“Portrait of an Invisible Man” by Paul Auster (post 2): Why Was His Late Father Invisible? Auster’s Sixty-Nine Page Meditation on His Father’s Contradictions.

In recent posts on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, I pointed out that one reason for the Invisible Man’s invisibility was his multiple personality, since his alternate personalities were usually hidden.

In undiagnosed multiple personality, not only are the alternate personalities usually hidden, but when they do come out, they usually do so incognito.

And since the alternate personalities are different from each other, but incognito, you don’t realize that you are seeing them, but you do have a vague sense that the person has puzzling contradictions.

Paul Auster sums up his impressions of his invisible man, his father, as follows:

“The rampant, totally mystifying force of contradiction. I understand now that each fact is nullified by the next fact, that each thought engenders an equal and opposite thought. Impossible to say anything without reservation: he was good, or he was bad; he was this, or he was that. All of them are true. At times I have the feeling that I am writing about three or four different men, each one distinct, each one a contradiction of all the others.” (1, p. 62).

1. Paul Auster. The Invention of Solitude [1982]. New York, Penguin Books, 2007.