Reviews for Travels in the Scriptorium

The average rating for Travels in the Scriptorium based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-09-01 00:00:00 Richard Lawson Picking The Language Lock From Kafka to Blanchot to Auster: it sounds a bit like an old American baseball triple play. However unlikely it seems, it is in fact a direct literary lineage. What's passed along isn't a baseball; it's an attitude toward language, an attitude inspired by, of all things, the Kabbalah. Kabbalah is a Jewish meditative technique (an inadequate description but so is method, or philosophy, or experience), the purpose of which is not to understand what language means, but to reveal what it conceals behind its mask of innocent neutrality. Travels in the Scriptorium is one of Auster's more explicit Kabbalistic pieces, and therefore probably can't be fully grasped without understanding its literary ancestry. Paul Auster has translated at least two of the French Maurice Blanchot's books on the philosophy of language, and incorporates much of that philosophy in his fiction. Blanchot in turn was a serious scholar of Franz Kafka who inspired Blanchot's thought through his distinctive prose of alienation, apparently alienation of the individual from repressive social regimes. But Kafka's primary focus wasn't political, it was linguistic. The overtly political insinuations of his stories are allegorical. That is to say their language means something other than what it says. Travels in the Scroptorium is obviously Kafka-esque and obviously allegorical. The protagonist Mr. Blank inhabits a room without explanation, to him or to the reader. He has no memory of his arrival there, or of his previous life. The room could be a bedroom, a hospital ward, or a prison cell. Mr Blank doesn't know whether he is a guest, a patient or a prisoner. Meaning is in abeyance, thus capturing the reader's attention with an unstated macguffin. So far, so Kafka. But very quickly it is evident that there is more to the story. In particular there are labels in block capitals placed on the objects in the room: TABLE, PEN, SHADE, WALL, etc. As descriptive designations, these labels are superfluous. Mr. Blank obviously knows what these objects are; he hasn't lost his ability for language along with his memory. They are clearly not descriptions, or reminders. The labels are commands. The words they contain are imposed on Mr. Blank even if he is unaware of the situation. The labels assert an equivalence between the object on which they are placed and the word they contain. This is a rather Blanchotian twist. It makes explicit the real subject of the story: the power of language. (For more on Blanchot and Kabbalah see: ). On the desk is a set of typescripts which Mr. Blank fears might reveal unpleasant things but to which he is irresistibly drawn. The typescripts don't have a label. Or said another way: they constitute one complex, narrative label. Mr. Blank reads them with incomprehension. Who are they written by? Are they truthful? Why are they here for him to read? They constitute a command like the labels. But Blank has no idea how to respond. Could this be precisely the right response to the command of the typescript? I think so; and I think that this is a key contribution of Auster to the tradition in which he has chosen to participate. The dominance of language is inescapable even when the tactics of the 'language-game' are clear. Blank tries to reassure himself with logical reason: "It's only words, he tells himself, and since when have words had the power to frighten a man half to death? It won't do," but they are obviously not 'merely' words. They have an attractive power which draws him into themselves, into the story they form. And they generate a range of emotions, the most important of which is the compulsion he feels to comprehend what's 'behind' them: "while he has grasped every word of the text so far, he has no idea what to make of it." Unlike the other experiences he has in the room - the feel of his sock-clad feet on the polished floor; the sexual ministrations of his mysterious visitor, Anna; the touch of a wash cloth on his neck - the experience of language is problematic. There is literally no getting behind the labels. After a false start to see what's outside the room, Blank gets the shade (with its label) to roll up, only to find impenetrably toughened glass of the window further protected by steel shutters, which are themselves held in place by large nails which he has no means to extract. "Imagine Mr. Blank's disappointment when he peers through the window and sees that the shutters have been closed, blocking any possibility of looking out to discover where he is." But in a manner analogous to his attitude toward the typescript text, Blank's desire to understand his context is also ambivalent. He could try the door since he doesn't know whether it locks from inside or out, "But Mr. Blank does not move from his spot by the window, for the simple reason that he is afraid, so afraid of what he might learn from the door that he cannot bring himself to risk a confrontation with the truth." The danger is that there is nothing there at all, at least nothing which can be discovered with a label already attached. For me, this is a perfect example of Auster's imaginative brilliance. And it's also the opening by which Kabbalah enters his story. The