Report from the Interior

by Paul Auster

In the beginning, everything was alive. The smallest objects were endowed with beating hearts . . .

Having recalled his life through the story of his physical self in Winter Journal, internationally acclaimed novelist Paul Auster now remembers the experience of his development from within, through the encounters of his interior self with the outer world.

From his baby's-eye view of the man in the moon to his childhood worship of the movie cowboy Buster Crabbe to the composition of his first poem at the age of nine to his dawning awareness of the injustices of American life, Report from the Interior charts Auster's moral, political and intellectual journey as he inches his way toward adulthood through the post-war fifties and into the turbulent 1960s.

Auster evokes the sounds, smells, and tactile sensations that marked his early life-and the many images that came at him, including moving images (he adored cartoons, he was in love with films), until, at its unique climax, the book breaks away from prose into pure imagery: The final section of Report from the Interior recapitulates the first three parts, told in an album of pictures.

At once a story of the times and the story of the emerging consciousness of a renowned literary artist, this four-part work answers the challenge of autobiography in ways rarely, if ever, seen before.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Autobiography, American, Audiobook, The United States Of America

352 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2013

About the author

Paul Auster was the bestselling author of 4 3 2 1, Bloodbath Nation, Baumgartner, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature. Among his other honors are the Prix Médicis Étranger for Leviathan, the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke, and the Premio Napoli for Sunset Park. In 2012, he was the first recipient of the NYC Literary Honors in the category of fiction. He was also a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions), the PEN/Faulkner Award (The Music of Chance), the Edgar Award (City of Glass), and the Man Booker Prize (4 3 2 1). Auster was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He died at age seventy-seven in 2024.

Reviews

[Haytham ⚜️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

"هكذا كانت أولى أفكارك: بقايا من الماضي الذي عشته في داخلك كصبي. ولست تستطيع إلا تذكر جزء منه، أو قِطع وجذاذات منفصلة، أو ومضات عابرة تصطخب فجأةً كيفما اتفق لها فتحملك على تمييز ما غاب عنك، ولعلك لا تتذكر إلا ذكرى تذكر لاحق لما تظن أنه دار في خلدك في ذاك الزمان البعيد الذي فات بالنسبة إليك الآن".

كصديقه الكاتب الجنوب أفريقي "كويتزي"، يسرد لنا "أوستر" عالم وذكريات صباه وبدايات شبابه بصيغة المخاطب وكأنه يطالع شخصه من خارج جسده، ويطلعنا على طفولته وكيفية تشكلها، وتخبطه وأزماته في بداياته والسعي وراء الطريق الصحيح للبدء في الكتابة المحترفة كما يستعيدها ذهنه عام 2013. كذلك يلقي الضوء عن الكثير من تفاصيل طفولتنا وكيفية تكوينها بكل المحيط بنا من عوامل مساعدة ومؤثرة في تطورنا النفسي بجميع مراحله؛ من صعود وهبوط وآمال وخيبات إلخ؛ وحيث كان كتابه "حكاية الشتاء" يمثل سيرته الجسدية؛ فإن كتابنا هذا هو تمثيل لسيرته النفسية وبداية تكون وتشكل الكاتب الناجح فيما بعد وصاحب أكثر المبيعات. وهو هنا ينظر في داخله ويطلعنا عنه، ونرى كما هو معروف عنه أنه قد أمضى جُل حياته جالسًا وحيدًا وسيد عزلته.

"كل ما أراه حولي هو… التفاهة، والغباء، والنفاق… لذا أرى نفسي تزداد في قلة احتمالها أو تسامحها - ولذا حتى لا أسئ إلى أحد، أنسحب من المجتمع. إنني أبغض نفسي لما أراه منها من ما أشعر أنه انعدام صبر مع الآخرين، ومع هذا لا يمكنني فعل شئ بشأن هذا…".

ينقسم الكتاب إلى عدة مراحل في حياته: جزء الطفولة في أوله وتكوين الشخصية بكل ما يحيط به من عالم أمريكي في خمسينيات القرن العشرين، سينما وموسيقى ورياضة والحلم الأمريكي. ويخصص جزء كبير من الكتاب ويسهب في سرد سيناريوهات ومشاهد سينمائية أثرت فيه وتركت علامة قوية في نفسه. وجزء سفره لباريس ومحاولة البدء من هناك وما واجهه فيها من مواقف ومشاعر في شوارعها ومقاهيها.

"وقع المطر على الشوارع الضيقة في برد الصباح الباكر… يبدو أنه يُقرب كل شئ - يُقربنا بعضنا من بعض، ويقرب كل شئ مني… حتى الأصوات تكتسب سمة مختلفة. لقد توقف المطر الآن. ينتشر فراغ صغير للحظة في الجو - بل في أذني فعليًا… وفي ذهني".

