Siri Hustvedt and Norman Finkelstein explore the many manifestations of haunting in Paul Auster's body of work. From the beginning to the end of his career, Auster wrote constantly about the uncanny – ghosts, doubles, disappearances and frightening returns permeate his works as a recurring thread. His fascination with writers such as Poe and Hawthorne deeply shapes his fiction.
Hustvedt's book Ghost Stories unfolds these haunting themes across a range of Auster's major works: the first part of The Invention of Solitude about his father's death, the novel Ghosts, The New York Trilogy and his many grieving characters. The theme of grief serves as catalyst for narrative – as in Baumgartner, which explores the nature of sorrow. The argument is simple yet profound: books are ghosts, a particular technology for encapsulating both presence and absence – the presence of absence in grief, which is what ghosts are fundamentally about.
Admission: 165 kr
Location: University Library, library building at Fiolstræde
