimova, Paul Auster’s Writing Machine: A Thing to Write With
Bloomsbury, 256pp, £25.99, ISBN 9781501318252
reviewed by Alex Wealands
Paul Auster once stated in an interview that all of his books are in fact the same book. Whilst this may seem like a playful misdirection from the author, anyone familiar with Auster’s work will be aware of the interconnections woven throughout his entire oeuvre, which Evija Trofimova has explored in Paul Auster’s Writing Machine: A Thing to Write With. Cigarettes or cigarillos, typewriters, notebooks, New York, names, doppelgängers, themes of chance and fate – these are all motifs that appear and reappear in what Trofimova calls Auster’s ‘life-work’. These elements comprise his ‘intratext’ where one work bleeds into another and another ad infinitum, and connected to this ‘intratext’ is a whole ‘extratext’ of cultural histories and associations.
As Trofimova asks, how do we then read Auster, given the fact that these striking similarities seem impossible to make sense of as a coherent whole? The answer to this textual openness is a ‘rhizomatic’ reading, (echoing Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept of the rhizome) where the focus is on a non-genealogical approach: a horizontal reading that allows you to ‘trace the dynamic connections and associations formed within the writer’s intratext, and explore how their meanings are assembled and simultaneously scattered.’ The common themes and recurring objects in Auster’s ‘life-work’ form ‘the connective tissue’ holding his texts together.
It is in this light that Trofimova begins to explore the more neglected side of Auster’s work and his collaborations with other artists in various media, such as City of Glass: The Graphic Novel, Smoke, Blue in the Face and Sam Messer’s paintings of Auster and his typewriter that illustrate the book. However, just like Auster’s characters, we are warned that any effort spent in uncoding the essence of someone else’s life and work means ‘to recognize, right from the start, that the essence of [such a] project is failure.’
Using Latour as a guide, Trofimova investigates how objects play an active role in forming social networks and assemblages, an idea derived from Heidegger’s ‘things that thing’ – the concept of ‘the thing’ explains how objects pass from an inanimate passivity into a more active role of ‘thinging’. The smoking writer-figure is an element that one encounters again and again in Auster’s texts, where smoking and smoke thus gather an assemblage of associations. Similarly to how the pronoun ‘I’ is a linguistic shifter – both mine and everyone’s to use – a cigarette too draws attention to the self, to the one who is smoking, which ‘echoes the schizophrenic splitting of the self that occurs as a writer sits down at his desk to write.’ Smoking also has an ‘extratext’ of associations where the image of the writer smoking at his desk is almost synonymous with the act of creation itself: the ‘image of a smoker lost in clouds of smoke (thought) suggests the anticipated act of creation.’ This also explains the social aspect of smoking, where, as Trofimova notes in the film Smoke, smoking ‘is an actant with a capacity to bring and hold people together.’ In this film, the characters share both stories and smoke, which in turn evokes the original idea of narrative, a sharing of a story orally. But, as we are constantly reminded by the paradoxes smoking produces, everyone will have different associations with this act, destabilising any static meaning ascribed to smoking.
The typewriter serves as an intermediate object, something that is always in-between a tool and a finished product. However, unlike a computer, a typewriter has a stronger link with the association of ‘serious writing.’ As Trofimova comments, ‘it is no coincidence that the word polygraph (the correct term for a fixed-width pantograph) is also the official name of . . . a lie detector,’ therefore strengthening the link between the transmission of truth and what a writer produces in creating a fictional world. Nietzsche for one noticed the curious effect the machine had on his thinking, noting that ‘our writing tools are also working on our thoughts.’ Even the word ‘typewriting’, when split into type and writing suggests “an assemblage of a human and a machine”. With this dehumanising concept the ‘typewriter renders authorship ambiguous,’ which when seen as a recurring object in Auster’s oeuvre, can only render his whole ‘life-work’ ambiguous.
