“Terrorism,” says Paul Auster as we walk through the city. “Please drop your bomb here.” You’ve only been out with the Austers for a few steps and you’re already seeing Brussels with different eyes. With the eyes of writers with an eye for worlds behind the comforting surface. A few steps earlier, Auster asks if I have one drug addicts then you haven’t seen it. A man bangs his head against a shop window. No, I didn’t. Auster is clearly uncomfortable. “You don’t see anything like that in New York,” Siri Hustvedt immediately puts me at my discomfort.
Paul looks around with heightened attention. “Isn’t there a statue of a woman in a fountain around here?” Without knowing it, I walk into a novel by the American writer. A few seconds later we sit at a table in restaurant ‘t Ogenblik together with Juliette Duret from Bozar Cinema. Fountain? Woman? Image? What was he talking about? I have the answer in my pocket. There is a copy of it in a bag Man in the darkness, Auster’s novel just published in Dutch. Later when reading, it becomes clear that the image in question plays a crucial role in the novel. It is located half a block away, in line with Beenhouwersstraat.
Paul Auster came to Brussels at the invitation of Bozar and the Cinematek for his feature film The Inner Life of Martin Frost to be presented in the Henry le Boeuf Hall. It was the second film he co-wrote and directed with Wayne Wang. Film is one of the keys to Paul Auster’s unique storytelling art: ingeniously composed novels that address philosophical questions, are narratively complex, but have the drive of a thriller.
The script for The Inner Life of Martin Frost is based on a fictional film from Auster’s novel The Book of Illusions, which in turn is based on the script for a short film that ultimately did not materialize. “Right,” Auster laughed on the phone from New York during a conversation I had with him beforehand Bozar Magazine, ‘you got it. It’s complicated.’ The main character is a Buster Keaton-like maker of silent films who one day disappears from the earth and starts making films again on one condition: no one is allowed to see them and they must be destroyed after his death. But does a film exist if no one sees it? Auster: ‘No, he doesn’t exist. But as long as the film is physically there, there is always the possibility that someone will find it. Film is such a public art form. It is absolutely unthinkable to make a film that no one will see. And yet that is exactly what Hector does.’
After the public conversation with VRT journalist Annelies Beck, Auster left the large stage on the right and ran through the corridors. He wanted to soak up the atmosphere in the room at the back. He also absolutely did not want to miss the end of the film to feel the reactions. Auster was happy as a child that more than two thousand people showed up and applauded enthusiastically. Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt happily signed their latest novels in the Bozar Bookshop. The signing session lasted longer than the film.
