Paul Auster’s stories are fraught with melancholia in that they are filled with unrelenting loss and remorselessness. The term melancholia means that a there is a denial of, and a refusal to deal with loss, instead the feelings are repressed and internalized.
In The Book of Illusions, a man endures the death of his entire family, his wife and two children in an airplane crash. It looks at the aftermath as he experiences the associated grief. It details how watching a television show ultimately allows, Paul Zimmer, the main character to grieve. The book, “Oracle Night,” details how a man loses his place in world while in Travels in the Scriptorium, the main character loses his sense of history and memory. In all three books there is a perverse sense of loss leading to melancholia.
Auster’s post 9/11 novel, “Man in the Dark,” chronicle’s the experiences that August Brill endures when is sleeplessly struggles with the death of his wife, and the murder of his granddaughter’s boyfriend in a country at war with Iraq after the Twin Towers are destroyed.
Friday, December 27, 2013
What are some examples of Melancholia in the writings of Paul Auster?
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