On the analysis of doubles and doppelgängers in Auster, Trofimova illustrates why psychoanalytical readings of his work often fail to offer a convincing argument because the double as such works as a structuring principle, an “actant” in the work. Auster’s “life-work” therefore ‘builds and extends itself through characters, themes, and narratives perpetually doubling each other.’ The double in Auster allows for multiple interpretations by splitting and doubling in the same way as a typewriter copies an original text, which more often than not points back to the self or original, whether that be fictional or factual. In this same way that the double can help point back to and perhaps further understand the self, Trofimova’s work uses the work of Sophie Calle to illuminate Auster’s work and what is particular to his own work in the broader categories of identity and the self. In Double Game, Calle literally re-writes what Auster wrote in Leviathan on her fictional counterpart Maria, therefore not only questioning ‘the distinction between reality and fiction, but even the concept of autofiction, and authorship over that.’
In true Auster fashion, Trofimova’s analysis becomes self-reflexive, showing the breakdown of traditional criticism. As Trofimova states:
Trofimova travels to New York/‘New York’ to not only find Paul Auster/‘Paul Auster’, but also to retrace paths and places and perform a ‘reading in situ’ in Auster’s ‘life-work’. However she ultimately fails to find any further answers when she meets Auster, and in her readings of his manuscripts she only finds more questions in the multitude of abandoned sentences and repeated phrases. These open up a space of speculation as to what different stories these fragments could have created, echoing Quinn’s dilemma in City of Glass as well as the reader’s own questions as to what would have occurred if Quinn had followed the other Stillman.
We are ultimately left with an inconclusion, a curious blend of ‘in conclusion’ and inconclusive. Trofimova wonders: ‘Could it be that . . . this whole project of reading Auster’s texts rhizomatically is the creation of my own alternative version of “Paul Auster and his work”?’ But surely every piece of criticism serves to create a version of a writer and their motives? However, when this is viewed alongside the conclusions Auster’s characters themselves deduce in his ‘life-work’, it is a very Austeresque experience to follow a path that leads to more questions.
Criticism is continually questioned. Would it not follow that the book is ‘wrong’ if Auster himself denies her conclusions of his ‘life-work’? Perhaps, but it misses the point that the author’s authority is continually questioned in this book and in the work of Auster himself. In the end, as his work suggests, truth and falsity are irrelevant as long as it makes a ‘good story’. Auster once remarked that once a book is written it belongs ‘to the readers’ minds’. Trofimova herself invites readers to create their own conclusions when she questions if her work will ‘concern the curious relationship that exists between the text, its author, his critic and the reader in the production of meaning’ – an assemblage that breaks traditional hierarchies. Trofimova’s book, ultimately, belongs to the reader as well.
As Trofimova asks, how do we then read Auster, given the fact that these striking similarities seem impossible to make sense of as a coherent whole? The answer to this textual openness is a ‘rhizomatic’ reading, (echoing Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept of the rhizome) where the focus is on a non-genealogical approach: a horizontal reading that allows you to ‘trace the dynamic connections and associations formed within the writer’s intratext, and explore how their meanings are assembled and simultaneously scattered.’ The common themes and recurring objects in Auster’s ‘life-work’ form ‘the connective tissue’ holding his texts together.
It is in this light that Trofimova begins to explore the more neglected side of Auster’s work and his collaborations with other artists in various media, such as City of Glass: The Graphic Novel, Smoke, Blue in the Face and Sam Messer’s paintings of Auster and his typewriter that illustrate the book. However, just like Auster’s characters, we are warned that any effort spent in uncoding the essence of someone else’s life and work means ‘to recognize, right from the start, that the essence of [such a] project is failure.’
Using Latour as a guide, Trofimova investigates how objects play an active role in forming social networks and assemblages, an idea derived from Heidegger’s ‘things that thing’ – the concept of ‘the thing’ explains how objects pass from an inanimate passivity into a more active role of ‘thinging’. The smoking writer-figure is an element that one encounters again and again in Auster’s texts, where smoking and smoke thus gather an assemblage of associations. Similarly to how the pronoun ‘I’ is a linguistic shifter – both mine and everyone’s to use – a cigarette too draws attention to the self, to the one who is smoking, which ‘echoes the schizophrenic splitting of the self that occurs as a writer sits down at his desk to write.’ Smoking also has an ‘extratext’ of associations where the image of the writer smoking at his desk is almost synonymous with the act of creation itself: the ‘image of a smoker lost in clouds of smoke (thought) suggests the anticipated act of creation.’ This also explains the social aspect of smoking, where, as Trofimova notes in the film Smoke, smoking ‘is an actant with a capacity to bring and hold people together.’ In this film, the characters share both stories and smoke, which in turn evokes the original idea of narrative, a sharing of a story orally. But, as we are constantly reminded by the paradoxes smoking produces, everyone will have different associations with this act, destabilising any static meaning ascribed to smoking.
The typewriter serves as an intermediate object, something that is always in-between a tool and a finished product. However, unlike a computer, a typewriter has a stronger link with the association of ‘serious writing.’ As Trofimova comments, ‘it is no coincidence that the word polygraph (the correct term for a fixed-width pantograph) is also the official name of . . . a lie detector,’ therefore strengthening the link between the transmission of truth and what a writer produces in creating a fictional world. Nietzsche for one noticed the curious effect the machine had on his thinking, noting that ‘our writing tools are also working on our thoughts.’ Even the word ‘typewriting’, when split into type and writing suggests “an assemblage of a human and a machine”. With this dehumanising concept the ‘typewriter renders authorship ambiguous,’ which when seen as a recurring object in Auster’s oeuvre, can only render his whole ‘life-work’ ambiguous.
On the analysis of doubles and doppelgängers in Auster, Trofimova illustrates why psychoanalytical readings of his work often fail to offer a convincing argument because the double as such works as a structuring principle, an “actant” in the work. Auster’s “life-work” therefore ‘builds and extends itself through characters, themes, and narratives perpetually doubling each other.’ The double in Auster allows for multiple interpretations by splitting and doubling in the same way as a typewriter copies an original text, which more often than not points back to the self or original, whether that be fictional or factual. In this same way that the double can help point back to and perhaps further understand the self, Trofimova’s work uses the work of Sophie Calle to illuminate Auster’s work and what is particular to his own work in the broader categories of identity and the self. In Double Game, Calle literally re-writes what Auster wrote in Leviathan on her fictional counterpart Maria, therefore not only questioning ‘the distinction between reality and fiction, but even the concept of autofiction, and authorship over that.’
In true Auster fashion, Trofimova’s analysis becomes self-reflexive, showing the breakdown of traditional criticism. As Trofimova states:
The process of tracing, describing and reading a rhizomatic multiplicity of texts itself results in a rhizome. It means this book that I am writing here might also become a bit rhizomatic - it might lack symmetry...and conclusiveness characteristic of scholarly works that engage in more “traditional” criticism.
Trofimova travels to New York/‘New York’ to not only find Paul Auster/‘Paul Auster’, but also to retrace paths and places and perform a ‘reading in situ’ in Auster’s ‘life-work’. However she ultimately fails to find any further answers when she meets Auster, and in her readings of his manuscripts she only finds more questions in the multitude of abandoned sentences and repeated phrases. These open up a space of speculation as to what different stories these fragments could have created, echoing Quinn’s dilemma in City of Glass as well as the reader’s own questions as to what would have occurred if Quinn had followed the other Stillman.
We are ultimately left with an inconclusion, a curious blend of ‘in conclusion’ and inconclusive. Trofimova wonders: ‘Could it be that . . . this whole project of reading Auster’s texts rhizomatically is the creation of my own alternative version of “Paul Auster and his work”?’ But surely every piece of criticism serves to create a version of a writer and their motives? However, when this is viewed alongside the conclusions Auster’s characters themselves deduce in his ‘life-work’, it is a very Austeresque experience to follow a path that leads to more questions.
Criticism is continually questioned. Would it not follow that the book is ‘wrong’ if Auster himself denies her conclusions of his ‘life-work’? Perhaps, but it misses the point that the author’s authority is continually questioned in this book and in the work of Auster himself. In the end, as his work suggests, truth and falsity are irrelevant as long as it makes a ‘good story’. Auster once remarked that once a book is written it belongs ‘to the readers’ minds’. Trofimova herself invites readers to create their own conclusions when she questions if her work will ‘concern the curious relationship that exists between the text, its author, his critic and the reader in the production of meaning’ – an assemblage that breaks traditional hierarchies. Trofimova’s book, ultimately, belongs to the reader as well.