Abstract
Brooklyn is best described as a city within the great New York City. It is a place associated with top-notch artists such as Walt Whitman, Hart Crane or quite recently Woody Allen; and one of New York boroughs where one cannot ignore the ongoing process of multiculturalism. There are several reasons as to why I chose Brooklyn as the topic of my research. Besides the classes about New York, I wish to discover another aspect of New York City through literature, and I hit my goal when I thought about Paul Auster.
I find it interesting to study New York through the work of a real New Yorker writer and to consider how the man appropriates his own city, not only through his life but also through his work. I never read Paul Auster's novels before, so I could work without any preconceived ideas which might influence my reading or my perception.
As my topic is a broad-based one, I had to confine my research to one novel to improve the accuracy of my work. I chose The Brooklyn Follies, his latest novel which came out in 2005. In this study, I focused on the borough of Brooklyn, ant I tried to study the many facets of the place and to reproduce them faithfully.
In the process, I discovered that there are two Brooklyns which are superimposed: the real Brooklyn with its restaurants, its business, the everyday life in Brooklyn for the author and his characters; and another Brooklyn, a literary and fictive one. The two Brooklyns end up merging into one another in the novel and hence emerges an original idea of Brooklyn.
