Interpreting Timbuktu: An Unnatural Narrative, an Emotional Reading Experience, and a Cognitive Explanation

Abstract

Paul Auster’s novella Timbuktu (1998) tells a tear-jerking story through the eyes of a dog, Mr. Bones, who struggles with the fact that his human master Willy G. Christmas is dying. The work, like many literary endeavors in the field of animal consciousness, does not attract much critical attention (Ittner 181). One reviewer criticizes Auster’s proclivity for “the utterly bewildering nature of human experience” and calls the work too dark for a children’s book and too whimsical and slim for an adult narrative (Taylor 22). Stefania Ciocia argues that the novella has been neglected by critics due to its “heavy-handed sentimentality and fable-like moralism” (647). The reception of Timbuktu reflects the disdain of literary critics for adult fiction about animals and the tendency to dismiss it as trivial (Ittner 181– 2). However, a closer reading of Timbuktu reveals that the narrative does not follow the conventions of animal stories, and it should not at all be dismissed as a trivial enterprise. Reading the narrative through the lens of unnatural narratology enables us to examine textual phenomena that violate the constraints of mimetic probability and also to determine how they interact with contextual factors to bring about certain effects on readers. The term ‘unnatural’ was first used by Brian Richardson (Unnatural Voices) and popularized through his collaborations with other narratologists such as Jan Alber, Stefan Iversen, and Henrik Skov Nielsen (see, for example,