وأما القسم الأخير من المذكرات فيتناول فيه الرسائل المتبادلة مع زوجته الأولى المستقبلية الكاتبة الشهيرة "ليديا ديڤيز" و سرده لأدق التفاصيل في نشاطه اليومي، حيث كانت تعيش سنة أكاديمية في لندن بعيدًا عنه في نهاية الستينيات، ويلاحظ حبه الشديد لها وتعلقه بها وكتابة كل صغيرة وكبيرة لها؛ ولكن يُلاحظ أو (كما استشفيت أنا) أنها كانت بعيدة عنه ولم تقابل حبه بحب جارف مثله، وهو ما أدى للطلاق فيما بعد. ملحق في آخر الكتاب ألبوم صور لها علاقة بالسرد، من الأحداث الأمريكية والعالمية والشخصيات العامة من رياضيين وسياسيين إلخ.

"بالنسبة لي، مشكلة العالم هي أولاً وقبل كل شئ مشكلة ذاتية، ولا يمكن تحقيق الحل إلا من خلال البدء من الداخل".

[Dagio_maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dentro-fuori

Nella corposa bibliografia di Paul Auster, i cosiddetti memoir occupano un posto significativo.

Come ne L'invenzione della solitudine, anche qui lo scrittore decide di adottare la terza persona come voce narrante.
Il suo è un evidente esercizio di distanziamento necessario a far affiorare i ricordi.

“Notizie dall’interno”, ultima opera (2013) di questo genere, è strutturato in tre parti.

La prima, e principale, intitolata “Due colpi alla testa”, è quella dove Auster fa un salto nel periodo dell’infanzia:
dalle prime percezioni (che ovviamente può solo immaginare) agli scombussolamenti dell’adolescenza.


”...esplorare la tua mente cosí com’è nei tuoi ricordi d’infanzia sarà senz’altro un compito piú difficile – forse impossibile. Eppure ti senti in dovere di provarci. Non perché ti reputi un oggetto di studio prezioso o fuori dal comune, ma proprio per l’esatto contrario, perché ti consideri uno come tanti, uno come tutti.”

Le delusioni di un bambino quando vede non collimare i margini dell’immaginazione con quelli della realtà;
la nascita della consapevolezza di sé e del senso di (in)giustizia; il bisogno di eroi...
Poi le grandi passioni: innanzitutto la lettura che si accompagna ai primi tentativi di scrittura; poi la musica, il cinema (Auster racconta completamente alcuni film che lo avevano colpito!), lo sport.
Poi ci sono le considerazioni sulla propria famiglia, sull’essere ebreo.

La seconda parte del libro (“Capsula del tempo”) è quasi fortuita, un corollario che lo scrittore aggiunge a libro terminato.
Sono riflessioni che si riferiscono ad alcune lettere che Auster scrisse alla ex moglie (la scrittrice Lydia Davis) ai tempi del loro fidanzamento e che ritrova dopo tanti anni.

La terza parte intitolata “Album” è propriamente una sezione visiva dove con immagini di vario genere, Auster ripercorre i punti salienti del suo racconto autobiografico.


Una lettura che ho apprezzato molto e, così come per “L’invenzione della solitudine”, mi sento di consigliare solo a chi già conosce ed stima Paul Auster .

Già dal titolo – che scimmiotta una testata giornalistica- si deduce che il resoconto è solo apparentemente esteriore.
Auster ci parla, in realtà, del suo sé interiore e per cogliere il discorso non si può essere digiuni della sua opera.
Non si può entrare "dentro" se non si arriva da "fuori"...


”Ancor oggi tieni fede a quel paradosso, a quel tentativo di catturare la strana duplicità dell’essere vivi, l’inesorabile unione di dentro e fuori che accompagna ogni nostro battito del cuore dalla nascita alla morte”

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had given up on Auster in recent years. The novels were becoming too repetitive in style and substance. (It pains me to say that, since I still think of The New York Trilogy all the time.) I picked this up when I saw it at the library for old times' sake and began it that day. The first two thirds are very good, and the middle third--where Auster describes two movies that affected him as a kid--is fantastic. Anyone who has ever been affected by a movie when he or she was a kid should read this section. He describes The Incredible Shrinking Man as if it were Citizen Kane, which is the whole idea--to a kid, this was like Citizen Kane. Granted, after that he tackles I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, a much better movie, but the intensity remains. In both cases, he reduces the films to their lowest terms, arguing through the urgency of his writing that their protagonists are Everyman figures. I've been watching the original episodes of The Fugitive recently and often find myself thinking of them in the manner Auster uses when he writes of his favorite films: A man is accused of a crime he did not commit. By a chance occurrence, he escapes and assumes a new identity. However, he soon learns that his cover as a bartender will be threatened by . . . etc. Reading this part of the book actually made me want to try to do the same thing with my favorite movies.

