Miles Donald
Loony Tunes
Moon Palace
By Paul Auster
Faber & Faber 286pp £12.95
This book should carry a Moon Warning. It opens in the summer of the astronauts’ moon landing. This is the first of a host of moon references. A telephone call to a police station is answered by a Sergeant Neil Armstrong. A character called Uncle Victor plays the clarinet in bands called the Moonlight Moods and the Moon Men. The hero/narrator (of whom more shortly) rents a New York apartment from which he can see the neon sign of the Moon Palace restaurant. He picks up a hooker who calls him a lunatic; he talks of his ‘doom’ in terms of a total eclipse; he goes on about ‘radiant Diana...image of all that is dark within us.’
All the above occurs within the first twenty nine pages. There are two hundred and fifty pages of mooning to go before the hero, with a nod in the direction of Sons and Lovers (as usual Auster gesticulates much in the direction of Other Artists), hoofs it towards a final
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Paul Gauguin kept house with a teenage ‘wife’ in French Polynesia, islands whose culture he is often accused of ransacking for his art.
@StephenSmithWDS asks if Gauguin is still worth looking at.
Stephen Smith - Art of Rebellion
Stephen Smith: Art of Rebellion - Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux
literaryreview.co.uk
‘I have fond memories of discussing Lorca and the state of Andalusian theatre with Antonio Banderas as Lauren Bacall sat on the dressing-room couch.’
@henryhitchings on Simon Russell Beale.
Henry Hitchings - The Play’s the Thing
Henry Hitchings: The Play’s the Thing - A Piece of Work: Playing Shakespeare & Other Stories by Simon Russell Beale
literaryreview.co.uk
We are saddened to hear of the death of Fredric Jameson.
Here, from 1983, is Terry Eagleton’s review of The Political Unconscious.
Terry Eagleton - Supermarket of the Mind
Terry Eagleton: Supermarket of the Mind - The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act by Fredric Jameson
literaryreview.co.uk