Paul Auster's Ghost Writers

Paul Auster has written of ghosts and writers since his first major work, The Invention of Solitude, where he wrote of the dead father and of the writer son. His works, however, are not about writers and ghosts, but about writers as ghosts.

Auster’s writers haunt two locations, the city and the room, uncanny places. Alone in labyrinthine cities, Auster’s characters tend to lose themselves unless they follow others, shadowing their subjects in a doubling which is, initially, a reading of the other’s passage, but then, inevitably, a re-writing of a path which is their own. As Derrida describes in “Perjuries” (speaking of trying to be faithful to those writers he follows like an acolyte), writing about, or for, another person, ghost writing so to speak, means an inevitable betrayal. But what does this mean for those who follow in mourning, as Auster’s characters do? Alone in the room, as in their lives, Auster’s characters give themselves over to the text, and become ghosts writing, uncannily undead or buried alive.

This essay analyses the significance of ghostly writing, taking place in cities and rooms, as a recurring theme in Auster’s work, arguing that, through this, Auster theorises on the nature of reading and writing as ethical practices related to the past, to mourning, to betrayal, and responsibility.