Paul Auster

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Paul Auster

Paul Auster (left)
Born February 3, 1947 (1947-02-03) (age 61)
Newark, NJ, United States
Pen name Paul Benjamin
Occupation novelist and poet
Nationality US-American
Writing period 1982 -
Genres Absurdist fiction, crime fiction, mystery fiction
Literary movement Postmodernism
Influences
Influenced
Official website

Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947, Newark, New Jersey) is a Brooklyn-based author known for works blending absurdism and crime fiction, such as The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989) and The Brooklyn Follies (2005).

Contents

[edit] Biography

Paul Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish middle class parents of Polish descent Samuel and Queenie Auster. He attended school in Maplewood, New Jersey and graduated from Columbia High School. After graduating from Columbia University in 1970, he moved to Paris, France where he earned a living translating French literature. Since returning to the U.S. in 1974, he has published poems, essays, novels of his own as well as translations of French writers such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Joseph Joubert.

He married his second wife, writer Siri Hustvedt, in 1981. Together they have one daughter, Sophie Auster. Previously, Auster was married to the acclaimed writer Lydia Davis. They had one son together, Daniel Auster.

He is also the Vice-President of PEN American Center.

[edit] Writing

Following his acclaimed debut work, a memoir entitled The Invention of Solitude, Auster gained renown for a series of three loosely-connected detective stories published collectively as The New York Trilogy. These books are not conventional detective stories organized around a mystery and a series of clues. Rather, he uses the detective form to address existential issues and questions of identity, space, language and literature, creating his own distinctively postmodern (and critique on postmodernism) form in the process.

The search for identity and personal meaning has permeated Auster's later publications, many of which concentrate heavily on the role of coincidence and random events (The Music of Chance) or increasingly, the relationships between men and their peers and environment (The Book of Illusions, Moon Palace). Auster's heroes often find themselves obliged to work as part of someone else's inscrutable and larger-than-life schemes. In 1995, Auster wrote and co-directed the films Smoke (which won him the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay) and Blue in the Face. Auster's more recent works, Oracle Night (2004), The Brooklyn Follies (2005) and the novella Travels in the Scriptorium have also met critical acclaim.

[edit] Themes

Two strong elements in Paul Auster's writing are Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis and the American transcendentalism of the early to middle 19th century, namely amongst others Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau.

In short Lacan's theory describes that we enter the world through words. We observe the world through our senses but the world we sense is structured (mediated) in our mind through language. Thus our subconscious is also structured as a language. This leaves us with a sense of anomaly. We can only perceive the world through language, but we have the feeling of a lack. The lack is the sense of a being outside of language. The world can only be constructed through language but it always leaves something uncovered, something that can not be told and be thought of, it can only be sensed. This can be seen as one of the central themes of Paul Auster's writing.

Lacan is considered to be one of the key figures of French poststructuralism. The strong influence of other poststructuralist philosophers can also be found throughout Auster's oeuvre. Mainly Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard and Michel de Certeau.

The transcendentalists believe in the fact that the symbolic order of civilization separated us from the natural order of the world. By moving into nature - like Thoreau in Walden - it would be possible to return to this natural order.

The common factor of both ideas is the question of the meaning of symbols for human beings.[3] Auster's protagonists are often writers who establish meaning to their lives through writing and they try to find their place with the natural order to be able to live again in the civilization.

Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Beckett, and Herman Melville have also had a strong influence on Auster's writing. Not only do their characters reappear in Austers work (like William Wilson in New York Trilogy or Hawthorne's Fanshawe in The Locked Room). Auster also uses variations on the themes of these writers.

Paul Auster's reappearing subjects are:[4]

  • coincidence
  • frequent portrayal of an ascetic life
  • a sense of imminent disaster
  • obsessive writer as central character/narrator
  • loss of the ability to understand
  • loss of language
  • depiction of daily and ordinary life
  • failure[5]
  • absence of a father
  • writing/story telling, metafiction
  • intertextuality
  • American History
  • American Space

[edit] Coincidence

Instances of coincidence can be found all over Auster's work. Auster himself claims that people are so influenced by all the consistent stories that surround them, that they do not see the elements of coincidence, inconsistency and contradiction in their own lives:

“ This idea of contrasts, contradictions, paradox, I think, get very much to the heart of what novel writing is for me. It's a way for me to express my own contradictions.[6] ”

[edit] Failure

Failure in Paul Auster's works is not just the opposite of the happy ending. In Moon Palace or The Book of Illusions it results from the individual's uncertainty about the status of his own identity. The protagonists start a search for their own identity and reduce their life to the absolute minimum. From this zero point they gain new strength and start their new life and they are also able to get into contact with their environment again. A similar development can also be seen in City of Glass or The Music of Chance.

