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Paul Auster

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Paul Benjamin Auster (February 3, 1947 – April 30, 2024) was an American writer, novelist, memoirist, poet, and filmmaker. His notable works include The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), Invisible (2009), Sunset Park (2010), Winter Journal (2012), and 4 3 2 1 (2017). His books have been translated into more than 40 languages.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Early life

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Paul Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey,<ref name=JPost>Freeman, John. "At home with Siri and Paul" Template:Webarchive, The Jerusalem Post, April 3, 2008. Retrieved September 19, 2008. "Like so many people in New York, both of them are spiritual refugees of a sort. Auster hails from Newark, New Jersey, and Hustvedt from Minnesota, where she was raised the daughter of a professor, among a clan of very tall siblings."</ref> son of Samuel Auster, a landlord who owned buildings with his brothers in Jersey City,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and Queenie, née Bogat. His middle-class parents were Jewish, of Austrian descent; the marriage was an unhappy one, and they divorced during Auster's senior year of high school, he moving with his mother and sister to an apartment at Weequahic, Newark.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> An uncle was the translator Allen Mandelbaum.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He grew up in South Orange, New Jersey,<ref>Begley, Adam. "Case of the Brooklyn Symbolist" Template:Webarchive, The New York Times, August 30, 1992. Retrieved September 19, 2008. "The grandson of first-generation Jewish immigrants, he was born in Newark in 1947, grew up in South Orange and attended high school in Maplewood, 20 miles southwest of New York."</ref> and Newark,<ref>Auster, Paul. Winter Journal (New York, NY: Henry Holt, 2012), p. 61.</ref> and graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood.<ref>Freeman, Hadley. "American dreams: He may be known as one of New York's coolest chroniclers, but Paul Auster grew up in suburban New Jersey and worked on an oil tanker before achieving literary success. Hadley Freeman meets a modernist with some very traditional views" Template:Webarchive, The Guardian, October 26, 2002. Retrieved September 19, 2008. "Education: Columbia High School, New Jersey; 1965–69 Columbia College, New York; '69–70 Columbia University, New York (quit after one year)"</ref>

During the summers of 1958 and 1959, Auster attended, respectively, Camp LakeView (East Brunswick, NJ) and Camp Pontiac (Copake, NY), where his outstanding athletic talents were recognized, especially as a baseball infielder. While attending summer camp, the 14-year-old Auster witnessed what he called the "seminal experience" of his life:<ref name="conversation">Template:Cite web</ref> a boy being struck by lightning and dying instantly.<ref name="auto2">Template:Cite news</ref> The boy was standing a few inches away from him at the time. This event changed his life, thinking about it every day.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Career

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After graduating from Columbia University with B.A. and M.A. degrees (English, Comparative Literature) in 1970,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="auto">Template:Cite web</ref> he moved to Paris where, among other jobs, he tried to earn a living translating French literature.<ref name=":0" /> After returning to the United States in 1974, he continued to work on his poems, essays, and translations of French writers, such as Stéphane Mallarmé<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and Joseph Joubert.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="bigthink">Template:Cite web</ref> His work as a translator led to the publication in 1982 of The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry, which he edited.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

File:Paul Auster, Salman Rushdie and Shimon Peres.jpg
Auster greeting Israeli President Shimon Peres with Salman Rushdie and Caro Llewellyn in 2008

Following the appearance in 1982 of his acclaimed debut work, a memoir titled The Invention of Solitude, Auster gained renown for a series of three loosely connected novellas published collectively as The New York Trilogy (1987),<ref name="auto6">Template:Cite web</ref> and is often cited as his most widely known work to the general reading public.<ref name="bigthink"/>

Although The New York Trilogy gives a nod to the detective genre, they are not conventional detective stories organized around solving mysteries. Rather, Auster uses the detective form to address questions of identity, space, language, and literature, creating his own distinctively postmodern form in the process.<ref name="auto6"/> Auster disagrees with this analysis, because he believes that "the Trilogy grows directly out of The Invention of Solitude".<ref>Mallia, Joseph. ""Paul Auster" Template:Webarchive, "BOMB Magazine", Spring, 1988.</ref>

