The obituaries are talking about Paul Auster’s fiction. The notes about Auster in this collection have been about his nonfiction. Most are on his wonderful biography of Stephen Crane. One mentions Winter Journey, Auster’s account of getting old.
Auster did many things. Not least, he introduced me and many others to Joubert.
Auster was interested in lost books — books by writers who weren’t interested in publishing. Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno was written in the 1760s and published in 1939. Joubert, usually described as an aphorist, wrote for himself.
Neither a poet nor a novelist, neither a philosopher nor an essayist, Joubert was a man of letters without portfolio whose work consists of a vast series of notebooks in which he wrote down his thoughts every day for forty years.
Auster said Joubert (1) observed the world, (2) cultivated friendships and (3) meditated. Joubert’s notebooks became his work, a lab to work out his ideas.
It seems to me that Auster was observing a kindred spirit. Like Joubert, Auster did all those things.
• The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, translated with an introduction by Paul Aster; New York: New York Review of Books, 2005, p. ix.
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