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3 - Paul Auster’s Ordinary Life and Yours
from PART I - Singularising and Sharing
Sandrine Sorlin, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier
Book:

The Stylistics of ‘You'

Published online:

06 January 2022

Print publication:

13 January 2022, pp 57-80
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Summary

Chapter 3 focuses on Paul Auster’s autobiographical diptych (Winter Journal (2012) and Report from the Interior (2013)) which are both entirely written in the second-person pronoun. It demonstrates why the pronoun is particularly fitting a choice in the general economy of life writing and memory gathering of Auster’s enterprise. The second-person pronoun is also shown to be instrumental in the interpersonal connection Auster is ethically constructing with his readers, making his own personal experience somehow shareable. ‘You’ positions the reader in a most singular way in the intrapersonal dialogue Auster is having with himself, placing her close to his deictic centre, as a sort of co-habitant of his mental space. The American author’s autobiographical works most unusually written in a doubly subjective ‘you’ indeed pragmatically invites the reader to meet him half way via the ethical vector that the second person represents.