The Michigan Daily

ARTS
Thursday, March 7, 1991 Page 5
Paul Auster defies stereotypes

by Jon Bilik
0ne wonders, the night before a
paper is due, whether themes were
inserted into great works of art
solely for pressured undergrads to
write about. Intentionality is, at
best, problematic; yet the institu-
tional paper-mill urges us to look
beyond the experiences that give rise
to theme, to ignore the beauty of a
poem in favor of writing about its
meter. It's gratifying, then, to find a
writer so rich in profundity and di-
alectic, one who relies on story
rather than theme.
While Paul Auster's themes are
rich and varied, it is his stories
which draw the reader into his
novels. The stories have a unique
sort of suspense, a suspense that
comes from well-developed charac-
ters who act in response to events
and coincidences that are completely
random. If, perhaps, there is any-
thing out of the ordinary about
Auster's characters, it is that many
permit themselves to take leaps of
faith to follow a whim, allowing the
forces of chance to change the direc-
tion of their lives.
For example, in Auster's latest
book, The Music of Chance, Jim
Nashe follows one whim after
another until he decides to pick up a
stranger who changes the course of
his life: "And just like that, he went
ahead and did it. Without the
slightest tremor of fear, Nashe closed
his eyes and jumped."
As the book states, it's all "a
question of sequence, the order of
events," which, I suppose, could be
construed as a literary device by the
over-zealous analyst, because it does
serve as the perfect vehicle for sto-
ries that keep the reader's interest by
virtue of their sudden turns. "You
start looking closely at things, and
extraordinary reverberations start to

take place," explains Auster. "And
they happen all the time. The chance
intersections that seem so improba-
ble are really common occurrences.
The odds against (these coincidences)
happening are so extraordinary, and
yet it's constantly happening."
Auster's books range from the
surreal happenstance of the inves-
tigative quest (The New York Tril-
ogy) to the dystopian bleakness of
chaos (In the Country of Last
Things) to the narrative of a young
intellectual in search of himself and
his origins (Moon Palace) to an au-
tobiographical set of memoirs ex-
ploring what it means to be a son
and a father (The Invention of Soli-
tude) to the story of a man giving
himself up to the forces of chance
(The Music of Chance): yet, in all,
Auster stresses realism.
"There's not anything truly fan-
tastic about (my books). They repre-
sent my feelings about how the
world really operates. I mean, we're
all the product of chance. Think of
our own births, for example. Think
of how our parents met. It's really
some bizarre encounter, right? That
particular moment of conception
makes you the unique person that
you are."
One gets the feeling while read-
ing Auster's books that he, like his
characters, allows himself to be con-
trolled by the vagaries of chance
while he writes. "If I knew what I
was doing, he explains, "there'd be
no fun in doing it. The whole thing
is an adventure, after all." Which is
perhaps the appeal of his books, be-
cause we all wonder about the pecu-
liar sequence of events that gets us'
to present day, all the choices we've
made in response to random oppor-
tunities. Auster's characters take that
responsiveness one step further, al-
lowing themselves to surrender to

chance, often when they're most
alone.
"Paradoxically," Auster explains,
"at the moment you are most iso-
lated from other people, it's pre-
cisely at that point that you've real-
ized the depth of your connection to
people. How, in fact, you can't iso-
late yourself from other people. That
we are the products of our parents,
our history, and our language, which
is something we make together.
Language is not made by one per-
son, it's made by groups of people,
and it's handed down and taught."
Invention of Solitude, for exam-
ple, "is a book written in solitude,
and yet it's peopled with other
voices, the other voices that are in
our head. Those happen to be the
voices in my head, but everybody
has other voices bouncing around in
their skull, whatever it might be."
Indeed, Invention of Solitude is
filled with examples of real-life co-
incidence and synchronicity, forces
that have shaped Auster's own rela-
tionships and sense of self.
Auster remains one of those au-
thors who consistently receives criti-
cal kudos for his work, yet reviewers
have not managed to fit him into
categories and genres. Although his
popularity seems to be spreading, he
still seems to fall into the, mutually
exclusive trap that distinguishes the
intelligent from the popular. Hope-
fully, given the engaging quality of
his stories, the sharpness of his
prose, and his unique explorations of
common experience, he will defy the
trend.
PAUL AUSTER will be reading
from his newest work, THE MUSIC
OF CHANCE, today at 5:00 in the
Rackham Amphitheatre as a part of
the UM Visiting Writers Series.
There is no admission charge.

