Winter Journal

Written by Paul Auster

Narrated by Paul Auster

From the bestselling novelist and author of The Invention of Solitude, a moving and highly personal meditation on the body, time, and language itself

"That is where the story begins, in your body, and everything will end in the body as well.

Facing his sixty-third winter, internationally acclaimed novelist Paul Auster sits down to write a history of his body and its sensations—both pleasurable and painful.

Thirty years after the publication of The Invention of Solitude, in which he wrote so movingly about fatherhood, Auster gives us a second unconventional memoir in which he writes about his mother's life and death. Winter Journal is a highly personal meditation on the body, time, and memory, by one of our most intellectually elegant writers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Aug 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781427225771

Paul Auster

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Oracle Night, The Book of Illusions, and Timbuktu. I Thought My Father Was God, the NPR National Story Project anthology, which he edited, was also a national bestseller. His work has been translated into thirty languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews for Winter Journal

[Fusun Dereli · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved it. I have teardrops in my eyes as the book ended. Thank you Paul Auster, and thank you MacMillan Audio for making this audiobook possible. It is wonderful to hear it from the author's voice. The feeling I have left is Paul Auster, the narrator is anyone, all of us. Just like he says in the beginning of the book, "'You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else". And when the book finishes, you know by heart that the narrator whose bare feet touches the bedroom floor as he walks to the window is your father, your mother, you, your friend, your husband, your daughter, your neighbour, anyone. A very universally humane feeling is conveyed from a very personal story.

[jeannine504 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Paul Auster's books take me to unfamiliar places of the mind yet usually leave me unsatisfied and slightly puzzled. I like the way "Winter Journal" is organized and can tolerate the "you", but the 2nd person distanced my feelings rather than embodying them.

The long lists of bodily sensations lack the luster of the lyrical descriptions to be found in David Mitchell's "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet". See Whitaker's masterful review of that book for a detailed analysis.

Best line is a quote from T. L.Eliot, who held up his hand in front of a woman who had asked to shake it and asked her "Madam, do you know where this hand has been?" Oh, the images.

[bibleblaster · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Loving his novels, I thought this slim memoir might be "spare fare" from Paul Auster, but I was (once again) completely taken with the world he creates. He manages the second person narration with skill and delves deep into himself without seeming deeply self-indulgent. Glad to see there's a companion volume coming out next Fall. There's a reason that I've read 15 other Auster books...I'd be happy to read 15 more.

[eye_gee-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great audio book, read by the author. An interesting memoir, told in the 2nd person. Don't let this put you off. It its easy to adjust to and has the added benefit of pointing out many of the similarities all our lives share.

[writemoves · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellently written memoir of the author, who is 64, reviewing his regrets, experiences and dreams from youth to "old age." Some great wisdom for Baby Boomers approaching the "winter" of their lives. "How many mornings are left?"

[hemlokgang · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Auster's second memoir was interesting, if a bit weird. Who writes a memoir in second person? I am sure, knowing the profound nature of his novels, that Auster has a reason, but it was distracting to me. Frankly, the last third was the most interesting. Auster compares writing to dance, and both of them to expressions of the heart rhythm. Love that part of it! Auster is one of my favorite authors, but this fell short of my expectations.

[yougotamber · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Winter Journal is Paul Auster revealing himself. He swoops down into the darkest (and lightest) bits of him and PRESTO we have the inner workings of an excellent artistic writer. I decided to audio book this because Auster reads the book himself, giving you the perfect tone and inflection. The "journal" is done in second person which pulls you right into his life. He sets the mood for each setting so well, I could close my eyes and imagine I was right in the middle of his life. I feel like I should have more to say about this book (especially since it has now become a "favorite")but I think you'll have to read it yourself to experience the magic it holds. However, I do recommend listening to it on audio if you have the option.

