Waiting for Auster

A couple of weeks ago I attended an interview/discussion with Paul Auster. I am not sure what it was that drove me to take a four-hour flight just to be a witness -one of many- of a public conversation. I have read all his works, i have seen the movies he wrote and/or co-directed, i have listened to many interviews he has given, and yet, i went to the trouble of taking time off from work, catching a plane and standing in line to be admitted into the crowded auditorium. His place on the stage was indicated by a simple sign that said -very simply and plainly- "Paul Auster". I sat in the crowd. I had no sign to indicate my presence other than the fact that i was there. That's what i knew to be true.

I arrived a day late. If i had taken the morning flight the day before, as opposed to the red-eye flight that saved me some time and money, i would have met Paul Auster in person. Maybe we could have exchanged a few words, maybe we would have had a profound conversation, maybe we could have elaborated on stories, narratives of the reader and the writer, where trajectories intersect at moments of empathy. Or maybe not. I arrived in good time to find a seat in the fourth row of the auditorium. It was the closest i could get to Paul Auster as a physical being. Was i really hoping to feel the physical proximity? Was i expecting it to have an effect on me? Incur some mental transformation or some epiphanic experience? No. Before getting on the plane, i had called home to say goodbye (a precaution of some sort, a pre-emptive gesture of the umentionable possibility of  perishing mid-air) and my husband said "enjoy the presentation; ask him a lot of questions". But i had no questions for Paul Auster; i never had any questions for Paul Auster. My students have many questions, questions of the work they study, "The New York Trilogy". But like the wise imperfect human beings that they are, they never seek to question Paul Auster, the man on the cover of the book, the one that put the words together, the auteur, the master-builder. They question the world in the work, they question their assumptions, they probe into what they feel and perceive, but they too have no questions for Paul Auster.

One can construct thousands of questions about deconstructing the work, identifying the references to the genre of the American novel, the intetextuality in the works, the geography of identity, the search for the self, the subtle Beckettian twists. One can proceed to dismantle the architecture of the characters' (or the author's) discontent, search for instances of cosmic rhyming, observe the mechanics of reality as it is exposed in a storyline that turns upon itself. One can interrogate the goose that laid the golden egg. Where did it come from and how can we get our hands on it, how can we make it ours, ours, ours, and keep it forever? How can we possess the work, a piece of the author, a sliver of his inspiration, a fragment of his existence? I sat there quietly and waited for the Q&A to finish. This is the man who created a world i inhabit. One of many worlds i inhabit as a reader, but the one that i have come to wish to inhabit. A world that i enter effortlessly and without shame or self-consciousness. Is it the humility and humanity of that world and its creator that grant me license to call it my own? Is it some invisible algorithm that led me to the entrance of this world? And is this something i would need to know and understand?

"Maybe after the book signing we can get you to meet him" my friend, John, his agent, said to me. And i started waiting for Paul Auster. We had dinner, a bottle of wine, and i waited. We walked by the restaurant where he was having dinner with the publishers. We went back to his hotel and canceled the message we had left for him. I waited. As i was secretly hoping for the cosmic rhyme that would have Paul Auster bumping into us outside the restaurant, or the hotel, i was also thinking that this would have been too trivial, too obvious, too mundane. John was torn. We got into the car and started on our way home. On the way we kept deliberating whether we should go back. John felt he hadn't kept his promise that i would get to meet the author; maybe shake the hand of the duck after enjoying the foie gras? This is not how cosmic rhyming works. One cannot invent the mechanics of reality for oneself or for others. Some are waiting for the barbarians. Some are waiting for Godot. I am waiting for Auster.

What about the Good Stuff?

The life of man is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" but this does not entail that good things do not happen. However, the worst thing that could happen to us and maybe Hobbes did not anticipate it was the additional time famine from which we are suffering today. I have not blogged for a while; teaching, examining, mentoring, parenting and studying have left me with no time to blog. Not much time to make a note of the good things happening, despite the fact that life IS nasty, brutish and short for a great number, if not all, human beings. It is a sad state of affairs when you do not make a note of the good things. To train myself to do this, i have divided my to-do list in four parts. Important Stuff, Good Stuff, Boring Stuff and Very Boring Stuff. (My friend, LS, suggested we add another section, Daunting Stuff. I am considering collapsing Boring and Very Boring or Important and Good, to allow for a neat division of the page in four parts. I am not sure when i will reach a decision, as i am debating whether the Important Stuff is necessarily Good or the Good Stuff necessarily Important. Issues of definition, perception and experience are standing in the way of groundbreaking developments in the area of to-do-list-making, but Daunting will definitely be there.)

