著者

上田 肇

出版者

静岡大学

雑誌

人文論集 (ISSN:02872013)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.53, no.2, pp.A117-A132, 2003-01-31

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Paul Auster's The Music of Chance is a very smart and stylish novel. Jim Nashe was a fireman in Boston, but after his wife left him, he asked his sister to take care of his daughter. And he began traveling around America. As long as he was driving, he carried no burdens. "Perhaps the music had something to do with that, the endless tapes of Bach and Mozart and Verdi that he listened to while sitting behind the wheel, as if the sounds were somehow emanating from him and drenching the landscape, turning the visible world into a reflection of his own thoughts." I would like to examine the story paying attention to the effects of music. I will put emphasis on the meaning of the anonymity of music. This may be closely related to the function of the simple language Paul Auster used in the novel. As Frederick R. Karl describes, Auster's deliberately flattened out American English conveys neutrality and withdrawal in the present age. His simple and easy language does not necessarily mean the story can be easily understood. On the contrary, it is a really difficult work. Auster's effort to quest for the function of language is apparent in the novel. He seems to emancipate language from the old barriers.