Anne Frank Rescues the Writer in Paul Auster's The Invention of Solitude

This article takes as its starting point Stephen Fredman's claim that women are “effaced” from Paul Auster's The Invention of Solitude, and notes that this claim is contradictory, given the centrality of Anne Frank to the text. This article attempts to account for that contradiction by arguing that Anne Frank is enlisted in Auster's text as a means of providing consolation for the loss of Auster's father; indeed, Frank is enlisted as a figure for Auster's father. It is argued that Frank can be read, if problematically, and not entirely successfully, as a Levinasian “other” within Auster's text, something which influences the act of self-representation in The Invention of Solitude and necessitates consideration of the text as autobiography.