[opinionated_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In which Paul Auster demonstrates that, at 64, he is totally in control of his craft. A masterly, and engrossing account of what should be quite personal material not necessarily interesting to anyone outside his family. I found it hard to put down. This is an non linear memoir, not quite autobiography, but more his memories of significant parts of his life. The section where he describes every address he's ever lived at, is particularly moving. As are the recollections of his mother who sounds like an enormous influence (his father, not so much). There is a lot of honestly in there as well, although whether some of the people mentioned, such as his first wife, would necessarily appreciate that honesty, is another matter. Auster's fiction has not been as sharp, at least for me, as when at is peak (which for me is about 10 years ago at the time of The Brooklyn Follies, The Book of Illusions and Oracle Night). Perhaps he will never write outstanding fiction again. But as an autobiographer he's outstanding. I shall now go and buy the companion volume, Notes From The Interior

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Paul Auster's Winter journal is more like a note-book than a journal. In the book, author writes that he began this journal when he was 64 years old. The Winter journal is neither chronological, nor does it have dated entries.The Winter journal is a contemplative autobiography. Auster goes over his life, step by step, creating lists of, for example, all the addresses he has lived at, all illnesses he had and all near-misses with death. The book is a bit morbid in the sense that it contemplates life as much as it contemplates death. It is a modern memento mori, as seemingly so many are published these days.While the Winter journal has some boring parts, there are also some very impressive sections, with outstanding prose; for instance, the episode about the swallowed fish bone is captivating, while Auster's description of his visit to the site of the former concentration camp Bergen-Belsen is chilling.Reiteration and parallels, as in one's own life, and comparison with other lives, reveals the element of chance in one's survival. Diseases, a car accident, the famous "small accidents around the house", they all occur when one least expects it. The solid oak leg of the table can be the banal cause of death of the one, or a near miss to another.While many books on this theme are pessimistic or mainly appeal to an older readership, Auster's Winter Journal offers as much to older as to younger readers. Firstly, the Winter Journal gives readers an peek from an unusual perspective into the author's life. The many described details are of the kind usually left out of official biographies. Not much autobiographical material has been published about Auster so far. It is actually interesting to discover through reading the Winter Journal that some of Auster's novels which seem so totally fictional do include references to real life which caused irritation on the part of his relatives.Another optimistic outlook Winter Journal permits is the sense that 64 is not that very old, and although the author tends to see 64 as a high age, there are several suggestions that at 64 one is just at the threshold of a next stage in life, and that the contemplative, brooding mood is something like a mini-"mid"-life crisis, which marks the transition to the next stage. This optimism should appeal to readers of all ages, as does the book

[elmoelle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a memoir that is unlike any other that I have read. Paul Auster examines his life from a multitude of seemingly mundane angles. First he thinks about all of the ways that he has experienced his body, the joy he felt in using his body to play baseball as a child, the ways his body has compensated for his inability to express grief by shutting down and causing him to endure panic attacks when his mother dies.

Auster then considers all of the addresses at which he has lived, and what the specific spaces have meant to him. My favorite was his description of a ramshackle farm house he purchased with his first wife in upstate New York that was previously owned by two ancient German sisters and still hosted their malevolent spirits.

I think that this non-linear approach to auto-biography reveals more about the author than any other I have read because his categorical lists of remembrance are the ways, I think, that most of us think about our own memories. Therefore, Auster's writing seems more real and vibrant than if he had chosen to fashion his life into a traditional, linear format.

I have read a couple of Auster's other books, but I don't think it is necessary to have any familiarity with him in order to enjoy this book. The interesting word pictures he makes and the unique point of view is enough to make this an interesting read even if Auster were a plumber instead of an award winning author.

[jphamilton-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a very special book. Auster is writing about his life, by dropping down — seemingly at random, or so it seems so far — on all times in his life, be he 6 or 64. Very personal and real. In the beginning he uses lots of very short pieces (half a page down to a paragraph) and as you move through the book there are some much longer sections. It's written in the second person and while it is so personal, he is such a fine writer that he engages the reader. He also amused this reader many times. His views of life, death, and everything else we all go through, are most interesting. Reading this slim volume was a fascinating place to be.

[bobbieharv · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book. Devoured it. Was amazed I hadn't read more by Paul Auster, until I realized I had and didn't care for it (Invisible). Winter Journal, though, was completely different: unvarnished, beautifully written, a window into his soul and his life.