The last third, however, is a falling off. Auster presents a series of letters he wrote while a student at Columbia and their scope is very narrow. He comes across as a whining, self-important graduate student, wringing his hands about French translations. Perhaps that was the point--I was naive enough to think that poetry mattered while the Vietnam War was occurring--but it doesn't make for good reading. I wish he would do a whole book of film synopses.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Βαθμολογία: ★★★★

Ενάμιση χρόνο μετά το εμβληματικό «4 3 2 1», επιστρέφω στον κόσμο του Auster με τα τελευταία του απομνημονεύματα. Το «Report from the Interior», γραμμένο σε δεύτερο πρόσωπο, χωρίζεται σε τρία μέρη. Στο πρώτο ο συγγραφέας μάς αφηγείται αναμνήσεις του από την παιδική και εφηβική ηλικία. Στο δεύτερο, που ήταν και το αγαπημένο μου, αναλώνει δεκάδες σελίδες αναλύοντας με εκπληκτικό τρόπο δύο αγαπημένες του ταινίες, «The Incredible Shrinking Man» και «I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang». Στο τρίτο και τελευταίο μέρος, ο Auster μας δείχνει μερικά από τα γράμματα που έγραψε στην πρώτη του γυναίκα, Lydia Davis, όσο ήταν φοιτητής στη Νέα Υόρκη και το Παρίσι.

Θα έλεγα πως το βιβλίο αυτό δεν είναι μια οποιοδήποτε αυτοβιογραφία και δεν απευθύνεται σε όλους, γι' αυτό και η σχετικά χαμηλή του βαθμολογία στο goodreads. Είναι γραμμένο για αναγνώστες εξοικιωμένους με τη ζωή και το έργο του Paul Auster και ουσιαστικά συμπληρώνει το «Ημερολόγιο του χειμώνα», το οποίο και θα πρότεινα να διαβάσετε αντί του «Report from the Interior».

[Madeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

(This review was originally written for and posted at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography's site. The book was a present from my in-laws, who clearly did not give it to me in exchange for a review.)

I've not read anything by Paul Auster before, including his Winter Journal that's both a companion piece of sorts and predecessor to Report from the Interior. While the earlier work is an account of Auster's physical state, the title of this unconventional memoir is absolutely indicative of its inward focus, with the author examining himself through memories of childhood (the lens of recollection is, thankfully, not slathered with Vaseline), the movies of his adolescence that have left the deepest impressions, letters to the woman who would become his first wife written during their college years, and a photo album highlighting points of interest from the book's first quarter. While I imagine Auster's fans would derive the most enjoyment from observing this particular author's inner formation, Report from the Interior made for a warm (if not charmingly self-indulgent) introduction to the writer's style and personality.

One of the things that makes a memoir compelling enough to read about someone's else's life is the universality it brings to each memory, how a writer translates a personal experience into the language of ubiquitous milestones. Using the weirdly compelling second-person as his narrative vehicle for most of the book, Auster leads his readers through the awe of one's early years, winding his way from idyllic youth to adulthood's harsh realities, each childlike expectation derailed by adult-sized disappointment becoming a foothold in the uphill battle of dawning awareness. But as he learns that not all people are as trusting as he is or that even heroes are imperfect men, young Paul also inches closer to the person he'll become as the world of literature reveals its secrets with an ever-increasing generosity and as life itself becomes a richer place as he discovers things like dancing with girls, unsupervised days at the cinema and the nonstop rush of New York City.

While each mile marker between youth and maturity is Auster's alone, he zeroes in on the heart of the memory, locating the reason why that particular moment sticks out more vividly than others and addresses the relatable humanity of the moment. He recalls his boyhood idolization of Thomas Edison, the heady rush as degrees of separation dwindle between the two when he finds out his barber also cut Edison's hair and how his own father once worked in Edison's lab, and the acute despair of discovering that Edison himself fired his father for being Jewish: The players and details comprise Auster's own drama but the slap of cold realization that comes with a hero's irrevocable fall is familiar to all who've passed through that checkpoint on their ways to becoming jaded adults.

Auster shares a number of life lessons gleaned through firsthand experience, particularly those that impinge on his developing sense of justice, and the movies that have left the most striking impact on his formative years' memories were his first tastes of life being unfair on a grander scale. Two films (The Incredible Shrinking Man and I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang) receive special attention for how viscerally Auster's younger self responded to them: Both forced their young viewer to accept that sometimes the hits just keep coming, especially if, like the films' protagonists, one just happens to be an unfortunate victim of circumstance. In a book that relies largely on firsthand experiences, examining the effects movies can have on their audience and hinting at how entertainment like books and film can be an excellent supplement to one's emotional education, as illustrated by the palpable horror Auster felt on behalf of the characters he observed. Letting an observer live vicariously through a fictitiously upended life without suffering through actual consequences cultivates the kind of empathy that comes with living vicariously through a tormented character for the duration of their story.

