Siri Hustvedt: Paul Auster's Haunted Books

Fotos: Gorm Valentin DK: Siri Hustvedt og Norman Finkelstein diskuterer hjemsøgelsens mange former i Paul Austers forfatterskab Fra begyndelsen til slutningen af sin karriere skrev Paul Auster om det uhyggelige. Hans fascination af tidligere forfattere inden for denne tradition, såsom Poe og Hawthorne, spiller ofte en vigtig rolle i hans fiktion. Spøgelser, dobbeltgængere, forsvindinger og skræmmende genkomster, opdagelsen af tabte eller fortrængte erindringer samt Freuds formulering om “stilhed, mørke og ensomhed” går igen fra Auster-bog til Auster-bog. Det uhyggelige viser sig ikke blot i bøgernes indhold; man kan også argumentere for, at Auster betragtede selve det at skrive som en uhyggelig og uforklarlig erfaring. I Siri Hustvedts Ghost Stories tager hun en lang række af de hjemsøgelsesmotiver op, som findes i Austers værker – blandt andet første del af The Invention of Solitude, der handler om hans fars død; romanen Ghosts, naturligvis, men også The New York Trilogy som helhed; samt Austers mange sørgende karakterer og de fortællinger, der udspringer af deres sorg. Deres mistede hverdagsliv bliver en katalysator for fortællingen. Bogen Baumgartner er en undersøgelse af sorgens væsen. Bøger er, argumenterer Siri Hustvedt, spøgelser – en slags spøgelsesteknologi. De rummer fænomenet nærvær og fravær – eller fraværets nærvær i sorgen, hvilket netop er, hvad spøgelser er. ENG: Siri Hustvedt and Norman Finkelstein will discuss the many manifestations of haunting in connection with Paul Auster’s work. From the beginning to the end of his career, Paul Auster was a writer of the uncanny and his love for earlier writers of the uncanny, such as Poe and Hawthorne, often plays an important part in the shaping of his fiction. Ghosts, doubles, disappearances and frightening returns, discoveries of lost or repressed memories, and the Freudian formulation of “silence, darkness and solitude” manifest themselves from one of Auster’s books to the next. Not only do aspects of the uncanny enter into the content of these books, but it can also be argued that Auster regards the act of writing itself as an uncanny experience. In Siri Hustvedt’s Ghost Stories, she picks up any number of haunting themes from Auster’s work—the first part of The Invention of Solitude on the death of his father; the novel Ghosts, of course, but The New York Trilogy as a whole; and Auster’s many grieving characters and their stories that are launched by grief. The divestment of the everyday former life becomes catalyst for narrative. Baumgartner is an anatomy of grief. Books, Siri Hustvedt argues, are ghosts, a technology of ghosts. The phenomenon of presence and absence or the presence of absence in grief, which is what ghosts are. Siri Hustvedt and Norman Finkelstein will discuss the many manifestations of haunting in connection with Paul Auster’s work. Fotos: Gorm Valentin