[berthirsch · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Winter Journal by Paul AusterThis is an uneven effort from a writer, Paul Auster, I am quite familiar with. Having read several of his novels and one other volume of memoir, Hand to Mouth, I am aware that his complete oeuvre is also “uneven”.Winter Journal is basically a 64 year old man’s look back at his life. From early childhood to his current age, Auster offers glimpses of importance and triteness. Exploring his own body in a bathtub, hearing stories about his ancestors and chronicling his relationships with women and his wife and children , he offers what I assume are meaningful events of his life.Yet reading a list of foods he ate as a child is the height of triteness – I gave up on this list midway through. At other times he offers insights that are thoughtful- a conversation about age and death he has with the French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant.Like his novels, some soar-The Book of Illusions- while others thud-Oracle Night. Auster is brave enough to share his inner thoughts and intimacies yet some of them were best left on the editing table.This book has some interest for me because I, too, am 64, Jewish, a New Yorker and reader yet even then this is a thin weightless effort; a throwaway that Auster should have left in his desk drawer.

[prop2gether · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mostly, I like Paul Auster's writing. I absolutely loved Timbuktu, didn't enjoy The New York Trilogy at all, loved Auggie Wren's Christmas, and was fascinated by The Music of Chance. I liked this work, a semi-detached (because it's written in the second person) remembrance of his body (according to the publisher) and life.It's gentle, it's harsh in places, it's a tribute to his mother and his wife, and, incidentally, there's an excellent dissection and review of the 1950's version of DOA to explain panic attacks. Several reviewers have commented on the lists and how distracting or annoying they are--but I find them fascinating. Auster lists every address he stayed at or lived at, with a summary of what happened at that point in his life. I track my addresses, and I know my mother did, all her life. It's all about what was happening at that period in our lives. Auster's recall is sharp and specific and, if sometimes, he does seem to carry on more than necessary, well, don't we all at times? This is a gentle, personal book, probably not for everyone. There's no scandal in the writing, there's a sharing of a single life. Having recently read Rousseau's Reveries of the Solitary Walker and Cela's Journey to the Alcarria, both told as memoirs outside of the first person, I found Winter Journal quite appealing.

[samsattler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A number of words come to mind when one considers Paul Auster’s new memoir, Winter Journal – unconventional, personal (almost by definition, I suppose), rambling, confusing, boring, frustrating, rewarding, revealing, gratifying, moving. Consequently, although many readers are certain to appreciate the book, I suspect that an equal number will end up considering it a waste of precious reading time. Auster, in his sixty-third year when writing Winter Journal, has produced what his publisher calls an “unconventional memoir,” a “history of his body and its sensations.” And a memoir that includes a list and description of every scar on the author’s body - and how he earned those scars – along with a description of all twenty-one addresses where his body has ever resided (a descriptive list that burns 53 pages of the 230-page ARC edition of the memoir) is exactly that. The publisher, of course, uses the word “unconventional” as a selling point, but I am not certain that readers will necessarily agree that this much unconventionality is a good thing. The section on a lifetime of living space will, in fact, likely be the tipping point for those readers who might already be starting to question the Winter Journal reading experience. They will either make it through these 53 pages, and the rest of the book, or they will give up somewhere in the middle of the list.Surprisingly for such a short book, Auster also devotes almost ten full pages to recounting the plot of the noirish 1950 movie D.O.A. Again, unconventionally, the author devotes as much time to the details of the film as to the reason he references it in the first place – Auster’s experience with panic attacks. Admittedly, the main character of D.O.A. suffers a classic panic attack of his own, but reading ten pages of movie recap grows rather tedious.The book may be uneven, but moving moments are sprinkled throughout. Auster’s memories of his visits to Minnesota and the pages he devotes to personal relationships (particularly to his relationship with his second wife), for instance, work beautifully. There is a horrifying memory of an encounter he had with a Parisian piano-tuner while living in France with a girlfriend. There is the moment during which the author reflects on Joubert’s thoughts on growing old: “One must die loveable (if one can).” Auster explains his understanding of the Joubert quote this way:“You are moved by this sentence, especially by the words in parentheses, which demonstrate a rare sensitivity of spirit, you feel, a hard-won understanding of how difficult it is to be loveable, especially for someone who is old, who is sinking into decrepitude and must be cared for by others. If one can.”Consider, too, Auster’s recollection of an observation generously offered him by an aging French actor:“Paul, there’s just one thing I want to tell you. At fifty-seven (Auster’s age at the time of the conversation), I felt old. Now, at seventy-four, I feel much younger than I did then.”Confused for a long while by this observation, it is only several years later that Auster comes to believe the actor may have been telling him that “a man fears death more at fifty-seven than he does at seventy-four.” So there are wonderful moments in Winter Journal, and there are whole sections that left me wishing the author would simply get on with it. Unconventional, it certainly is.Rated at: 3.5