The letters Auster wrote to his college sweetheart and first wife, writer and translator Lydia Davis, offered a glimpse of the writer as a young man in the cusp between collegiate freedom and adult responsibility, even if they are awash in a young writer's inability to resist the showiness of burgeoning talent and a wordsmith's experimentation with a medium he is on the brink of mastering, even mentioning how his parents won't address a pressing issue in letters because Auster has the advantage over them. But they're an honest time capsule that screams of uncertainty and potential colliding in that desire to experience everything with the exuberance only a university student can sustain.

I've found that one of the biggest appeals that memoirs hold for me is the assurance that other people--successful, decidedly functional people, no less--have experienced and felt things I always wondered if other people went through. Far beyond the general coming-of-age embarrassments and skin-thickening hurdles are those little moments that could either be personal quirks or things no one talks about for one reason or another. This is where writing in the second person best serves the readability of Auster's autobiographical tale, as it's almost comforting to realize that statements like "you would walk around in a state of stunned disassociation" (and a page later, "you have never completely outgrown this tendency to vanish from your own consciousness") and "once you were old enough to compare your situation to that of the other children you knew, you understood that your family was a broken family, that your parents had no idea what they were doing" offer a sense of comfort and belonging, knowing that this is a categorization of things that happened to someone else but feeling like that someone else is acknowledging that they happened to you, too.

Report from the Interior is a quite beautifully written attempt at reclaiming youth's lost relics through vivid recollections, a tribute to the fact that you can't predict what memories will stick around decades later or what details will define them, but that you can make sense of what they say about the individual by wrangling them into a written work.

[Eshraq · Rating 4 out of 5]

نباید ستاره‌ای میدادم، دستم خورد.
من این کتاب رو مثل یک زندگی خوندم.
ستاره نیاز نداره.

[Paul Gleason · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whereas Winter Journal is a fascinating and unexpected exploration into what it's like to have an American BODY in the second half of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first, Report from the Interior is a disorganized and half-baked foray into memoir as an exploration of ego. Auster annoyingly writes in the second person in an attempt to universalize experiences that many members of his generation have had over the past seven decades or so. In other words, he doesn't do anything original here. In fact, the book suffers because it reminds one of other, better Paul Auster memoirs, such as The Invention of Solitude and, yes, Winter Journal.

The latter succeeds because of its originality. It's a memoir that chronicles the breakdown of the human body (Beckett is a crucial Auster influence) in the context of recent American history (a history that includes many medical developments that preserve the body).

Interior is just straight-up memoir, divided into three parts. I won't ruin the book for those of you who want to read it by summarizing the parts because they're crucial to the structure and the meaning. (There's some postmodern trickery here that just doesn't work out). But let me say here that the three sections are so banal that said parenthetical trickery doesn't save the book.

Report from the Interior is undoubtedly one of Auster's weakest efforts.

[Oscar · Rating 3 out of 5]

La última novela de Paul Auster, ‘Informe del interior’, es un libro de memorias en el que el autor norteamericano repasa algunos de los hechos que incidieron en su infancia, adolescencia y primera juventud. Paul Auster, en segunda persona, habla con el niño que fue, rescatando los momentos más divertidos, pero también los más dramáticos. De esta manera, asistimos a un ejercicio de honestidad por parte del escritor, que intenta desentrañar aquellos años, aderezados de pensamientos y conflictos interiores. Paul Auster nos habla de su religión, de la idea de ser judío, de sus padres, de libros, de sus lecturas, de su pasión por el cine, de sus primeros intentos de convertirse en poeta, en escritor, de su primera mujer.

El libro está dividido en cuatro partes, todas ellas formadas de párrafos, como las partes de un puzzle que hay que completar. En la primera sabemos de la infancia de Auster, de sus recuerdos más lejanos, de sus primeros juegos, libros y películas. En la segunda parte, Auster reflexiona sobre dos películas que le impactaron especialmente, El increíble hombre menguante (1957) y Soy un fugitivo (1932), las cuáles desgrana pormenorizadamente. La tercera parte del libro está compuesta sobre todo por fragmentos de la correspondencia que Auster mantuvo con Lydia Davis, su primera esposa, donde se transmite el estado anímico del escritor, su melancolía y soledad, así como sus primeros escarceos con el arte de la creación. Y por último, en la cuarta parte, nos encontramos con un álbum fotográfico que sirve de complemento a las otras tres.