Similar to the themes explored in The New York Trilogy, the search for identity and personal meaning continued to permeate the three novels Auster published in quick succession in the late 1980s. Whether writing about the relationships between people caught in the flux of an uncertain future and uncertain identity (In the Country of Last Things [1987] and Moon Palace [1989]), or the role of coincidence and random events in our lives (The Music of Chance [1990]), Auster was steadily increasing his readership and popularity.<ref name="auto6"/>

During the 1990s Auster published three more novels, but he increasingly turned his attention to script writing and filmmaking by way of his screenplay and directorial collaborations with Wayne Wang on Smoke (which won Auster the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay) and Blue in the Face. He also directed the movie Lulu on the Bridge (1998).<ref name="indiewire">Template:Cite news</ref>Template:NoteTag

After a steadfast commitment to filmmaking during the late 1990s, Auster decided to turn his attention once again to writing novels, memoirs, and essays during the remaining two decades of his life. Between 2002 and 2024, Auster published nine novels, two memoirs, an 800-page biography of Stephen Crane (Burning Boy), and a sustained jeremiad (Auster calls it a "political pamphlet")<ref name="conversation"/> on the long, unending history of gun violence in America (Bloodbath Nation).<ref name="auto6"/> Eight of the final ten novels Auster published during his lifetime (from 1999 to 2023) received nominations for the International Dublin Award, and Auster's 2017 novel 4 3 2 1 was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.<ref name=2017shortlist>Template:Cite web</ref>

Auster was on the PEN American Center board of trustees from 2004 to 2009<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and its vice president from 2005 through 2007.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2012, Auster said in an interview that he would not visit Turkey, in protest at its treatment of journalists. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan replied: "As if we need you! Who cares if you come, or not?"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Auster responded: "According to the latest numbers gathered by International PEN, there are nearly one hundred writers imprisoned in Turkey, not to speak of independent publishers such as Ragıp Zarakolu, whose case is being closely watched by PEN Centers around the world."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Auster was willing to give Iranian translators permission to write Persian versions of his works in exchange for a small fee; Iran does not recognize international copyright laws.<ref name=Dehghan>Template:Cite news</ref>

One of Auster's later books, A Life in Words, was published in October 2017 by Seven Stories Press. It brought together two years of conversations with the Danish scholar I.B. Siegumfeldt about each of Auster's fiction and non-fiction works. It has been a primary source for understanding Auster's approach to his works.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Reception

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"Over the past twenty-five years", wrote Michael Dirda in The New York Review of Books in 2008, "Paul Auster has established one of the most distinctive niches in contemporary literature".<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Dirda extolled his virtues in The Washington Post, attesting that Auster had "perfected a limpid, confessional style" and constructed suspenseful, sometimes autobiographical plots. His heroes operated in a world that appeared familiar but they confronted "vague menace and possible hallucination."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Writing about Auster's 2017 novel 4 3 2 1, Booklist critic Donna Seaman remarked that Auster went beyond conventions of storytelling and mixed genres, even crossing over into filmic modes. She praised the complex sense of wonder and gratitude in his works, which often features "sly humor" in an oeuvre which she considered "a grand experiment, not only in storytelling, but also in the endless nature-versus-nurture debate, the perpetual dance between inheritance and free will, intention and chance, dreams and fate. This elaborate investigation into the big what-if is also a mesmerizing dramatization of the multitude of clashing selves we each harbor within."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The English critic James Wood criticized Auster for what he considered "borrowed language" and "bogus dialogue", nonetheless conceding that Auster was "probably America's best-known postmodern novelist". He noted: "One reads Auster's novels very fast, because they are lucidly written, because the grammar of the prose is the grammar of the most familiar realism (the kind that is, in fact, comfortingly artificial), and because the plots, full of sneaky turns and surprises and violent irruptions, have what the Times once called 'all the suspense and pace of a bestselling thriller'."<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

File:Paul Auster John Ashbery BBF 2010 Shankbone.jpg
Auster with John Ashbery at the Brooklyn Book Festival

