by Paul Auster
17. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
18. Footnote in the letter: “A piano piece by Erik Satie.”
19. It puzzles you that you shared the story of sleeping with another girl with the girl you thought of as your girlfriend, for the genial tone that runs through the letter does not suggest that you and Lydia were on the outs just then. At the same time, you were both young, you had never lived together, you were not planning to get married, and because you were free to do what you wanted, perhaps you felt the story would amuse her, as if it were a story you were sharing with a friend, rather than a lover or (future) spouse.
Other aspects of the letter make you cringe as well, especially the use of the words “fairy” and “queer,” but in 1969 the word “gay” was not widely known, America had not yet come up with a neutral term for homosexuality, and the words of the street all had a pejorative edge to them that sounds ugly today.
2CV = Deux Chevaux, the rudimentary French car you had bought for $300 and were driving that summer. It was so small and so light that it was all but useless on American highways. Maximum speed: approximately forty-five miles per hour.
As for Henry K., the person who came back to New York from a forestry camp in Michigan and then mysteriously turned up in the men’s room of the Port Authority bus terminal—you have no memory of who he was, even though he must have been a friend of yours.
There are also some errors in terminology—the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, for example, which you refer to as the Esplanade—but you will let them stand, for that is what you wrote at the time, and a time capsule must never be tampered with.
ALSO BY PAUL AUSTER
NOVELS
The New York Trilogy (City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room)
In the Country of Last Things
Moon Palace
The Music of Chance
Leviathan
Mr. Vertigo
Timbuktu
The Book of Illusions
Oracle Night
The Brooklyn Follies
Travels in the Scriptorium
Man in the Dark
Invisible
Sunset Park
NONFICTION
The Invention of Solitude
The Art of Hunger
Why Write?
Hand to Mouth
The Red Notebook
Collected Prose
Winter Journal
Here and Now (with J. M. Coetzee)
SCREENPLAYS
Three Films: Smoke, Blue in the Face, Lulu on the Bridge
The Inner Life of Martin Frost
POETRY
Collected Poems
ILLUSTRATED BOOKS
The Story of My Typewriter (with Sam Messer)
Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story (with Isol)
City of Glass (adapted by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli)
EDITOR
The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry
I Thought My Father Was God and Other True Tales from NPR’s National Story Project
Samuel Beckett: The Grove Centenary Edition
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAUL AUSTER is the bestselling author of Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Invisible, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature. Among his other honors are the Prix Médicis étranger for Leviathan, the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke, and the Premio Napoli for Sunset Park. In 2012 he was the first recipient of the NYC Literary Honors in the category of fiction. He has also been a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions), the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (The Music of Chance), and the Edgar Award (City of Glass). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into forty-three languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
REPORT FROM THE INTERIOR. Copyright © 2013 by Paul Auster. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.henryholt.com
Cover design: Lisa Fyfe
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Auster, Paul, 1947–
Report from the interior / Paul Auster.—First edition.
pages cm.
ISBN 978-0-8050-9857-0 (hardback)
1. Auster, Paul, 1947– 2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography. I. Title.
PS3551.U77Z46 2013
818'.5403—dc23
[B] 2013002417
e-ISBN 9780805098594
First Edition: November 2013