[timbazzett · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

WINTER JOURNAL is only the second book by Paul Auster I have read. I remember greatly enjoying one of his novels a decade or more ago: TIMBUKTU, with its unusually perceptive canine character, Mister Bones. Auster's memoir, however, was not nearly as enjoyable. With its long detailed lists and descriptions of places he's lived, foods he liked, his life-long love affair with baseball, the many allusions to the breakup of his parents' marriage, as well as the mapping of his own body with its scars both visible and not, the memoir had so much promise. And yet it read almost more like a biography than a memoir. This was due in no large part I think to Auster's unnecessarily artsy and affected use of the second person as his chosen method for telling his story. It felt like he was viewing his own life through the wrong end of a telescope, depersonalizing the naarrative and keeping him at a safe distance from his reader.I was very frustrated and ultimately sad about this narrative device, because many of his experiences, particularly those from his childhood and teenage years, were universal in nature, things I should have been able to identify closely with, but there was that damned second-person "you-this" and "you-that" constantly in the way. It's too bad, because Auster's life has been a well-traveled and intensely interesting artist's journey. Unfortunately, he remained largely remote and icily detached. It just didn't work for me.

[lizzied_11 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Oh dear. Obviously, I don't know what a memoir is supposed to be or do. I think that in this one the reader was to feel herself looking over the author's shoulder as he recalled the physical facts of his life. I could never get by the second-person narration. I still wonder, "Who does that? Is there anybody in the world who remembers what he did by saying, 'So there you were lying in the bed...'" Not me. Then there are the lists. I loathe listing as an excuse for writing. Even if you're Paul Auster, I don't want to read "...the hundreds if not thousands of candy bars you consumed before the age of twelve: Milky Ways, Three Musketeers, Chunkys, Charleston Chews, York Mints, Junior Mints, Mars bars, Snickers bars,..." (I am kinder to you, my reader, than Auster is.) Then there is the sheer bloody-minded self-indulgence: "...an ancient longing will suddenly take hold of you, and then you will cast your eyes down at the sweets on display below the cash register, and if they happen to have Chuckles in stock, you will buy them. Within ten minutes, all five of the jellied candies will be gone. Red, yellow, green, orange, and black." On the other hand, I was often fascinated with the stories that he chose to tell. I also found moments of wonderful expression and insight as when he quotes and comments on Joubert,"One must die lovable (if one can)," or "Writing begins in the body, it is the music of the body, and even if the words have meaning, can sometimes have meaning, the music of the words is where the meanings begin." What I take away from the book is scattered pictures and feelings with nothing solid beyond Auster's intention to keep on living whatever his life as an old person will be.

[detailmuse · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Perhaps it is something as simple as this: that a man fears death more at fifty-seven than he does at seventy-four.I’ve only read Paul Auster’s nonfiction but I love it -- whether it’s life’s coincidences in The Red Notebook or this memoir on aging, written over a winter as Auster moves from midlife toward old age. I also feel that the total of an Auster book is less than the sum of its parts. In other words: I love the reading but like the overall work somewhat less.Here he journals about his first 64 years and filters his recollections through his body and the spaces around and within it. It’s a chapter-less sequence of musings with just the occasional space on a page to separate vignettes. It’s written entirely in second-person point of view -- which immediately raised my guard and then surprised me by becoming less visible and even pulling me into the experience just like it’s supposed to. The best passages are the sections of 8-10 pages of solid, unparagraphed text, where he dives deeper and takes the reader along; I grew to love seeing them ahead.Whereas Auster wrote about his father in The Invention of Solitude, here he writes about his mother, including this passage from a night after they visited her gravely ill second husband in the hospital:…just when you thought it would be impossible for anyone to say another word, when the heaviness in your hearts seemed to have crushed all the words out of you, your mother started telling jokes {…} jokes so funny that you and your wife laughed until you could hardly breathe anymore {…} an unending torrent of classic yenta routines with all the appropriate voices and accents, the old Jewish women sitting around a card table and sighing, each one sighing in turn, each one sighing more loudly than the last, until one of the women finally says, “I thought we agreed not to talk about the children.”And then this:You have seen several corpses in the past {…} but none of those corpses belonged to your mother, no other dead body was the body in which your own life began, and you can look for no more than a few seconds before you turn your head away.As a whole, it feels like a journal -- a notebook filled with stream-of-consciousness writing from prompts in a memoir class (especially the 53 pages -- one-fourth of the book -- that recall the place of his birth and his 21 residential addresses since). Yet the pages are so good! I’m definitely going to read the rest of his nonfiction.(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)

