Reconstructing the (masculine) self from old age: Memories of the aching male body in Paul Auster's Winter Journal

Abstract

Written when Auster was in his sixties, Winter Journal (2012) is loyal to his postmodern view of the self as a constructed artifact mediated by the body, and the narrative flows through convolutions of remembrances, anecdotes, homes, and houses, as well as transcendental images of his body moving along his lifetime. This chapter studies how the process of narration is organized by means of levels of discourses about his body and his will of embracing an alternative masculinity, which becomes the cohesive line of the book. The narrative structure, far from the conventional form of autobiographical writing, suggests a way of understanding the self as mediated by a body in constant change. Such a change results from the process of getting old, but also from assimilating illness and injuries as part of the process