Failure in this context is not the "nothing" - it is the beginning of something all new.

[edit] Identity/Subjectivity

Auster's protagonists often have to go through a development that reduces their existence to the absolute necessary: They cut off contact to their family and friends, hunger and lose or give away all their belongings. Out of this approximation of their nil they either gain new strength to connect to the world again or they fail and finally disappear.

“ But in the end, he manages to resolve the question for himself - more or less. He finally comes to accept his own life, to understand that no matter how bewitched and haunted he is, he has to accept reality as it is, to tolerate the presence of ambiguity within himself. ”

—Paul Auster about the protagonist of The Locked Room, quoted in Martin Klepper, Pynchon, Auster, DeLillo.[7]

[edit] Reception

[edit] Published works

[edit] Fiction

[edit] Poetry

  • Disappearances: Selected Poems (1988)

[edit] Screenplays

[edit] Essays, memoirs, and autobiographies

[edit] Edited collections

  • The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry (1982) [9]
  • True Tales of American Life (First published under the title I Thought My Father Was God, and Other True Tales from NPR's National Story Project) (2001)

[edit] Translations

[edit] Misc

The Accidental Rebel-Wed. April 23 article in New York Times

[edit] Other media

  • On the album As Smart as We Are by New York band One Ring Zero, Auster wrote the lyrics for the song "Natty Man Blues" based on Cincinnati poet Norman Finkelstein.
  • In 2005 his daughter, Sophie, recorded an album of songs in both French and English, entitled "Sophie Auster", with the band One Ring Zero. The lyrics of three of the songs (in English) are by Paul Auster; and he also provided for the accompanying booklet translations of several French poems which form the lyrics of other songs on the album.
  • In 1993, a movie adaptation of The Music of Chance was released. Auster features in a cameo role at the end of the film.
  • In 1994 City of Glass was adapted as a graphic novel by artist David Mazzucchelli and Paul Karasik. Auster's friend, noted cartoonist Art Spiegelman, produced the adaptation.
  • Michael Mantler's album Hide and Seek uses words by Auster from the play of the same name.
  • Paul Auster's voice can be heard on the 2005 album entitled We Must Be Losing It by the Farangs. The two tracks are entitled "Obituary In The Present Tense" and "Between The Lines".
  • In 2006 Paul Auster directed the film The Inner Life of Martin Frost. It was shot in Lisbon in Portugal and starred his daughter Sophie Auster as the character Anna James.
  • The lyrics of Fionn Regan's 2006 song Put A Penny In The Slot mention Auster and his book Timbuktu.
  • Austria composer Olga Neuwirth's composition ... ce qui arrive ... (2004) combines the recorded voice of Paul Auster with ensemble music and live electronics by Markus Noisternig and Thomas Musil (Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM)). Paul Auster is heard reading from his books Hand to Mouth and The Red Notebook, either as straight recitation, integrated with other sounds as if in a radio play, or passed through an electronically realized string resonator so that the low tones can interact with these of a string ensemble. A film by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster runs throughout the work featuring the cabaret artist and actress Georgette Dee.

[edit] See also

Paul is the older cousin of conservative columnist Lawrence Auster.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Off the Page: Paul Auster Auster lists most of these writers as major influences on his fiction, during an on-line chat December 16, 2003. Link here for transcript which appeared in the Washington Post.
  2. ^ The Art of Hunger
  3. ^ Heiko Jakubzik: Paul Auster und die Klassiker der American Renaissance. Dissertation, Universität Heidelberg 1999 (online text)
  4. ^ Dennis Barone (ed.): Beyond the Red Notebook. Essays on Paul Auster. Penn Studies in Contemporary American Fiction. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (2. ed. 1996)
  5. ^ Dirk Peters: Das Motiv des Scheiterns in Paul Austers "City of Glass" und "Music of Chance". unpublished MA dissertation, Christian-Albrechts Universität Kiel, 1998
  6. ^ Paul Auster from Mark Irwin, "Inventing the Music of Chance" In: The Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. XIV, no. 1
  7. ^ Martin Klepper, Pynchon, Auster, DeLillo. Die amerikanische Postmoderne zwischen Spiel und Rekonstruktion. Campus, Frankfurt am Main u.a. 1996. (= Nordamerikastudien; 3) ISBN 3-593-35618-X
  8. ^ Paul Auster's next novel, 'Man in the Dark', is due to be published by Henry Holt in the US on Monday 1st September 2008.[1]
  9. ^ for more information about some of the poets included in this volume see:French Poetry since 1950: Tendencies III by Jean-Michel Maulpoix

