Report from the Interior

July 8, 2013
In this companion to an earlier memoir also written in the second person, Winter Journal, Auster returns to many of the concerns of his 1950s childhood in South Orange, N.J., that ran like leitmotivs through his young life and helped forge the writer’s identity he would embrace by age 22. While Winter Journal explored the “manifold knocks and pleasures” of aging as well as his parents’ unhappy marriage, this volume delves into what had nourished his young mind and heart as a child up until age 12 (he was born in 1947), such as infatuation with early TV characters like Felix the Cat, aviation miracles, the jolt of seeing The War of the Worlds for the first time, meeting Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford (then wondering if he was an imposter), and enduring long stretches of reverie-inducing boredom. Shadows were cast over his youthful obliviousness as he began to “catch on” to what it meant to be a Jew in America (an outsider, often induced to change his name), to understand the gulf between white and black, rich and poor, and to marvel at the horrors endured by Korean War veterans. Yet “Interior” serves as only part one of this work, complemented by “Two Blows to the Head,” elaborate delineation of the plots of two “cinematic earthquakes” of his youth, The Incredible Shrinking Man and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang; “Time Capsule,” a revisiting of the first self-consciously writerly letters Auster wrote as a young Columbia University student to his then girlfriend, Lydia Davis; and photos of the various themes in “Album.” This erratically episodic, somewhat puzzling compendium rounds out the edges to Auster’s oeuvre.

March 15, 2014

Auster (Winter Journal) is a good reader and a great writer. Unfortunately, though well narrated, this work does not display Auster's typical quality. His early years as a schoolboy baseball player and Yankees fan are quite entertaining. Also, his extended takes on the films The Incredible Shrinking Man and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang as formative experiences in his youth are very interesting. Less so is the final portion of the book, a second-person dialog with his adolescent self, based on selections from love letters written in the 1970s to Lydia Davis, who became his first wife. Apart from his commentary on his Columbia University education and his participation in anti-Vietnam War protests, it's pretty boring. VERDICT This audio presentation is recommended to libraries with extensive literary audio collections and of course to fans of the author. ["Auster presents a fascinating take on the memoir," read the starred review of the Holt hc, LJ 10/15/13.]--Cliff Glaviano, formerly with Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH

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