Reading

Response Prompts for 4 November 2011

Remember there is no class October 28th! If you will be absent for our November 4th class because of the Bayram holiday, make sure to email me your reading response before our scheduled class time to receive credit for the response. Remember that completing these responses counts towards your exam grades. Think about these questions as you read Paul Austers Portrait of an Invisible Man. Then respond to the reading (in at least 300 words): you dont have to answer all of the questions, or even address any of them in your response. There are no real right answersthe prompts are just meant to guide your reading and thinking. If there is something interesting in the text that youd rather respond to, go ahead! We will talk about these questions and your responses in our class. 1. Austers Portait of an Invisible Man is an interesting text in many ways, one of which being its cross-genre appeal. How would you categorize the text? Is it a memoir? Autobiography? Realist fiction? Documentary? Non-fiction? What elements of these genres can you see in the text, and what role do they play? How does genre effect how you as a reader understand the text? Would you read the story differently if it were labeled fiction, and the main character was named something other than Paul Auster? 2. In the text, Auster spends a great deal of time investigating himself, his past, and his family. What does it mean for a writer to search through, seek out, and investigate both family and the past? How does Auster represent himself as a writer, son, and father? What does he use to represent his own father? What does he seek out and discover? What is missing? How does he conduct his search and what alternative roles might he play. (For more inspiration and direction regarding this question, see question 1 at the bottom of page 99) 3. In an interview Auster said I dont think of [this text] as an autobiography so much as a meditation about certain questions, using myself as a central character. As you (re)read, keep this statement in mind. What would you identify as the questions at the center of this meditation? Where and how does Auster define himself as a character? What role does this character play as you process the information he gives about his father? 4. Portrait of an Invisible Man is a text marked by distinctive formal features, such as line breaks, photographs, excerpts from newspaper articles, and grammatically unique introductory sentences to paragraphs (for example, Earliest memory: his absence. [62]). Austers prose is distinctive, unusual, and experimental; he mixes narrative, report, and reflection. Think of these features in relation to what Auster says about writing about a person and about the past. Why do you think Auster chooses this unique form of writing? What effect does it have on you as a reader? 5. In this text, Auster invites you to think about his problems as a writers problems, not simply as family problems, ethical problems, or psychological problems. As you (re)read, look for the points where Auster speaks directly about his work as a writer, and the problems he faces in writing. What are those problems? How are they writing problems? How does he solve or attempt to solve them? Do you like the inclusion of his reflections on the process of writing? Can you learn anything about writing from reading Austers reflections on writing?