[edit] Further reading

  • Paul Auster, Gérard de Cortanze La solitude du labyrinthe. Paris:Actes Sud, 1997.
  • Franchot Ballinger Ambigere: The Euro-American Picaro and the Native American Trickster. MELUS, 17 (1991-92), pp. 21–38.
  • Dennis Barone (ed.): Beyond the Red Notebook. Essays on Paul Auster. Penn Studies in Contemporary American Fiction. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (2. ed. 1996)
  • Dennis Barone Auster’s Memory. The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 14:1 (Spring 1994), pp. 32-34
  • Charles Baxter The Bureau of Missing Persons: Notes on Paul Auster’s Fiction. The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 14:1 (Spring 1994), pp. 40-43.
  • Harold Bloom ed. Paul Auster. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publ.; 2004.
  • Martine Chard-Hutchinson Paul Auster (1947- ). In: Joel Shatzky and Michael Taub (eds.). Contemporary Jewish-American Novelists: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997, pp. 13-20.
  • Alain Chareyre-Méjan, Guillaume Pigeard de Gurbert. Ce que Paul Auster n’a jamais dit: une logique du quelconque. In: Annick Duperray (ed.). L’oeuvre de Paul Auster: approches et lectures plurielles. Actes du colloque Paul Auster. Aix-en-Provence: Actes Sud, 1995, pp. 176-184.
  • Gerard de Cortanze, James Rudnick: Paul Austers New York. Gerstenberg, New York; Hildesheim, 1998
  • (French)Gérard de Cortanze Le New York de Paul Auster. Paris: Les Éditions du Chêne-Hachette Livre, 1996.
  • Robert Creeley Austerities. The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 14:1 (Spring 1994), pp. 35-39.
  • Scott Dimovitz, 'Public Personae and the Private I: De-Compositional Ontology in Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy.' MFS: Modern Fiction Studies. 52:3 (Fall 2006): 613-633.
  • William Drenttel (ed.) Paul Auster: A Comprehensive Bibliographic Checklist of Published Works 1968-1994. New York: Delos Press, 1994.
  • (German)Sven Gächter Schreiben ist eine endlose Therapie: Der amerikanische Romancier Paul Auster über das allmähliche Entstehen von Geschichten. Weltwoche (31.12.1992), p. 30.
  • Charles Grandjeat Le hasard et la nécessité dans l’oeuvre de Paul Auster. In: Annick Duperray (ed.). L’oeuvre de Paul Auster: approches et lectures plurielles. Actes du colloque Paul Auster. Aix-en-Provence: Actes Sud, 1995, pp. 153-163.
  • (German) Ulrich Greiner: Gelobtes Land. Amerikanische Schriftsteller über Amerika. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1997
  • Claude Grimal Paul Auster au coeur des labyrinthes. Europe: Revue Littéraire Mensuelle, 68:733 (1990), pp. 64-66.
  • Allan Gurganus How Do You Introduce Paul Auster in Three Minutes?. The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 14:1 (Spring 1994), pp. 7-8.
  • Anne M. Holzapfel: The New York trilogy. Whodunit? Tracking the structure of Paul Auster’s anti-detective novels. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1996. (= Studien zur Germanistik und Anglistik; 11) ISBN 3-631-49798-9
  • (German) Beate Hötger: Identität im filmischen Werk von Paul Auster. Lang, Frankfurt am Main u.a. 2002. (= Europäische Hochschulschriften; Reihe 30, 84) ISBN 3-631-38470-X
  • (German) Heiko Jakubzik: Paul Auster und die Klassiker der American Renaissance. Dissertation, Universität Heidelberg 1999 (online text)
  • Bernd Herzogenrath An Art of Desire. Reading Paul Auster. Amsterdam: Rodopi; 1999
  • Bernd Herzogenrath Introduction. In: Bernd Herzogenrath. An Art of Desire: Reading Paul Auster. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999, pp. 1-11.
  • Gerald Howard Publishing Paul Auster. The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 14:1 (Spring 1994), pp. 92-95.
  • Peter Kirkegaard, Cities, Signs, Meanings in Walter Benjamin and Paul Auster: Or, Never Sure of Any of It in Orbis Litterarum: International Review of Literary Studies 48 (1993): 161179.
  • Barry Lewis The Strange Case of Paul Auster. The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 14:1 (Spring 1994), pp. 53-61.