So here is my confession: my Good Stuff list since the last time i blogged. I hope i am forgiven.

1. My Year 1 students had an interactive oral session on Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto that made the room come alive with ideas and possibilities. The concept of the three-star question that i picked up from Erica McWilliam challenged them to higher levels of probing into the text and understanding its ambiguities. LS was there to witness it all and that made the experience even more precious, for the students who felt appreciated and worth observing, and for me, navigating my way in the new course (with so many others in the sidelines of the OCC forum) looking for good practice and improved student performance.

2. My lovely boarding student, S, prefaced this stimulating event with an equally stimulating and very enlightening presentation on Japanese culture. Might i add that she took the time to read the book in both languages before addressing my students? (No category exists for these experiences and the eagerness with which she picked up the phone to call her mother in Japan and ask her to send us a copy of the original).

2. The final draft of the second assignment for the online course was turned in on time. The design of a learning network for IB teachers with a focus on their professional development by creating a learning environment and a learning space for them has been completed. (Surprisingly, despite being famished for time, i did manage to spend a couple of days on JSTOR and other databases researching... ) Yes, the idea of a space where teachers can share what we know, learn more, share ideas, connect ourselves to individuals, professional communities and learning organizations is Good Stuff.

3. Quality time with the librarian=balm for the soul. Our lovely librarian had a little project prepared for World Book Day and i gave her a hand setting it up. (If she were to allow coffee drinking in the library i would seriously consider moving in there.) Her idea brought together book suggestions by members of staff and the outcome was an interesting list of books from around the world, dated from 200BC to 2012, books that can make one cry or laugh, books that have changed our lives. On that day i read an excerpt at school assembly from a book that i had chosen, viz. Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy, and our librarian tells me that students did ask her about it later. Several approached me asking for the title and the author again. This is Really Good Stuff.

4. Exams are approaching. We are all in one piece and getting there. This year i find myself in both camps. I will be examining and invigilating, but also sitting exams next month on the same day as our Economics and Biology IB students, in another venue and for another purpose. In solidarity with our IB students who are studying i moved my reading 'corner' outside. Where the sun is shining.

On another level

Last Friday my HL students took the analysis to a whole new level when discussing Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy. They navigated effortlessly in the identity mazes of the book and followed the characters around in the streets of New York. The predicament of the author did not seem like an unfamiliar topic to them. In fact, one of them said that this, i.e. The New York Trilogy, is their kind of book. Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia was also voted as their kind of book. The book that got the most rotten tomatoes was Virgina Woolf's A Room of One's Own. The discussion that was triggered by (only) three open-ended questions; identity, chance and spaces, gave me a lot to think about. It is possible that The New York Trilogy is 'their kind of work' because they can relate to the proximity/exclusion contradiction of the cityscape. Unlike A Room of One's Own that focuses on an argument very much obsolete to them (whether i can prove to them that in reality it may be far from obsolete is another story). I did not find it surprising that two of the novels they described as 'theirs' are concerned with the individual's identity albeit from very different perspectives and in very different settings. What struck me as surprising is the ease with which they discussed concepts such as author's experience of writing, his/her intentionality and his/her death. In fact, most of them seemed to have a formed opinion about these. When did this happen? Ideally, i would like to give myself credit for such a development, but i can't. Because it did not happen in my classroom. What happened in my classroom was that i witnessed the demise of Virginia Woolf, an authority on authorship. My students reacted to this kind of authority; instead, they responded to Auster in a way that included their experience of the new authorship, observer and observed at the same time, emerging from the new media, validating each one of us as a creator of personae.
This took place on Friday. That same evening an SL student posted the sign in the picture on her window across the alley from my house: "Is English tomorrow HL only?" Yes, we would continue our discussion of The New York Trilogy and i am sure she felt as much gratitude for the free periods as i did for her being thoughtful and sending me a window message instead of knocking on my door. On Saturday morning, however, the students seemed to have run out of profound and significant comments. I am sure Auster would understand why that was so.