The Ethics of Writing in Paul Auster's In the Country of Last Things

Author: Wakana Nagata

Fourth-year student at Sophia University

Publication permission was granted in February 2026

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Memory and Record: The Ethics of Writing in In the Country of Last Things

        In In the Country of Last Things, Paul Auster depicts a dystopian city in which disappearance is not merely accidental but systemic. Not only objects but also words, names, and meanings steadily erode. As material goods vanish from everyday life, language itself loses its referential stability, and words no longer reliably correspond to the objects or experiences they once described. In such a world, both memory and record, which are the two primary means by which human experience is preserved, are placed under severe strain. Memory survives only within fragile human bodies, while records exist as physical objects that may outlast individuals but fail to guarantee meaning or understanding. Anna Blume’s narrative takes the form of a notebook addressed to an unknown recipient, a written record produced in a world where communication is no longer assured. Crucially, Anna does not write with the expectation that her words will be fully understood or even received. Instead, the act of writing itself becomes the focus. This raises a question: what does it mean to record experience when memory is unreliable and the material record is stripped of stable meaning? This paper argues that In the Country of Last Things establishes a sharp yet unstable distinction between memory and record. While memory remains ethically charged but inevitably perishable, the record endures materially while failing to preserve significance. Anna’s notebook exposes the tension between these two modes of preservation and reveals writing not as an act of salvation, but as a fraught resistance to erasure in a world governed by loss.

In In the Country of Last Things, records survive as physical objects even after meaning has collapsed. Words, documents, and books continue to exist materially, yet they no longer function as a source of knowledge and understanding. As the city deteriorates, language itself becomes detached from reference, turning into residue rather than signification. This transformation is most vividly represented in the fate of the library. As Anna observes, people no longer go there to read, but to keep from freezing to death “The irony does not escape me, of course—to have spent all those months working on a book and at the same time to have burned hundreds of other books to keep ourselves warm” (Auster 79). Once a space dedicated to the preservation of knowledge, it is reduced to a shelter where books are burned for warmth. The book remains, but its purpose is inverted. It no longer carries initial meaning but provides fuel. As Daniela Fargione argues, in In the Country of Last Things “words and/as waste undergo the same process of transvaluation” so that records survive only as material residue rather than as carriers of meaning (129). Records accumulate, but accumulation does not equal preservation. Instead, they resemble debris left behind by a collapsing system. This logic aligns with Lucia-Hedviga Pascariu’s reading of the novel through entropy, noting that in this "sterile urban landscape," individual memory becomes "of no consequence" because the systemic "disappearance of language" renders the past unreachable (678). Records, far from resisting destruction, are absorbed into the same entropic process that consumes bodies and cities. The durability of the record, therefore, remains insufficient to fully anchor its meaning. What remains is not memory but material residue, objects that persist without interpretation.

If records endure without meaning, memory represents the opposite condition. Memory is meaningful yet cannot be preserved. Memory exists only within living bodies and disappears with them. Anna repeatedly acknowledges the instability of her own recollections, admitting that she cannot remember events precisely or reconstruct them in coherent order. Her narrative is shaped not by accuracy but by hesitation, gaps, and uncertainty. As Matti Hyvärinen observes, Anna is caught in a dilemma between acting, thinking, and telling, none of which can fully coincide (59). Anna says in her circumstances, “Faced with the most ordinary occurrence, you no longer know how to act, and because you cannot act, you find yourself unable to think” (Auster 13). Memory in the novel is inseparable from bodily experience and ethical responsibility. It is flawed, partial, and often unreliable, yet it remains embedded in human relationships. Unlike records, memory carries ethical weight because it is tied to witnessing and responsibility rather than preservation. Even when memory fails to deliver factual certainty, it sustains an obligation to others. It is an obligation that cannot be transferred to objects. Memory cannot survive beyond the human body, but precisely for that reason, it remains irreducibly human.

Anna’s notebook occupies a paradoxical position between record and memory. It is a physical object that may outlast its author, so it is undeniably a record. Yet it cannot function as a substitute for memory, because it lacks any guarantee of reception or understanding. Anna writes without knowing whether her words will ever reach their intended recipient, or whether they will be interpreted at all. “It doesn’t matter if you read it. It doesn’t even matter if I send it—assuming that could be done. … I am writing to you because you know nothing”(Auster 2). The notebook does not preserve memory but it merely preserves traces. Nevertheless, Anna continues to write. Her act of writing does not aim at successful communication but resists absolute silence. Writing becomes an act that acknowledges its own possibility of failure. As Victoria Woburn remarks at the scene where Samuel Farr becomes the new doctor in the Woburn House after Dr. Woburn’s death, language in this world functions as a “masquerade”(Auster 112). Words simulate meaning without securing truth, and give people hope. Anna’s writing accepts this condition rather than denying it. She does not write because writing works, but because not writing would concede total erasure. The notebook thus represents an ethical position that even when memory cannot be preserved and records cannot guarantee meaning, the act of writing remains preferable to silence. It does not stop loss, but it refuses to disappear without a trace.

