miércoles, 1 de mayo de 2024

How I met Paul Auster

The first time I “met” Paul Auster was when I read The New York Trilogy. I was intrigued by those ‘noirish’ post-modern games with identity and genres, but I didn’t become an Auster fan yet. It was really Moon Palace that did it. I had finished my dissertation on Dashiell Hammett and was looking for another writer to spend my free time (?) letting my neurones fly high around a guy and his imagination: I ended up reading all his books and started doing research on his work.

The second time I “met” Paul Auster was in Asturias. I got his contact through the editor of the only book on the market on Auster at the time, Dennis Barone, and I sent Auster’s assistant (he never got to use email, as far as I know) a request to interview him. This was the year that he received the Prince of Asturias award, and he had an open Q&A session (with Pedro Almodóvar, another recipient of the award that year) in the Teatro Jovellanos. He was so busy that we couldn’t have a proper interview, but I got to ask both of them a couple of questions from the audience, and he did sign a book for me.

The third time I (actually) met him was in San Sebastián that same year (2007). He was presenting his film The Inner Life of Martin Frost and he was the president of the jury. We had been in touch, but his agenda was so packed that we couldn’t have a proper interview there either. I ended up meeting him (briefly) and having a picture taken. I can’t help thinking I look like a ‘groupie’ by the side of the cool rock star, but what the hell, it was Paul Auster!

The last time I “met” him was when I interviewed him. We had decided to have a phone interview and we agreed on a date. It was the Saturday during Thanksgiving weekend in the States, Auster was in his Brooklyn home, and you could hear the noise of breakfast in the background. He was extremely nice and helpful. I had faxed him the questions (as it is well known, he always wrote longhand and then typed the result in his old typewriter) and we spent almost one hour talking about his relationship with film. I didn’t know if I would publish the interview yet, but I asked for Auster’s permission, he said he would like to correct it, we faxed each other several proofs, and I ended up publishing in the Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos and in Literature/Film Quarterly.

And, finally, the time I nearly met him again was a few years ago, before his illness. By then, I had published several articles on his work and co-edited a book with my friend Stefania Ciocia (The Invention of Illusions), and the University of Copenhagen organized two symposia that were the beginning of the Paul Auster Research Library in that university. I was invited to present a paper in the second symposium, but not in the first, which Auster attended, so I missed him that time, but I cherish the fact that, according to legend (and two friends), he did ask about my whereabouts.

In the last couple of years, I have been following closely his fight with cancer and the tragic news about his son and granddaughter. As he wrote in his autobiographical memoirs, tragedy was hovering around him, like the time when he found out that his grandmother had killed his own grandfather, or that other time when lightning struck (and killed) the boy next to him in a summer camp.

He was an excellent person and a great writer, able to hook the readers and play postmodern games at the same time; both European and genuinely American, he managed to show the paradoxes of contemporary life and establish deep connections with millions of readers all over the world, because, as he said when he received the Prince of Asturias Award,  “a book is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy”.

Farewell, Paul.

jueves, 7 de mayo de 2020

Description

In this research group we focus on books, films and other cultural products (like comics or television) from a transnational perspective. We consider for example how US culture is affected by transnational trends and how US literature, culture and films have had an impact on the culture of other countries like Spain (in the project about "Transnational Post-Westerns"). We also investigate the impact that Spanish literature has had on other countries, and pay particular attention to globalization, gender and border studies.

lunes, 28 de enero de 2019

Research Group Members

Jesús Ángel González, PI (CV, Publications, Google ScholarPersonal Website)
Alfredo Moro (ResearchGate)
Macarena García-Avello (Publications, Google Scholar)
Eduardo Obradó (Publications)
Eva Pelayo (Publications, ResearchGate)
Richard Jorge (ResearchGate)

RESEARCH LINES


American Literature, Film and Culture and its transnational impact: JESÚS ÁNGEL GONZÁLEZ
Transnational Post-Westerns: JESÚS ÁNGEL GONZÁLEZ
Transnational Crime Fiction: EDUARDO OBRADÓ
Transnational Gender Perspectives: MACARENA GARCÍA-AVELLO
Italian-American Literature and Culture: EVA PELAYO
Spanish Literature from a Transnational Perspective: ALFREDO MORO                        
Irish-American Literature: RICHARD JORGE
Transnational Gothic: RICHARD JORGE

sábado, 26 de enero de 2019

FUNDED PROJECTS

"Transnational Post-Westerns: Global Impact of a Regional Myth" (SODERCAN/FEDER, 13.JU21.64661) (2018- 2019)


This project deals with the analysis of a contemporary subgenre that combines two categories that are helping us reconceptualize the traditional view about film genres. The first category, transnational cinema, intimately related to the phenomenon of globalization, is already well established in academic jargon to make up for the inadequacies of the concept of national cinemas. The second, the Post-Western, is used to refer to films revising both the Western genre and the spatial and ideological implications of the West of the USA in this genre.

The main objective of this project is then to review these two concepts in order to propose a new line of research, and to propose and analyze a new generic category combining both: Transnational Post-Westerns. Based on Neil Campbell's definition of Post-Westerns as films produced after World War II, "coming after and going beyond the traditional Western while engaging with and commenting on its deeply haunting assumptions and values" (Post-Westerns, 131), this project intends to analyze films made outside the United States which make references to the Western genre and which establish a dialogue with the original genre in order to achieve two goals. First, to analyze and question the values and tenets of the original genre from the point of view or race, politics and gender. And, secondly, to investigate the identity and national conflicts of the country in which these films are produced and set. In a preliminary analysis, several examples have already been studied in Spain and Ireland (in two articles published as Transnational Post-Westerns in Irish Cinema in The Journal of Transnational American Studies, and "A genre auteur ?: Enrique Urbizu's Post-Western films" in Hispanic Research Journal). A corpus of films has been located in countries such as France, Mexico, Italy, Russia and Turkey, and the objective will be to analyze these films to define the characteristics of the subgenre.



Along with this main objective, four secondary objectives have been set to help us understand better the features of Post-Westerns and the transnational phenomenon. The first secondary objective is to inquire about the existence of the Post-Western category in other popular genres such as television, contrasting "NeoWesterns" (like Deadwood) with specifically Post-Western products (which make references to the genre but propose a radically different discourse, away from the time and space of classical Westerns) like Justified or Westworld. The second goal is to study the predecessors of the Western genre from a transnational point of view (Transnational PreWesterns), that is to say, to investigate the relation of the myth of the West with the foundational myths of European countries and the structures and characters of Westerns with classic literary archetypes. Thirdly, we intend to study the importance of translation in the "transnationalization" of Westerns and, finally, to consider the West of the USA as a "transnational space" in which, far from the stereotypes of the Western genre, new identities are developed. The research team of this project is made up of researchers of the Department of Philology of the University of Cantabria with specific training in these fields.

NEW WESTS: EL OESTE AMERICANO EN LA LITERATURA, EL CINE Y LA CULTURA DEL SIGLO XXI: UN ENFOQUE TRANSNACIONAL Y TRANSDISCIPLINAR, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, PGC2018-094659-B-C21 
(IP: Amaia Ibarraran Vigalondo)