Moon Palace (Paperback)

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Staff Reviews


Although the tale of a troubled youth in the midst of New York City has been done dozens of times by fill-in-the-blank Salinger-philes, Paul Auster has managed to justify the pretentious and often stupid decisions of a young man in remarkably beautiful fashion. Moon Palace is set in New York City during the moon landing of Apollo 11, a mission Auster uses to coincide with the exploration and maturation of our hero.

Marco Stanley Fogg has few family members and even less money when he moves to New York in the fall of 1965 to attend Columbia. After his first year in the dorms, he moves into a single bedroom apartment he has unconventionally furnished with the many boxes of books previously owned by his uncle Victor. A bed made out of eight boxes here, a table made out of six stacked boxes, a stool made out of two boxes there.

Fogg's minimalist lifestyle becomes even more so after his uncle's death. He must cope not only with the loss of his last remaining family member but also the fact that he has virtually no money. Fogg's solution is to pay tribute to his uncle's life by reading every one of his uncle's books and then selling the copies to a secondhand bookstore. As he does, his apartment becomes sparser, but his knowledge of and love for his uncle grows. As his furniture slowly disappears, Fogg grapples with his poverty and is drawn further into his desire to exist with nothing. Analogous to Krakauer's tale of Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild, Moon Palace plays with the desperate and inspired attempts of a young man to create his own future. -- Jon Stich

— From March 2010

Description


The “beautiful and haunting” (San Francisco Chronicle) tale of an orphan’s search for love, for his unknown father, and for the key to the elusive riddle of his fate, from the author of the forthcoming 4 3 2 1:  A Novel

Marco Stanley Fogg is an orphan, a child of the sixties, a quester tirelessly seeking the key to his past, the answers to the ultimate riddle of his fate. As Marco journeys from the canyons of Manhattan to the deserts of Utah, he encounters a gallery of characters and a series of events as rich and surprising as any in modern fiction.

Beginning during the summer that men first walked on the moon, and moving backward and forward in time to span three generations, Moon Palace is propelled by coincidence and memory, and illuminated by marvelous flights of lyricism and wit. Here is the most entertaining and moving novel yet from an author well known for his breathtaking imagination.

From New York Times-bestselling author Paul Auster (The New York Trilogy).

About the Author


Paul Auster is the bestselling author of 4 3 2 1Sunset ParkThe Book of IllusionsMoon Palace, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006, he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature.  His other honors include the Prix Médicis étranger for Leviathan, the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Burning Boy, and the Carlos Fuentes Prize for his body of work.  His most recent novel, 4 3 2 1, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.  He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Praise For…


“Auster is a masterly storyteller. . .Moon Palace shimmers with mysteries.”
The Washington Post Book World
 
“Enormously compelling. . .Auster has a rare combination of talent, scope, and audacity.”
The New Republic
 
“Good hearted and hopeful, verbally exuberant.”
The New York Times Book Review

“Reads like a composite of works by Fielding, Dickens, and Twain. . .Auster has a lot of fun concocting Marco’s adventures, almost has much fun as one has in reading them.”
– Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Praise for Paul Auster:

“One of the great American prose stylists of our time.”New York Times

“Auster really does possess the wand of the enchanter.”New York Review of Books

“One of the great writers of our time.”San Francisco Chronicle

“Contemporary American writing at its best.”—New York Times Book Review, on Invisible

“A literary original who is perfecting a hybrid genre of his own.”Wall Street Journal
Product Details
ISBN: 9780140115857
ISBN-10: 0140115854
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publication Date: April 1st, 1990
Pages: 320
Language: English
Series: Contemporary American Fiction