In In the Country of Last Things, writing is not consistently presented as an act that promises salvation or preservation. Rather, through the figures of Sam, Isabel, and Anna, Auster progressively delineates the limits of the ethical significance that writing can sustain. Sam initially writes and believes that he is “going to take the manuscript back home with me. The book will be published, and everyone will find out what’s happening here” (Auster 71) .  However, his manuscript is burned together with the library, and the act of writing itself is interrupted. From that point onward, Sam no longer writes. Instead, at Woburn House, he assumes the false role of a “doctor,” using language not as a truthful record but as a performance that sustains the immediate situation. As Victoria describes it, this practice functions as a “masquerade” (Auster 112), marking a retreat from the ethical responsibility traditionally associated with writing. Isabel’s act of writing is different, having lost her voice, she writes in Anna’s notebook shortly before her death as a final attempt at communication. This act does not aim to leave a record for the future but is directed toward a present other standing before her. Writing still functions as communication, yet only insofar as it is grounded in bodily proximity and the immediacy of the “here and now,” making it fragile. Writing retains ethical meaning only when the possibility of response can still be assumed. Isabel thus stands at the final point at which writing can still, however precariously, reach another person. Anna’s act of writing in a notebook begins only after this possibility has completely disappeared. She does not write while staying at Woburn House, but starts her notebook in the final phase of the narrative, when the collapse of the community and her departure from it become unavoidable. Anna knows from the outset that her words may never be read and may never be understood, but she writes. What is important here is that Anna’s writing is not undertaken in order to preserve memory or to transmit meaning. Rather, it consists in the decision not to choose silence after writing has been recognized as incapable of saving anything. It is at this point that the ethical limit of writing itself emerges. Anna’s notebook is incomplete both as a record and as communication, yet it functions as a final form of engagement that refuses total disappearance or disengagement.

In In the Country of Last Things, neither memory nor record offers a reliable means of preservation. Memory, bound to the body, disappears with it, leaving no stable trace behind. Records, though materially durable, accumulate without securing meaning, becoming residues within an entropic system rather than vessels of understanding. Through Anna Blume’s notebook, Paul Auster refuses to privilege either mode of preservation. Writing does not redeem loss, nor does it restore coherence to a collapsing world. Instead, it exposes the gap between experience and its inscription, a gap that cannot be closed by documentation alone. Yet Anna’s writing is not meaningless. By continuing to write despite the absence of a guaranteed reader, she acknowledges the failure of both memory and record without surrendering to absolute silence. In contrast to Sam’s compromised transmission of facts and Isabel’s final, fragile moment of communication, Anna writes after the possibility of successful transmission has already dissolved. Her notebook does not preserve memory, nor does it function as effective communication. Rather, it marks the ethical limit of writing itself. In this sense, in In the Country of Last Things Auster presents writing as an act undertaken in full awareness of its insufficiency. It neither secures survival nor promises understanding. What it offers instead is a refusal to disappear without acknowledgment. Writing becomes not an act of salvation, but a conscious engagement with loss, which a record that does not save memory, yet insists on bearing witness to its inevitable disappearance. 

Works Cited
Auster, Paul.  In the Country of Last Things. Penguin Books, 1988.

Fargione, Daniela. “Words and/as Waste in Paul Auster’s In The Country of Last Things,” in Democracy and Difference: The U.S. in Multidisciplinary and Comparative Perspectives. University of Trento, 2012, pp. 127-132. www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniela-Fargione-2/publication/329588880_WORDS_ANDAS_WASTE_IN_PAUL_AUSTER'S_IN_THE_COUNTRY_OF_LAST_THINGS/links/5c1123ac4585157ac1bce26b/WORDS-AND-AS-WASTE-IN-PAUL-AUSTERS-IN-THE-COUNTRY-OF-LAST-THINGS.pdf. 

Hyvärinen, Matti. “Acting, Thinking, and Telling: Anna Blume’s Dilemma in Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things.” Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, vol. 4 no. 2, 2006, p. 59-77. Research Gate, www.researchgate.net/publication/265828323_Acting_Thinking_and_Telling_Anna_Blume's_Dilemma_in_Paul_Auster's_In_the_Country_of_Last_Things.  

Pascariu, Lucia-Hedviga. “Entropy and Loss: Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things.” Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 92, 2013, pp.678-685, doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.08.738.