‘Informe del interior’ es un libro muy bien escrito, más unas memorias que una biografía novelada, como sucedía en ‘A salto de mata’ y ‘Diario de invierno’, pero que parece pasar por encima de los hechos, sin abundar en excesivos detalles y reflexiones. Me quedo con las dos primeras partes, que son las que más he disfrutado.

[Will Walton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upon finishing REPORT FROM THE INTERIOR, I said to my friend, "This is a strange, interesting book." I stand by that remark; Auster's newest memoir is definitely unusual. But above all things it is beautiful.

I was captivated by Auster's odd mixtape of memories, his blunt honesty, his tenderness. His recollections of past anxieties, especially in passages recalling his early twenties, resonated with me (sometimes scarily - that was part of this memoir's effect). But INTERIOR is also incredibly comforting. Whether by describing his two favorite films in charming detail or deconstructing his experience with first love, Auster stokes flames of wonder at each turn. It is often as though he is re-living each new experience all over again... And, to some extent, re-learning from each as well.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This sequel to Winter Journal came out a year later. Again, the autobiographical rendering features second-person narration and a fragmentary style. I had a ‘been there, done that’ feeling about the book and only gave it a quick skim. It might be one to try another time.

In the first 100-page section Auster highlights key moments from the inner life of a child. For instance, he remembers that the epiphany that a writer can inhabit another mind came while reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s poetry, and he emulated RLS in his own first poetic attempts. The history and pop culture of the 1950s, understanding that he was Jewish, and reaping the creative rewards of boredom are other themes. I especially liked a final anecdote about smashing his seventh-grade teacher’s reading challenge and being driven to tears when the man disbelieved that he’d read so many books and accused him of cheating.

Other sections give long commentary on two films (something he also does in Winter Journal with 10 pages on the 1950 film D.O.A.), select from letters he wrote to his first wife in the late 1960s while living in Paris, and collect an album of black-and-white period images such as ads, film stills and newspaper photographs. There’s a strong nostalgia element, such that the memoir would appeal to Auster’s contemporaries and those interested in learning about growing up in the 1950s.

Ultimately, though, this feels unnecessary after Winter Journal. Auster repeats a circular aphorism he wrote at age 20: “The world is in my head. My body is in the world. You will stand by that paradox, which was an attempt to capture the strange doubleness of being alive, the inexorable union of inner and outer”. But I’m not sure that body and mind can be so tidily separated as these two works posit. I got more of an overall sense of Auster’s character from the previous book, even though it was ostensibly focused on his physical existence.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Andrew]

Despite the fact that I didn't much care for Winter Journal or the second half of The Invention of Solitude, I found myself remarkably charmed by Report from the Interior (except the letters at the end, those felt kinda tacked on). You see how the boy slowly turns into the man, and it's as affecting a portrait as any. Special bonus points for his scene-by-scene description of a cheesy '50s sci-fi flick, The Incredible Shrinking Man, which is told with the sort of deep reverence only a 10-12 year old child can have for a cheesy film... and all I could think of was my own embarrassingly enthusiastic point-by-point retellings in the cafeteria of Entrapment with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones around the same age.

[Rod · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is rare for me. Most Auster books I've read (and I've read most Auster books) would get 3 stars or above. (Many would rate 4 stars.) So I was ready to love this, in it's Audible edition with Auster reading...but, it was fragmented and sometimes felt pointless. I really liked Winter Journal--this is meant to be a companion volume to that--but this didn't hold together as well from my perspective. The movie summaries were entertaining; the initial chapter, charting a young boy's thoughts and perceptions, were wonderful; but it quickly grew self-indulgent and rambling. The discovery of letters to his first wife, Lydia Davis, was, no doubt, important to Auster...not so much to the rest of us. In summation: read Paul Auster's novels! Let this one go.

[Ana-Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Report from the Interior by Paul Auster (2013)

One year later, after publishing his Winter Journal, at the age of 64, Auster continues his exploration of his childhood and college period in this book that keeps the style used in the Winter Journal (second person account that creates a kind of complicitness with the reader and a sort of external projection of a character that used to be Auster but it is not entirely him at this stage).

Simply finding again this voice and this style was a real pleasure to me. This was another immersive experience, a seamless connection with the flow of words and the voice of the author, where one is not that preoccupied with separating fact from fiction but rather enjoys seeing how mundane experiences ( a movie, a book, a word, a game) create from a child, an adolescent and later a young, cocky man, intelligent, full of sexual energy, but still raw and unfinished.

If I were to compare the two journals, I would say that Winter Journal is far more complex since it covers his entire life, and it also dissects the intersection of life with time, living and being lived, and the confrontation with loss and death. This second autobiographical work is more luminous and somehow more conventional than the Winter Journal, but nevertheless an enchanting experience to read.

[Barbaraw - su anobii aussi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Non voglio ripetermi

Potrei riscrivere esattamente la stessa recensione che per "diario d'inverno"; ma, contrariamente a Paul Auster, non voglio ripetermi!

[Martin Raybould · Rating 2 out of 5]

Part one (Report From The Interior) is an interesting attempt to recall Auster's life in the U.S. up to the age of 12 - as fascinating for what is forgotten than for what is remembered. The second part (Two Blows To The Head) consists of detailed descriptions of two movies that made a big impact on him as an adolescent - The Incredible Shrinking Man + I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang. At this point I might have given the book 3 or 4 stars but the tiresome & self indulgent third section (Time Capsule) ruins it. He quotes at length from a batch of rediscovered letters sent to him by his ex-wife documenting his life as a struggling writer that are repetitive and tiresome with only a rudimentary attempt to put the rambling prose into a broader context. The fourth section is an collection of images that relate to the opening part. This book should have been published as a slim 100 page book with related images.

[Cocodras · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me ha encantado. Descubrí a Auster hace tan sólo tres o cuatro años, pero es un autor que me encanta. Su estilo es sencillo, pero fascinante y su Informe del interior no podía ser diferente. Nos cuenta su infancia como creo que todos recordamos la nuestra, a gotitas. Quizás la parte que menos me ha gustado... no, no puedo decir que no me haya gustado, pero cuando cuenta detalladamente las películas (El increíble hombre menguante y Soy un fugitivo) sentí que el ritmo que tenía hasta entonces la narración quedaba suspendido. Hasta que vuelve a contar su vida a través de las cartas a su novia.

Me sentí muy identificada. Supongo que lo que sienten los niños es universal aunque cada uno crea que es diferente a los demás. Y la última parte, la de las cartas, me hizo recordar todas las cartas que escribí cuando tenía la edad de Auster cuando las escribió. Me quedo con la misma sensación que otras veces al terminar un libro suyo: leer más.

[Mali Hz · Rating 4 out of 5]

یک اتوبیوگرافی. پل استر نویسنده مورد علاقه ی منه و سبک نوشتارش و کلن میپسندم و این کتاب هم مستثنی نیست. توی این کتاب احساسات و طرز فکرش و از دوره کودکی تا اوج جوانی شرح داده با عبارات و توصیف های زیبا که برای من خوندنش خالی از لطف نبود
"نخست همه چیز زنده بود. کوچکترین اشیا قلب تپنده داشتند. قیچی ها راه میرفتند، تلفن ها و کتری ها پسر عمو بودند و چشم ها و عینک ها برادر..."

[Liz Pardey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Auster was trying to be post-modern, experimental. He has previously written a straightforward memoir of his physical life -- I haven't read it yet though I intend to. Report is his attempt to separate his inner self from his physical self and I'm afraid he seems to have failed. There is no way to document a life from the inside. He has to dip into the world around him and since we are all products of our environment, this would seem to be unavoidable.
I found it a disconcerting effort. He writes as an observer -

You can't remember the precise moment when you understood that you were a Jew. It seems to you that it came sometime after you were old enough to identify yourself as an American.

Is he sitting on his own forehead with a stethoscope pressed to his own scalp detecting thoughts? He also says he is trying to avoid the physical parts of his life. However that seems to be almost impossible. The most annoying part is the way he will give a bit of information but ignore it. For instance his parents divorced. Why? When? He also says he won't go beyond the age of 12 but he devotes about a third of the text to (1) extensive exposition and critique of two movies (2) letters he wrote as a university student to his future wife. The last section of the book is a collection of personal photographs and posters. They are intended to complement the text but I think it would have been much more effective if they ran simultaneously or were referenced. By the time I was done reading I wasn't much interested in looking at his scrapbook.
I actually found him to be self-obsessed and rather unpleasant as a young man; since he is quoting his letters he goes into first person. Once or twice to thoroughly confuse his readers he observes on his letter-writing self in second person.
.

[César Iván · Rating 4 out of 5]