  • James Marcus Auster! Auster!. The Village Voice, 39 (August 30, 1994), pp. 55-56.
  • Brian McHale Constructing Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
  • Patricia Merivale The Austerized Version. Contemporary Literature, 38:1 (Spring 1997), pp. 185-197.
  • Christophe Metress Iles et archipels, sauver ce qui est récupérable: la fiction de Paul Auster. In: Annick Duperray (ed.). L’oeuvre de Paul Auster: approches et lectures plurielles. Actes du colloque Paul Auster. Aix-en-Provence: Actes Sud, 1995, pp. 245-257.
  • (German) Werner Reinhart: Pikareske Romane der 80er Jahre. Ronald Reagan und die Renaissance des politischen Erzählens in den USA. (Acker, Auster, Boyle, Irving, Kennedy, Pynchon). Narr, Tübingen 2001
  • William Riggan Picaros, Madmen, Naïfs, and Clowns: The Unreliable First-Person Narrator. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981.
  • Mark Rudman Paul Auster: Some ‚Elective Affinities‘. The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 14:1 (Spring 1994), pp. 44-45.
  • (German) Michael Rutschky Die Erfindung der Einsamkeit: Der amerikanische Schriftsteller Paul Auster. Merkur, 45 (1991), pp. 1105-1113.
  • Edward H. Schafer Ways of Looking at the Moon Palace. Asia Major. 1988; 1(1):1-13.
  • (German) Steffen Sielaff: Die postmoderne Odyssee. Raum und Subjekt in den Romanen von Paul Auster. Univ. Diss., Berlin 2004.
  • (German) Joseph C. Schöpp Ausbruch aus der Mimesis: Der amerikanische Roman im Zeichen der Postmoderne. München: Fink, 1990.
  • Motoyuki Shibata Being Paul Auster’s Ghost. In: Dennis Barone (ed.). Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995, pp. 183-188.
  • Carsten Springer: Crises. The works of Paul Auster. Lang, Frankfurt am Main u.a. 2001. (= American culture; 1) ISBN 3-631-37487-9
  • Carsten Springer: A Paul Auster Sourcebook. Frankfurt a. Main u. a., Peter Lang, 2001.
  • Eduardo Urbina: La ficción que no cesa: Paul Auster y Cervantes. Vigo: Editorial Academia del Hispanismo, 2007.
  • Eduardo Urbina: La ficción que no cesa: Cervantes y Paul Auster. Cervantes en el ámbito anglosajón. Eds. Diego Martínez Torrón and Bernd Dietz. Madrid: SIAL Ediciones, 2005. 433-42.
  • Eduardo Urbina: Reflejos lunares, o la transformación paródica de la locura quijotesca en Moon Palace (1989) de Paul Auster. Siglos dorados; Homenaje a Augustin Redondo. Ed. Pierre Civil. Madrid: Castalia, 2004. 2: 1417-25.
  • Eduardo Urbina: Parodias cervantinas: el Quijote en tres novelas de Paul Auster (La ciudad de cristal, El palacio de la luna y El libro de las ilusiones). ‘Calamo currente’: Homenaje a Juan Bautista de Avalle Arce. Ed. Miguel Zugasti. RILCE (Universidad de Navarra) 23.1 (2007): 245-56.
  • Eduardo Urbina: Reading Matters: Quixotic Fiction and Subversive Discourse in Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions Critical Reflections: Essays on Golden Age Spanish Literature in Honor of James A. Parr. Eds. Barbara Simerka and Amy R. Williamsen. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2006. 57-66.
  • Various Authors. Special edition on Paul Auster. Critique. 1998 Spring; 39(3).
  • Sophie Vallas "The voice of a woman speaking": voix et présences féminines dans les romans de Paul Auster. In: Annick Duperray (ed.). L’oeuvre de Paul Auster: approches et lectures plurielles. Actes du colloque Paul Auster. Aix-en-Provence: Actes Sud, 1995, pp. 164-175.
  • Florian Felix Weyh Paul Auster. Kritisches Lexikon der fremdsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur (26. Nachlieferung), pp. 1-10.
  • Curtis White The Auster Instance: A Ficto-Biography. The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 14:1 (Spring 1994), pp. 26-29.
  • Eric Wirth A Look Back from the Horizon. In: Dennis Barone (ed.). Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995, pp. 171-182.
  • John Zilcosky The Revenge of the Author: Paul Auster’s Challenge to Theory. Critique, 39:3 (Spring 1998), pp. 195-206.

[edit] External links

Persondata
NAME Auster, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Newark, New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH