Cinematic Time and Traumatic Ethics: A Deleuzian Reading of Catastrophe in Paul Auster’s <i>Man in the Dark</i>

In Man in the Dark, Paul Auster turns to cinematic temporality to reimagine the literary representation of catastrophe and trauma. Reading the novel through Gilles Deleuze’s film-philosophy, this essay argues that Auster performs a narrative translation of the time-image, moving from the affective intensity to the crystalline multiplicity of pure memory. Through close analysis, I demonstrate how Auster transposes the affection-image into prose to render violence as sensory impact; employs spatial-temporal metaphors to formalize trauma’s disjointed durée; and constructs a crystalline narrative mode that accesses Bergsonian “pure memory,” transforming traumatic recall into a virtual field of potential. By staging this progression, Auster does not merely represent trauma but enacts a poetics of temporal ethics, one that resists narrative closure and opens trauma to reconfiguration. Ultimately, this study positions Man in the Dark as a key intervention in contemporary debates about intermediality, trauma narration, and the ethical possibilities of literary form.