Siempre he pensado en Auster como en un gran fabulador, aquellos que logran hacer grandes novelas sin la necesidad de que éstas se vuelvan una trampa del lenguaje, el rumor de la poesía vacío de acción. Las novelas de Auster siempre se mueven, suelen sorprender, hacernos preguntar por los por qués, pero no siempre por los cómos.
En este informe, lo primero que uno puede destacar es que Auster es uno de los grandes prosistas estadounidenses. La primera parte del libro es de una belleza demoledora pero atractiva. Ah, claro que uno no cree que un hombre adulto recuerde tantas cosas de su infancia, y menos tan vívidas, pero leyendo la fuerza de las palabras, decido creer.
La segunda parte, bueno, nos lleva al cine (este libro es, en gran medida, un buen complemento de las otras dos novelas que me leí de Auster antes, y no lo hice pensando en eso): nos cuenta, con gran lujo de detalles dos películas que son importantes para él. No mucho que comentar.
La tercera parte fue mi favorita. Creo que lo fue por el chisme. Lydia Davis, su ex-esposa, le envía una serie de cartas. Ahí encontramos al Auster joven y aventurero, un muchacho arrogante que termina por caer mal, como todo adolescente edgy de la literatura (te estoy viendo, Holden). Además, uff, esa última carta en la que le cuenta a su en ese momento saliente, Davis, que se acostó de la nada con otra chica, es oro puro. Cinismo y despreocupación.
Chisme y buena prosa: poco más se le puede pedir a un libro de memorias.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Paul Auster's memoir, Report from the Interior, is cluttered with the odd realities that plagued a boy born in the mid-1940s and hung around through his dismal days at Columbia University in the late-1960s.

The first part, focusing on his New Jersey youth, age 1 to 12, is a conventional account of a bright, thoughtful, athletic boy living with parents who barely speak to one another. The setting is the suburbs. The singular moment of revelation comes with his recognition that he is a Jew, Jews are different, and Jews suffered the Holocaust. His non-practicing parents decide, however, that he should go through a bar mitzvah. Well, he does, but this is an unenlightening, grueling process and takes precious time away from pick-up baseball, which he adores. Compared to some of the memories Philip Roth has shared of life as a Jewish boy in the New Jersey, there's little here of interest. One of Auster's virtues when he writes fiction--his flat aesthetic--doesn't serve him well.

Things get worse because Auster becomes an adolescent. Naturally, there is some investigation into and beyond the underwear, both his own and girls'. That's sort of okay. What's not okay is the decision Auster makes to recapitulate in excruciating detail the plots of two movies that apparently made a lasting impression on him. These are The Incredible Shrinking Man and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, which he describes as two cinematic earthquakes in his life. But Auster doesn't really analyze his reactions to these movies, i.e., how they moved his aesthetic and moral needles. And they are not B movies; they are more like C or D movies. I suppose we are to take from his extended synopses that if you want to know Paul Auster, you need to know these movies, but again, it would be better if he clarified the connection.

Oh, no, Auster then becomes a college student, a period for which he has no written records, no journals, no apprentice fictions or screenplays, until, alas, his first wife informs him that she has a lot of his letters to her when they were undergraduates. Does he want them? Yes, he wants them, and yes, he uses them to illustrate how self-deprecating, self-absorbed, self-dramatizing, self-criticizing, pompous, lonely, lost, well-read, preachy, and angst-ridden he was when he wasn't near his first wife (then his first major girlfriend) and had to write her the kinds of letters that we all wrote when we were that age and none of us except Auster wants to reread, much less publish in a book. Ye Gods, it's painful to be so smug, so inept, so naive, so miserable. Why put yourself through it again?

The one thing I can say for this last prose section of the book is that it does reveal Auster as a young man with lots of raw talent as a writer. That he would finally transform himself into an accomplished novelist definitely seems possible.

The last section of the book is an album of photos and illustrations connected to earlier elements of the text. It's black and white and pretty humdrum from the Lone Ranger through A-bomb testing to the Columbia uprising against Vietnam when Auster was an undergraduate.

In comparison to his other memoir, Winter Journal, Report from the Interior falls kind of flat. There's too little here that illuminates the inner development of the artist; Auster doesn't seem to have a ladder on which to climb that would enable to really look down on himself and contextualize himself acutely.

[Mehrsa · Rating 1 out of 5]

پارسال کتاب سفر در اتاق تحریر پل استر رو خوندم و خب، خیلی بهم نچسبید و نتونستم باهاش ارتباط برقرار کنم. گفتم شاید چون کتاب اولیه که ازش می‌خونم. این دفعه رفتم سراغ این کتاب و واااااقعا به‌زور خودمو رسوندم صفحات آخر کتاب!!!!
جملات و متن کتاب به شدت یخ و سرد و زندگی‌نامه‌ای بود که جزء جزء همه‌چی رو تعریف می‌کرد و همین باعث کلافگی مخاطب (من) می‌شه!
فکر کن دوتا فیلم رو، از اول تاآخر، با جزئیات تو کتاب تعریف کرد!!!!!🤦🏻‍♀️
خلاصه که من دوسش نداشتم و اصلااا پیشنهادش نمی‌کنم!

[molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a strange and captivating memoir. It can be divided in two parts, really, the first being a brief trip through Auster's earliest memories, a piecemeal and seemingly dreamlike wandering through his early formative impressions, which range from cartoon shows to Nazi Germany. It invites the reader to do the same- to collect the flashes of memory that are all that we have left of our early years and wonder why these are the moments we are left with. I remember certain hours, certain sentences people spoke to me with a clarity that is clarion clear, but somehow puzzlingly detached, as if they happened in a past life or to a different person. Which is really what Auster is talking about in this book. The dialogue we have with our past selves, that person who is now a stranger, but somehow still looking out from your same eyes.

The second half feels like an entirely different book. It consists of a series of old letters he wrote that Auster's ex-wife had recently sent to him, and as I remember they span his late teens and early twenties. Auster is tempestuous and idealistic and emotional in his letters, raw in a way that I think we forget as we grow older and more complacent in who we are. Auster appears disconcerted at the person writing this letter, this stranger that is his earlier self. It made me glad that I never threw away my old journals in one of my periodic fits of minimalism. It is astonishing how soundlessly we can glide through the years.

I really loved this, will need to read more Auster.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange, uneven little piece that I nevertheless enjoyed reading. It feels more like a sketch, what with the sudden jump from boyhood-in-second-person to the epistolary university years, but somehow, reading about his French days, depressed and sick and poor, are evocative rather than boring (not something I can say about most musings of university students, my former know-it-all/impassioned self included). Auster has always been rather navel-gazey and pretentious (can you name another writer that has become famous for mostly writing memoirs?) but still, strangely, beautifully relatable.

[Felipe · Rating 1 out of 5]

No one, but auster can get a publisher to publish a so called book made of two over detailed old movie reviews and a bunch of narcicistic letters... B-O-R-I-N-G!

[Mis Lecturas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Report from the interior se anuncia como libro hermano de Winter Journal, una de las memorias más singulares que haya leído. Winter está escrito desde el punto de vista de lo físico y todas las sensaciones que el cuerpo le había entregado a su autor a lo largo de los años (Auster tenía más de 60 años cuando lo escribió). Winter Journal es una verdadera joya.
Por desgracia, Report no logra generar algo similar, lo que es irónico puesto que este libro tiene la intención de dar un recorrido similar de la vida del autor pero desde el punto de vista de la mente, los recuerdos. La primera parte es sin duda la más lograda, donde Auster efectivamente recuerda y describe su niñez con los retazos que logra rescatar y que usa para describir su vida familiar y su interior de aquella época. Pero la segunda parte (Los dos golpes en la cabeza) describen (con MUCHO detalle) dos películas que lo marcaron profundamente. Son páginas y páginas de una descripción que no desemboca en un análisis profundo de las sensaciones que le dejaron los films. La tercera parte está casi por completo basada en las cartas que le escribió entre los 19 y los 21 años a su futura esposa, y de nuevo, aunque las cartas aparecen impresas casi en su totalidad, existe poca mención retrospectiva de lo que el autor estaba viviendo en ese momento (muchas veces, las cartas son juegos de palabras o largas peroratas acerca de la situación de EEUU y en especial de Nueva York en medio de la guerra de Vietnam), pero si la idea era que el lector formara opinión propia solo leyendo las cartas, cuesta. Se necesita una mayor guía para desenterrar los significados ocultos entre tanta línea.
Si en todo el texto se ven situaciones que después Auster ocupó en sus novelas (4321, por ejemplo) y se hace mención a otros libros del mismo autor que podrían dar una mejor idea de una vida muy interesante en su soledad y la absoluta convicción de haber sabido siempre que la escritura era lo suyo.

[erik moreno]

aburridísimo al menos hasta «cápsula del tiempo», que es más de la mitad del libro, donde (muy a mi pesar) escribe sobre la correspondencia que Auster-joven envío a Davis-joven, y que Davis-vieja volvió a enviar (en fotocopias, antes de entregarlo a Columbia University Libraries) a Auster-viejo mientras escribía esta segunda parte de su autobiografía

[Kimia almasi · Rating 4 out of 5]

این روزا فقط میخوام کتاب بخونم. فقط این برام مهمه چلنج امسال کتاب خودندمو اوکی کنم.
چرا؟ چون همه چی ریده...
و پل استر عزیزم، با چشمان درخشانش، شروع خوبی بود برای این امیدواری. خوندم که پل سرطان داره.
و منم میخوام براش بخونم: ای پل عزیزم، بمن نگو مریضم، کیمی تو رو دوس داره، انتظار بوس داره.

[Antonio Lombardi · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpwqSq6noG1/
https://lecosmicronache.com/2018/11/0...

[Nico Ivaldi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rilettura

[Khulod A Razak · Rating 3 out of 5]

تقريبا نفس سوالفه ب رواية ١٢٣٤ الجزء الي تكلم بيه عن الفلمين حلو اما طريقته بالتحدث باسلوب المخاطب ماعجبتني