Resumo de In The Country Of Last Things

AUTHOR :
Paul Auster was born on February 3, 1947 in Newark (New Jersey). He studied Anglistics and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. After his studies, he worked one year on a petrol-ship, before he lived four years in Paris. In 1974 he came back to New York. He began his writing career publishing essays and poems for different magazines. After the publication of The New York Trilogy in 1987 he became well known even in Europe. This trilogy consists of the novels City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986). In this trilogy Paul Auster himself appears as one of the characters. After this first success, his novel In the Country of Last Things appeared in 1988, and some others followed. Some examples of his writing: Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1991), Leviathan (1992) and Mr. Vertigo (1994). Further, there is the autobiography The Invention of Solitude and a summary of poems and essays (Groundwork, 1990). In 1993, The Music of Chance was turned into a movie and in 1996 Smoke and Blue in the Face were shown in German cinemas. Today, Auster lives in Brooklyn. He's married to the author Siri Hustvedt and he has two children.
These are Paul Auster's thoughts about life and about writing a book:
You cannot tell objective about life in order to live. For that, you have to describe and discuss your emotions, your opinions and your impressions. That's the cause why in Paul Auster's novel In the Country of Last Things the two objective texts written by Sam and William disappeared, but the personal notes of Anna and Isabel still existed at the end.
Plot Summary

Anna Blume arrives in a city in the country of last things to look for her brother William. Nobody has heard about him for months. It is not very probable that he is still alive. And who goes voluntarily to a city which doesn't really exist? All she has is William's last address, the name and a photo of his successor, Samuel Farr. She only realizes the dimension of chaos and destruction when she arrives in the city. The street, the building she looks for don't exist anymore. The conditions are unimaginable - the city falls into ruin; in order to survive you have to plunder, to steal, to be inventive; food is meagre, apartments are luxury. There are many new jobs in the city: corpses collectors, assassins, who are employed by the victim himself, garbage collectors, etc.
But Anna is lucky. One day she saves the live of an older woman, Isabel. Isabel takes Anna home. She also shows her tricks to survive. Anna is able to life there and they become friends. However Isabel is very ill. After her death housebreakers immediately come to take over her apartment.
After that Anna lives on the streets again - until she happens to enter the national library, being on the run. There she meets Samuel Farr, who is working on a book about the city. Anna and Sam share Sam's room and soon become lovers. One day Anna is lured into a human slaughterhouse, while she is looking for new shoes. But she manages to escape. In the meantime the library has burnt down.
The people of Woburn House find Anna and take her with them. Woburn House gives a roof to homeless persons for a few days. Anna stays there, recovers from her accident and begins work there. She doesn't know what happened to Sam, her relationship with Victoria, the owner of Woburn House, gives her new strength.
A few weeks later Sam turns up at Woburn House. Anna, who has given up searching for him, is very happy. Sam works at Woburn House, too. Finally the people of Woburn House run out of money and have to close shelter. Anna and her friends decide to leave the city although this is a dangerous enterprise. Anna also wants to continue the search for her brother.

Poems
In the class we wrote poems about the first two pages of the book. Here are two of them.
In the Country of Last Things
Today I'm writing you a letter
Then, I think I'm feeling better
What I feel I'm writing heru are not near:
Moving on from street to street
All the time the same to feet
Perhaps I'll find my brother
For him I'm searching
And no other.
And I keep on moving on
Things in town don't last real long
Every time I look around
The thing I saw,
Already gone...
There are the last things.
A house is there one day,
And the next day it is gone.
A Street you walked down yesterday
Is no longer there today.
I put one foot in front of the other,
And then the other foot in front of the first,
And then hope I can do it again.
Nothing more than that.
No matter what anyone says,
The only thing that counts
Is staying on your feet.
You must get used to doing with little as you can.
By wanting less, you are content with less,
And the less you need,
The better off you are...

Resumos Relacionados