Paul Auster

Life and works

Paul Auster, the pseudonym of Paul Benjamin, was born in 1947 in new jersey and studied at Columbia university. He worked as a merchant seaman before becoming a teacher of creative writing and a writer himself. His first novel Squeeze Play came out in 1982, but by the time he had already written several volumes of poetry. He became famous with New York Trilogy (1985/87) where he applies post-modernist deconstruction to the detective story. It was followed by In The Country of Last Things (1987) a nightmarish vision of social disintegration. In The Music of Chance (1991), which has also a film adaption, the protagonist spends his life travelling through America in surrealist situations. In Mr. Vertigo (1994) Auster experiments with Magic Realism Ground Work (1990) contains a selections of his poems and essays. He became well known to the public at large for the screenplay of the film Smoke (1995) and its follow-up Blue in the Face (1995).

Exercises on the text taken from the final part of the book “Timbuktu” by Paul Auster

Read the text.

  1. Find out how long Mr. Bones has been in the new home: “By the time you had been there for two and half months…”;
  2. Make a list of the positive aspects he finds in his new life: “It wasn’t just the daily rides in the van, and it wasn’t just regular meals or the absence of ticks and fleas from his coat. It was the barbecues on the back patio. The Porterhouse steak bones he was given to gnaw on, the weekend outings to Wanacheebee pond and the swims with Alice in the cool water, the overall feeling of splendor and well-being that had engulfed him.”;
  3. What are the negative counterparts?: “Willy had always attacked these things, railing against them in that lopsided, comic way of his, but Willy had been on the outside looking in, and he had refused to give any of it a chance.” “….it no longer seemed so important that you were tethered to a wire all day.”
  1. Read the text again.
  2. Mr. Bones previous world and the one he finds himself in are described as “outside” and “inside”. Underline the phrases that describe what the “inside” means to Mr. Bones and what it meant for Willy: “Willy had always attacked these things, railing against them in that lopsided, comic way of his, but Willy had been on the outside looking in, and he had refused to give any of it a chance. Now that Mr. Bones was on the inside, he wondered where his old master had gone wrong and why he had worked so hard to spurn the trappings of the good life.”
  3. What does the dog think about Willy’s way of thinking? In my opinion Mr. Bones is agree with Willy, and he would be with him again.
  4. What is the price the dog has paid for his welfare? He was tethered to a wire all day.
  5. Is the reader led to form a positive or negative view of society described in the extract? In my opinion, the reader led to form a negative view of society. Mr. Bones as Willy, is alive to the trappings of the good life (good food, good family, good home) but he must give up his liberty, and this is a too high price to pay.
  6. What expectations are created about the possible outcome of the story? In my opinion is more probably that the dog escapes from that life to return to the old life.