first 'principle' (another inadequate term) of Kabbalah is that everything is a sign. It doesn't fight language, it succumbs entirely to it. Auster alludes to this by the visual and audio recording of everything that occurs in the room: "The least groan or sniffle, the least cough or fleeting flatulence that emerges from his body is therefore an integral part of our account as well." In Kabbalah every jot and tittle of the text is of tremendous import. My sense is that Auster's inclusion of Blank's grunts and mumbles and the unintelligible random noises of the room is an intentional self-referential parody of Kabbalah, a very appropriate Kabbalistic tactic which frequently exposes itself to its own critique. Kabbalah then destroys the conventional meaning of the signs. As he reads the typescript, Blank is informed that the narrative will be used against the writer who has prepared it by those who are persecuting him. The writer implies that although he is being as factual as he can be in his report, what he has written is essentially a lie which will convict him. The text says, "Thank the Colonel for me, and tell him I understand what he's doing. He's giving me a chance to lie about what happened in order to save my neck. That's very sporting of him. Please tell him that I appreciate the gesture... By allowing me to put the story in writing, he is gathering evidence, irrefutable evidence that will justify any action he decides to take against me." In other words even the most factual account he can give is evidence of his guilt. Truth itself is falsehood; the connections between words and things is broken. But Kabbalah is not merely destructive. It seeks to re-construct reality by re-arranging the relationships among the signs of language, to give these signs not new designations connecting them to things but to give them new relationships with each other, thus re-framing their emotional import as well as demonstrating their arbitrary exercise of power. At one point Blank tries to adjust the labels as "a symbolic undertaking to restore harmony to a broken universe." This is one of many examples of Auster's explicit use of the terminology of Kabbalah - repairing the broken universe. What does Blank do to escape the power of words? Remarkably, he writes. He throws himself back into the arms of the thing which is constraining him, namely language. He constructs a story. Like the writer of the typescript, Blank can only tell another story regardless of the consequences: "The only thing I can do is tell the story." The unique aspect of this story is that it cannot be a command, except perhaps to oneself. It is therefore not something definitive or eternal or verifiable. The story is a re-construction out of the material at hand which will change as the material allows, including the new material of his story itself. This is the dangerous truth, the ghost in the machine, the bedrock of thought: that there is no bedrock. Many find this not just dangerous but sacrilegious, an affront to both the human mind and whatever they consider to be divine intelligence. Travels in the Scriptorium is wonderfully dangerous and sacrilegious, just like Kabbalah.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-07-22 00:00:00 Miljenko Horvat Travels in the Scriptorium, Paul Auster Travels in the Scriptorium is a novel by Paul Auster first published in 2007. An old man is disoriented within an unknown chamber and has no memory about who he is or how he has arrived there. He tries to understand something from the relics on the desk, examining the circumstances of his confinement and searching for reasons and a method to exit. Determining that he is locked in, the man ' identified only as Mr. Blank ' begins reading a manuscript he finds on the desk, the story of another prisoner, set in an alternate world the man doesn't recognize. Nevertheless, the pages seem to have been left for him, along with a haunting set of photographs. As the day passes, various characters call on the man in his cell ' vaguely familiar people, some who seem to resent him for crimes he can't remember ' and each brings frustrating hints of his identity and his past. ... عنوانها: سفر در اتاق تحریر؛ سفر در اتاق نسخه برداری؛ نویسنده: پل آستر؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و سوم ماه جولای سال 2009 میلادی عنوان: سفر در اتاق تحریر؛ نویسنده: پل آستر؛ مترجم: مهسا ملک مرزبان؛ تهران، افق، 1387، در 162ص؛ شابک 9789643694883؛ چاپ دوم 1389؛ چاپ سوم 1392؛ چاپ چهارم 1396؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان امریکایی - سده 20م عنوان: راه رفتن در اتاق نسخه برداری؛ نویسنده: پل آستر؛ مترجم: مهدی غبرائی؛ تهران، ثالث، 1387، در 136ص؛ شابک 9789643805173؛ چاپ دوم با عنوان: سفر در اتاق نسخه برداری؛ تهران، ثالث، 1394؛ در 138 ص؛ شابک 9789643806354؛ عنوان: سفر در اتاق کتابت؛ نویسنده: پل آستر؛ مترجم احسان نوروزی؛ تهران، چشمه، 1387؛ در 135ص؛ شابک 9789643624125؛ چاپ دوم 1389، چاپ سوم 1396؛ پیرمرد روی لبه ی تخت مینشیند؛ ذهنش درگیر مسائل دیگری است: این جا چه میکند؟ در اتاق، با برچسبی روی میز نوشته شده «میز»؛ روی لامپ «لامپ»، او کیست؟ اینجا چه میکند؟ پیرمرد پاسخ پرسشها را نمیداند، پیرمرد هیچ به یاد نمیآورد...؛ «استر» کنجکاوی هر خوانشگری را برمیانگیزند؛ ایشان خوانشگر را از بلندای دنیای جادویی واژه ها، بر روی زمینِ سخت مینشانند، و سپس دوباره به پرواز درمیآورند تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/04/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی