Report From the Interior

by Paul Auster

  “It was one of Columbia’s virtues,” Dupee wrote, “that it allowed its teachers … plenty of intellectual and social freedom and plenty of good students. It is true that my habitual detachment from campus politics had recently broken down as I saw the students growing more and more desperate under the pressures of the War. The War’s large evil was written small in the misery with which they pondered hour by hour the pitiful little list of their options: Vietnam or Canada … or jail! Naturally they were edgy, staying away from classes in droves and staging noisy demonstrations on campus. To all this, the Columbia Administration added further tension. Increasingly capricious in the exercise of its authority, it alternated, in the familiar American way, between the permissive gesture and the threatened crackdown.

  “So little unchallenged authority survives anywhere at present, even in the Vatican, that those who think they have authority tend to get ‘hung up’ on it. Many of my fellow teachers shared the Administration’s ‘hang up.’ One of them said to me of the defiant students, ‘As with children, there comes a time when you have to say no to them.’ But the defiant students weren’t children, and saying no meant exposing them to much more than ‘a good spanking.’ The War was doing far more ‘violence’ to the University than they were. Altogether, Columbia (especially the College where I teach and where the big April disturbances began) had been grim throughout the school year. And while nobody—not even the student radicals—expected any such explosion as actually occurred, I would not have been surprised if the year had ended with an epidemic of nervous breakdowns.”

  That was the place you returned to, that epicenter of potential nervous breakdowns, and whatever private struggles you might have been going through that year, they cannot be separated from the general sense of doom that hovered in the air around you …

  In the letter written on November third, you report that you are back in school, reinstated at Columbia, and that you are about to move into a new apartment (601 West 115th Street) with the modest rent of eighty dollars per month. The person responsible for persuading you to reverse your plans was your Uncle Allen. After your return, you spent several days at his apartment in Manhattan “talking about all kinds of things,” in particular the mess you had made for yourself and your future. You write how good it was to talk to him, praise his intelligence and understanding, and admit that you were wrong to drop out of school—not because school is important to you but because of the war and your opposition to the war, which would have led to much trouble with the draft. By reentering Columbia, you will be able to postpone that battle for another eighteen months.

  “I’ve worked out a schedule of 4 courses—2 graduate, 2 undergraduate—only 5 class meetings a week—all on Mon., Tues., & Wed., giving me a four-day weekend. I’ve nearly caught up with the work already…”

  NOVEMBER 17: To tell the truth, I really don’t mind being here. Uprooting myself so much … in the past few years, I’ve achieved an equilibrium with my environment: indifference, or to put it better, calm—all places are both good & bad; the important thing is to go about the business of living, to fulfill the inner imperatives that keep me going. About America, the place is such a festering infection, a great boil of troubles … it’s quite exciting to be around.

  I stay up til about 4 every night. I did more Dupin translations (about 20 all together now), Allen very pleased, giving them to James Wright—our friend—tomorrow. He is editor of the magazine The Sixties … I hope, in the near future, to do translations of several other poets. I find it a good exercise. Also, revising & expanding my scenario, doing preliminary sketches for other things, fiction … more films. Have been in contact with a filmmaker—now know where to get a cameraman. Must soon start working on raising money. Plus, of course, I’m going to school. So, you see, I’m rather busy …

  Read poems of Pierre Reverdy. See films Hunger, Young Törless …

  NOVEMBER 23: About the scenario. I have just gotten hold of a typewriter—a huge machine, rented at the price of $6 a month, and have not yet begun the rewriting … only mental revision, addition. The biggest task is the physical work—the typing—there are so many pages. So I won’t send it in the mail right away—rather, bring a copy with me at X-mas … I’ll also bring the Dupin translations, and translations of 2 other French poets: Jaccottet and du Bouchet. I’m doing a little book of the 3 poets for my French course—translations (about 20 poems of each), a general introductory essay, an article on each poet, and commentaries. How academic! But it’s much better than doing an ordinary paper. I have a novel that I’m about to begin. Have also written some poems, which I will send to you in the next letter. They still need a bit of work.

  Bad news: received a letter from the Mexican woman. While she was away from Paris, the director and the producer stole the script—rewrote it completely—making it crude & commercial—and signed a contract with Paramount and Dalí to make a million-dollar film. She has been left in the cold, and, needless to say, so have I. Such greed and chicanery. All behind her back. Dalí, she says, is only concerned with money … Perhaps, for me, it is all for the best—being left independent, to my own devices. But I feel sorry for her.

  I don’t want to be pedantic, but in answer to your previous questions … read these 2 books by Marx: The German Ideology & The Economic and Philosophic Mss. of 1844. Very precise, very illuminating … And don’t let the Fanon book—The Wretched of the Earth—slip away.

  You remember writing the screenplay, the work you refer to as your scenario, which indeed was rather long, close to a hundred single-spaced pages, not so much a movie script as a present-tense narration crammed with minute details about the settings and elaborate descriptions of gestures, pratfalls, and facial expressions, and because it was supposed to be a black-and-white silent film, that is, a film with no dialogue, there were none of the blank spaces one associates with a normal script, and in your memory you can still see what the pages looked like: dense with words, a swarm of black marks with just a few bits of white peeking through, which meant that it was far and away the longest piece of finished work you had ever done. If you are not mistaken, the title of the film was Returns, a dream-like philosophical comedy about an old man wandering around a largely uninhabited landscape looking for his boyhood home and encountering various adventures along the way. You remember thinking it was quite good, but that doesn’t mean your judgment was correct, and even if you hoped to have it produced, you never thought of it as anything more than a novice work, an experiment. What astounds you now is how deluded you were in thinking you could mount a production, how ignorant you were about the ways of filmmaking, how ridiculously naïve and foolishly optimistic you were about the whole business. You knew nothing, absolutely nothing, and unless you had been endowed with a small private fortune to squander on the project, the chances of such a film being made by a twenty-year-old boy were zero, absolutely zero. In any case, by the time you had completed the final version, you were already thinking about other things you wanted to write, and when you weren’t busy with those things, you were busy keeping up with your schoolwork. Some months later, you gave the manuscript to a friend who’d said he wanted to read it, and the manuscript was lost. Xerox machines were new in those days, and you hadn’t been able to afford the expense of making copies, and because you had neglected to use a carbon while typing up the final version, the manuscript that disappeared was the only copy in existence. It made you unhappy, of course, but not desperately unhappy, not crushed or despondent, and before long you stopped thinking about it. Close to twenty-five years would go by before you tiptoed into the world of film again.

  DECEMBER 3: I live alone, rarely emerging from my house. Days pass and I do not speak. When I am forced to say something, my voice seems strange to me, rattling like a machine. I go to class only five times a week. Sit, listen, leave. Return home. Weekends, which are four days long, are the most lonely. Then, if I do go out, it is only after midnight, to get drunk or buy groceries.


  I work extremely hard, walled in my hiddenness … the novel is an overwhelming undertaking … Poetry is almost a diversion. Film absorbing. School work something to get done.

  I don’t know what is driving me … My mind keener, yet more confused. I often feel that I am about to die. Last night I listened to Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony for the first time in almost 2 years. My body shook, I trembled, and … I cried. I couldn’t understand it. As if I had fallen into the void.

  It is a solipsistic life. Friendless, bodyless …

  Later:

  Something nice happened today. About a week ago I gave Allen a copy of the poems I sent to you. Then I forgot about them, was doing other things. Apparently he put them in his pocket and forgot about them too. Today he called and said that last night he did a double-take when he found them in his pocket. He said he was very impressed, that he had almost called last night at 2 in the morning to tell me. I was rather skeptical—I don’t think they’re that good … But he said, no, no, they’re really good & went on with particulars, and said that I should send them to Poetry magazine, because they merit being published. Although I don’t know if I’ll do that, I was flattered by his comments. He said he thought I was really coming along. It’s good to have a little boost like that, especially from him.

  DECEMBER 5: It seems that fate is working against us. This is difficult to say, I hope I can, I’ve made myself a bit drunk to be able to face the page. Simply, I won’t be able to come at Christmas. Three reasons, all squeezing in at once to choke me, responsibilities, debts, conflicts. My father, who still controls my bank account until I’m twenty-one, a stupid agreement I consented to years ago, is not going to loosen his fist (my money!), for, as he claims—frivolity. And Norman claims he needs me to launch his campaign—still a nebulous thing—for it must be done soon or not at all.15 And my grandmother, who is rapidly fading, a hideous thing to watch, needs the family around. Each person doing his or her share by spending time with her—which is an arduous ordeal … Because the film fell through, my former pretext for going—since a matter of the heart is necessarily negligible, frivolous, according to them—has vanished. I’m stuck—not yet my own man.

  I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I had counted on it so much—had lived for nothing else. I sit and look at your picture and try to recall your voice …

  DECEMBER 18: You say that you want to know the details of my life. I will try to tell you …

  I have four courses—“Government C.C.”16 in which we read people like Marx, Lenin, and Sorel … It meets on Mon. & Wed. from 11–12:15, and I hardly ever go—the class is boring, but the reading fine. Second, on Tuesday, from 3–5, I have a seminar called “Oriental Humanities.” Again, the reading is fine—Middle Eastern & Indian philosophy, religion, & poetry—but the class is boring beyond words. Two teachers are there & both are dunces. Nevertheless, the reading is something I probably wouldn’t have done on my own. Wednesday is better. In addition to the C.C., I have 2 other courses—both in the graduate school. The first, from 2–4, is Art History—“Abstract Painting” with Meyer Schapiro … He’s extraordinarily articulate, intelligent, witty, well read. It’s a big lecture (about 200–250 people)—& I just sit back for 2 hrs. & listen to him speak—a real pleasure. Then, from 4–6, I have the other graduate course, in 20th-century French poetry. The reading, of course, is splendid—but the class unfortunately rather ponderous. I’ve been working hard, though—just completed a 25-page paper on 1 15-line poem by Beckett. It was helpful to look at one small thing with such care … Also, as I may have already told you, I’m doing a series of translations—of Dupin, du Bouchet, Bonnefoy, & Jaccottet—four contemporary poets. I’ll be finished sometime during the vacation, which begins next week … About a month & a half ago, Bonnefoy was here and gave a talk, in French, at La Maison Française, on Baudelaire and Mallarmé. An unlikely looking man—tiny, somewhat scrunched up—but a great poet & fine art critic … I was impressed.

  Next term will be much better … as far as teachers go, quality of courses. I saw me ol’ pal Edward Tayler the other day to ask if I could take an advanced graduate seminar with him—“English Lyric—1500–1650.” Of course, of course, he said, Delighted to have you … We had a very amusing talk in the confines of his office for about half an hour … Another graduate course will be Aesthetics, philosophy, which promises to be good—another, in French, on Flaubert, given by Enid Starkie, the grand old English dame on leave from Cambridge. Also, in undergraduate—Medieval French literature, and then, a course in contemporary music from Beeson, which I very much want to take. Finally, GYM. It will keep me quite busy—but I don’t really mind—in an odd way I enjoy studying, especially old things—medieval, Renaissance …

  I am almost always alone. I stay in my apartment a great deal. Three rooms. Small bedroom and bathroom in the back … Next, the kitchen. Coffee, toast—then into the big living room & my desk, to work. Sometimes, late at night, I go to the West End for some Guinness. I occasionally see L., whose company I enjoy. Once in a while, see the girl and her roommate … both former students of Allen’s. Sometimes they feed me, other times we just talk.

  Through Allen, I got to meet … Ruby Cohn, who has written a book on Beckett and is a good friend of his. We met, one morning, about 2 weeks ago, & had a nice talk for about 3 hours …

  Allen has been consistently kind to me … & helpful—reading things—helping me get the translations published—encouraging me to send out other things. I may be able to make some money doing translations of some plays for a book of avant-garde European drama that is being planned by a friend of his—he’s putting in the word for me …

  More seriously … I live in my writing—it consumes my thoughts. I have many ideas, plans going at once—I think about them all in my spare moments, refining, revising, while concentrating on the particular thing I’m working on at the moment …

  Despite all my internal confusion, my loneliness, I have somehow, along the way, acquired … confidence in the writing, in my own ability. That is what sustains me now. I’m a dedicated monk—celibate and all.

  My grandmother is rapidly declining—She has caught bronchitis & is now in the hospital. On Friday, because a night nurse could not be hired on such short notice, my mother & I stayed up all night beside her bed—My grandmother could not sleep for even a minute—her suffering is endless, constant. She is totally helpless, Lydia—She cannot move at all—her spine is like jelly—She can only moan and cry. It was an awful awful night—the worst I have ever spent—to have to sit helpless beside such helplessness, such suffering. Death was so close. From the window, slow, silent … boats moved along the darkened East River.—I am just now beginning to recover from the sleeplessness & despair of that night. Fortunately, the bronchitis is beginning to clear up. But she doesn’t have many more months to live. When I left the hospital in the gray, early morning light, I felt a very bitter joy to find myself among the living …

  Soon, on New Year’s Eve, I’ll be going to a party—haw!—a party given by Allen. It will be the first one for me in a long time. How strange it will be to be in a crowd again. I hope I … don’t go off in a corner & get drunk, which is my usual behavior at such gatherings. Perhaps it will be so crowded that I’ll be unable to reach a corner.

  One of the nicest things since I’ve been back is my continued friendship with Peter—through the mail—his letters truly warm my heart. I don’t deserve such a good friend. With utter kindness & self-sacrifice, he took the time to gather my things & send them to me. Real drudgery, which he did with great humor. The things are now at the airport & will be delivered tomorrow. It will be nice to have my typewriter, notebooks, books … Also, I’ll finally be able to change my pants …

  JANUARY 11, 1968: My grandmother has died—the funeral was yesterday—Despite the fact that it was expected, I’m still … shaken. The funeral itself was very upsetting—my grandfather has taken it badly & has done much crying … It all saddens me. Yet, it is ce
rtainly better that she no longer go through the hideous torture of the disease.17 And fortunately, she died quietly, in her sleep—it had been feared that she would choke …

  The typing of the translations has been completed (160 pages). At great expense I have made one copy—I might be able to make another for free—if so, I’ll send it to you right away—if not, we’ll have to wait until next month when I’m better supplied with pennies …

  If you want a really fine, deep laugh—read At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O’Brien. Highly recommended.

  FEBRUARY 12: A whole month and not a word … I called your mother to see if anything had happened to you. She said your new address was London W. 6. The one you gave me was N. 6. Perhaps this has caused a confusion in the mail rooms.

  I have little to say except my 21st birthday came & went with little stir … Never before have I felt so unneeded and unwanted. I live in a vacuum—have nothing to do with anybody—which pains me. I can do nothing but watch others. I need someone.