«If I Never Saw the Moon, Then the Moon Was Never There»: The Influence of Alan Schneider’s and Samuel Beckett’s Film on Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions
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Abstract
In this paper, I analyse the intertextual relationship between Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions (2002) and Alan Schneider and Samuel Beckett’s Film (1965). By examining the different ways in which the American author alludes to this short film, I propose that, with The Book of Illusions, Auster reinterprets Film based on some of the recurring fixations in his work, such as the duplicity of identity or a life devoted to writing. Specifically, I suggest that Berkeley’s maxim, esse est percipi (‘to be is to be perceived’), the basis of Schneider and Beckett’s short film, becomes one of the novel’s thematic axes.
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