[williecostello · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Winter Journal" is a memoir of Paul Auster's body––which is not to say a memoir devoid of any psychology or emotion, but rather one in which the psychology and emotion always arise through somatic reflection: insomnia recalling certain memories, panic attacks as a means of introducing the topic of a mother's death, STI's as reminders of lovers past. The book is a catalogue of everything Auster's body has suffered and everywhere Auster's body has been, and thus a record of everything Auster himself has experienced. Auster's embrace of his own corporeality is comforting, and provides a fascinating look in on a life which might not have been quite as interesting if rehearsed in a more straightforward fashion. Furthermore, Auster's attention to his body is, of course, also attention to his mortality, making "Winter Journal" a fitting account not only of a life but of a life in the face of death.

[michaelbartley · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mr. Auster writes about looking back on his life as he turns 63. There are parts that beautiful and touching. Yet I found some aspects of the book irritating, he likes to make list. He made a list of every place he lived, every place he traved to, every type of food he eat. and of course a list of all his lovers. I wish that his editor would edit the list out

[katybee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very personal yet completely universal memoir, Paul Auster shares his life in brief passages that range all the way from basically biological to elegantly spiritual. Childhood, adolescence, marriages, parenthood and loss of parents, travel, injuries, true love, mistakes, food, family, abodes, baseball. He has written this journal very gracefully in the second person and so you are taken in immediately - it is both a gentle and unrelenting mirror. Perhaps you are in no way similar to Paul Auster in age or gender or cultural background. Perhaps you have not traveled all over the world or become a renown writer. But you recognize what he is saying and discover how much you have in common with this fellow human. You find yourself nodding...yes, yes...that is how it is. You receive the gift of spending a bit of time with a wonderful writer and could very well pass this journal along to others - it seems that kind of book.

[browner56 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

You are approaching your sixty-fourth birthday and your thoughts become increasingly reflective. As memories from events in your past coming flooding back—some from more than a half-century ago—you struggle to make sense of what they all mean. A celebrated novelist by trade, you naturally think to put order and context to your reflections in the form of a memoir. The result is ‘Winter Journal’, an honest and moving meditation as you approach the last season of your life.While admittedly weak, the previous description, which is written in Auster’s oddly effective second-person narrative style, provides an adequate summary of what the reader will find in this book. As the author himself so aptly puts it, a writer’s job is “to explore the interior of his own head”. Most of the time, of course, this exploration has involved him stretching the limits of imagination to produce compelling fiction; here, though, he pours over memories from a boyhood spent fighting and seeking knowledge, his myriad casual and meaningful relationships with women (including two marriages: one turbulent, one lasting), his academic and professional career, dealing with anti-Semitic incidents, and, especially, the life and death of his mother. As any fan of Auster’s fiction knows, his stories are inventive, complex, and anything but straightforward. Unsurprisingly, then, his autobiography is not told in a simple, linear manner either. Since the search for one’s identity is a recurring theme in many of his novels, it seems natural for the author to write a book in which he scours the past for his own. (Actually, this is the second memoir he has written; ‘The Invention of Solitude’ appeared thirty years earlier.) One intriguing device he uses in developing this history is to relive the most poignant moments spent in the twenty-one apartments or houses he has inhabited throughout his life in both the United States and France.Without question, Auster has led an interesting life. In truth, though, his life is not appreciably more or less interesting than those of a lot of people who have felt compelled to write their own autobiographies. What sets ‘Winter Journal” apart is the quality of the writing itself and it was this craftsmanship that made this a very satisfying reading experience.