Paul Auster (born in 1947), Brooklyn-based American novelist and movie director
, whose complex mystery novels are often concerned with the search for ...
Unit 1
Tips for texts Paul Auster (born in 1947), Brooklyn-based American novelist and movie director, whose complex mystery novels are often concerned with the search for identity and personal meaning. He has a wider readership in Europe, particularly in France, than in America.
M oon Palace The narrator has been helping an eccentric, blind old man called Effing with the crazy task of distributing banknotes to the people in the streets.
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1. spokes / "spEÁks /: baleines d’un parapluie 2. whimsical / "wImZIkEl /: funny, playful 3. to tiptoe: marcher sur la pointe des pieds 4. to ward off: to protect oneself from something 5. a cloudburst / "klaÁdb∏:st /: a sudden violent rainstorm
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At eight o’clock we went down to Times Square, where we finished our work in a record-breaking twenty-five or thirty minutes. Because it was still early, and because we were closer to home than usual, Effing insisted that we return on foot. In itself, this is a trivial point, and I wouldn’t bother to mention it except for a curious thing that happened along the way. Just south of Colombus Circle, I saw a young black man of about my age walking parallel to us on the opposite side of the street. As far as I could tell, there was nothing unusual about him. His clothes were decent, he did nothing to suggest he was either drunk or crazy. But there he was on a cloudless spring night, walking along with an open umbrella over his head. That was incongruous enough, but then I saw that the umbrella was also broken: the protective cloth had been stripped off the armature, and with the naked spokes1 spread out uselessly in the air, it looked as though he was carrying some huge and improbable steel flower. I couldn’t help laughing at the sight. When I described it to Effing, he let out a laugh as well. His laugh was louder than mine, and it caught the attention of the man across the street. With a big smile on his face, he gestured for us to join him under the umbrella. “What do you want to be standing out in the rain for?” he said merrily. “Come on over here so you don’t get wet.” There was something so whimsical 2 and openhearted about his offer that it would have been rude to turn him down. We crossed over to the other side of the street, and for the next thirty blocks we walked up Broadway under the broken umbrella. It pleased me to see how naturally Effing fell in with the spirit of the joke. He played along without asking any questions, intuitively understanding that nonsense of this sort could continue only if we all pretended to believe in it. Our host’s name was Orlando, and he was a gifted comedian, tiptoeing 3 nimbly around imaginary puddles, warding off 4 raindrops by tilting the umbrella at different angles, and chattering on the whole way in a rapid-fire monologue of ridiculous associations and puns. This was imagination in its purest form: the act of bringing nonexistent things to life, of persuading others to accept a world that was not really there. Coming as it did on that particular night, it somehow seemed to match the impulse behind what Effing and I had just been doing down at Forty-second Street. A lunatic spirit had taken hold of the city. Fifty-dollar bills were walking around in strangers’ pockets, it was raining and yet not raining, and the cloudburst5 pouring through our broken umbrella did not hit us with a single drop. We said our goodbyes to Orlando at the corner of Broadway and Eighty-fourth Street, the three of us shaking hands all round and swearing to remain friends for life. Adapted from Paul Auster, 1989.
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G
O I N G
F U R T H E R
Build up your comprehension A Look and anticipate
D Read between the lines 1 What sort of narrative is it? Who is the narrator?
1 Say what sort of document it is, who wrote it,
Justify with elements from the text.
and when it was published.
2 Read lines 3 to 4. What is the effect of this sentence?
2 Look at the title and the drawing. In your
opinion, what is the story about?
3 Analyse the narrator’s opinion at the beginning.
How does it evolve throughout the text?
B Scan through the text
4 What is Orlando referred to as? Why? 5 Describe the atmosphere of the text. Quote several examples to justify your answer.
1 Where are the characters? Pick out
the places mentioned.
6 What is the impression left by the last
2 What information do you get about each
paragraph of this extract? Why?
character? 3 Who do these pronouns refer to?
E Translation
“we” (l. 1) • “I” (l. 4) • “he” (l. 7) • “us” (l. 15) • “he” (l. 20) • “our” (l. 22) • “he” (l. 23) • “us” (l. 31)
Translate into French from lines 5 to 9 ”I saw ... head”.
4 List all the adjectives that reflect the mood of
the characters.
F Put pen to paper
5 Pick out the words related to the weather. Why
are there so many?
1 Write a dialogue based on this text and
act it out.
6 Find another title for this text.
2 Write about a strange scene you have
witnessed.
C Work with words
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Workbook
1 Guess the meaning of these words.
unusual (l. 7) • cloudless (l. 8) • uselessly (l. 11) • merrily (l. 16) • openhearted (l. 17) • intuitively (l. 21) • gifted (l. 23) 2 Look for synonyms of the following words
in the text. walk home • enormous • to move • humid • impolite • crazy 3 Using the context, find the meaning of the following words and expressions.
cloth (l. 10) • steel (l. 12) • to turn someone down (l. 18) • puddles (l. 23) • to chatter (l. 24) • to pour ( l. 31) • a drop (l. 32)
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A R O U N D
T H E
C I T Y
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