M-A'
Nick Fifer (Woody Allen) proves he is a man and punches out that annoying mime (Bill Irwin), while his wife,
Deborah (Bette Midler), tries to look skinny.
Life in a mall: compact hell

Scenes From A
Mall
dir. Paul Mazursky
by Brent Edwards
(The following is an interview
with Scenes From A Mall director
Paul Mazursky, as imagined by
Daily film critic Brent Edwards.)
B.E.: Let's begin with the most
interesting aspect of your new film,
Scenes From A Mall - Woody
Allen.
P.M.: Well, Woody has the same
agent as me, and apparently he was
looking to work with another direc-
tor. I thought Bette Midler and
Woody would work great together,
and luckily they were both available.
B.E.: As a big Woody Allen fan,
I was more than disappointed with
his character. Mr. Allen is not a
character actor - Woody Allen al-
ways plays Woody Allen. To see
him with a pony tail, wearing ex-
pensive clothing and saying "Ciao"
on a phone, is frankly both absurd
and appalling.
P.M.: Yes, of course you feel
that way. I put Woody in that role to
accentuate the absurdity of the whole
California lifestyle. Another actor
may have fit right into the role and
you wouldn't have had the same re-
action, but with Woody, the whole
"neon and sushi" facade sticks out

like a penis through a open fly.
B.E.: So my uncomfortableness
at seeing Mr. Allen in that role was
intended? You know, after I've been
in a mall for a while I usually get
very bored, and I had the same reac-
tion to the movie. Was that intended
as well?
P.M.: Absolutely! I wanted the
audience to be overwhelmed by the
shallowness of the lives of those
who spend their time in the mall. I
was inspired to make the film by the
thought that all aspects of life can be
found at a mall: work, relationships,
entertainment, food, life, and death.
Woody conducts his business from
mall pay phones, Bette organizes a
dinner party from the mall, they
have sex in the mall, they break up
and get back together in the mall.
Everything happens in the mall
these days.
B.E.: I know what you mean. I
buy my socks at the mall.
P.M.: I wanted Bette to give
birth and Woody to get a vasectomy
in the mall, but we couldn't do it
due to time constraints.
B.E.: You seem to be indicating
that everything negative about the
film was intended to be unpleasant
to make a point. When Ms. Midler
and Mr. Allen were having sex in a
theater showing Salaam, Bombay!, I
found myself wishing I were watch-
ing that film instead of yours. I sup-
pose you wanted that reaction?
P.M.: Yes! Yes! Yes! While the
rest of the world is engaged in ethi-
cal dilemmas and immersed in

thoughtfulness and creativity, as in
Saalom, Bombay!, Hollywood is
having sex and L.A. is playing
beach volleyball! While other coun-
tries are struggling to maintain hu-
man dignity in the face of starvation,
Californians are ordering sushi from
their Mercedes car-phones!
B.E.: Hence the trite scene where
you show a line of cars waiting to
be parked, with each driver talking
on a cellular phone. Ha, ha. It re-
minded me of Sesame Street humor.
You repeatedly used mall entertainers
a mime, carollers - with annoy-
ing frequency. By the middle of the
film, I wanted to drill a hole through
that goddamn mime's head.
P.M.: Gets the audience to de-
spise the false masks people wear.
B.E.: And the magician?
P.M.: The illusion of happiness.
B.E.: The excessive wealth and
wasteful consumption?
P.M.: Plastic society.
B.E.: The boring plot?
P.M.: Reveals the mundaneness
of life.
B.E.: Woody's pony tail?
P.M.: Phallic symbol.
B.E.: Bette's lover?
P.M.: Electra complex.
B.E.: Ying?
P.M.: Yang.
B.E. Thank you.
P.M.: You're welcome.
SCENES FROM A MALL is being
shown at the Ann Arbor 1 &2 and
Showcase.



Daily Fine Arts needs writers with background in
classical music. Are you interested? Telephone
763-0379 and ask for Elizabeth Lenhard

. . _ . ..

MICHAEL 1.

THERE'S ONLY
ONE WAY
THESE TWO
ARE GOING
TO GET ALONG...

JAMES
AS.
NEW YORK'S

AS

HOLLYWOOD'S

U H i

Eyes
Eyes
Curb
Have you ever stopped to wonder
what it would be like if Led Zep-
pelin had never existed? Life without
"Kashmir" or "The Ocean" or "The
*0 Battle of Evermore"? But then again,
if it's any consolation, mankind at
least would have never had to suffer
the existence of about 1,000 third-
geueration, corporate metal units
like Eyes (by the way, they've al-
ready got their own $2.00 for the
first minute, 1-900-42-EYES hot-
line number) - y'know, permed
dudes trying to base a career on
slicked recycles of the dopey stuff
like "Livin' Loving Maid" and
"Black Dog."
And better yet, there'd definitely
be no existence of third-generation,
corporate-metal, Klaus Meine/Kip
Winger/Paul Rodgers-influenced
See RECORDS, Page 7

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