Personal life and death

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Auster's first marriage was to the writer Lydia Davis in 1974. They had one child together, their son Daniel Auster. By 1979 they were separated and were divorced in 1981.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> In 1981, Auster married his second wife, writer Siri Hustvedt, the daughter of professor and scholar Lloyd Hustvedt. They lived in Brooklyn<ref name=JPost/> and had one daughter, Sophie Auster, a singer.<ref>Denes, Melissa (February 3, 2006). "The dark side of happiness" Template:Webarchive. The Guardian.</ref>

Daniel Auster was arrested on April 16, 2022, and charged with manslaughter and negligent homicide in the death of his 10-month-old infant daughter Ruby, who consumed some of the heroin and fentanyl he was using.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Ruby had died five months previously, on November 1, 2021. At the time of the arrest, police remained unclear about how the baby could have ingested the drugs while lying beside her father when he was napping.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

On April 26, 2022, Daniel Auster died from an overdose.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Daniel Auster was also known for his association with the Club Kids and their ringleader Michael Alig, and was present during the killing of fellow Club Kid Andre Melendez.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Paul Auster characterized his politics as "far to the left of the Democratic Party", but said he voted Democratic because he doubted a socialist candidate could win.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He described right-wing Republicans as "jihadists",<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and the election of Donald Trump as "the most appalling thing I've seen in politics in my life".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

On March 11, 2023, Auster's wife Siri Hustvedt revealed on Instagram that he had been diagnosed with cancer in December 2022, and that he had been treated at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York since then.<ref>Template:Cite instagram</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Paul Auster died of complications from lung cancer at his home in Brooklyn, on April 30, 2024, at the age of 77.<ref name="Death">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="auto"/> He was survived by his wife Siri Hustvedt, their daughter Sophie Auster, his sister Janet Auster, and a grandson.<ref name="auto1">Template:Cite web</ref>

Awards and honors

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Published works

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Fiction

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Memoir

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Nonfiction

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  • The Art of Hunger (1992)
  • Collected Prose (contains The Invention of Solitude, The Art of Hunger, The Red Notebook, and Hand to Mouth as well as various other previously uncollected pieces) (first edition, 2005; expanded second edition, 2010)
  • Here and Now: Letters, 2008–2011 (2013) A collection of letters exchanged with J. M. Coetzee
  • A Life in Words: In Conversation with I. B. Siegumfeldt (2017)
  • Talking to Strangers: Selected Essays, Prefaces, and Other Writings, 1967–2017 (2019)
  • Groundwork: Autobiographical Writings, 1979–2012 (2020)
  • Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane (2021)
  • Long Live King Kobe: Following the Murder of Tyler Kobe Nichols [with photographs by Spencer Ostrander] (2022)
  • Bloodbath Nation [with photographs by Spencer Ostrander] (2023)<ref>Review: Template:Cite web</ref>

Poetry

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  • Unearth (1974)
  • Wall Writing (1976)
  • Fragments from the Cold (1977)
  • Facing the Music (1980)
  • Disappearances: Selected Poems (1988)
  • Ground Work: Selected Poems and Essays 1970–1979 (1990)
  • Collected Poems (2007)
  • White Spaces: Selected Poems and Early Prose (2020)Template:NoteTag

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Screenplays

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Edited collections

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Translations

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Miscellaneous

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Other media

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Notes

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References

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Further reading

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  • 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: "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.
  • Thorsten Carstensen: "Skepticism and Responsibility: Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions." in: Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 58:4 (2017): 411–425.
  • Martine Chard-Hutchinson "Paul Auster (1947– )". In: Joel Shatzky and Michael Taub (eds). Contemporary Jewish-American Novelists: A Bio-Critical Sourceboook. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997, pp. 13–20.
  • Alain Chareyre-Méjan, Guillaume Pigeard de Gurbert. "Template:Lang". In: Annick Duperray (ed.). Template:Lang. Aix-en-Provence: Actes Sud, 1995, pp. 176–184.
  • Gérard de Cortanze, James Rudnick: Paul Auster's New York. Gerstenberg, New York; Hildesheim, 1998
  • Template:In lang 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.
  • Scott Dimovitz: "Portraits in Absentia: Repetition, Compulsion, and the Postmodern Uncanny in Paul Auster's Leviathan". Studies in the Novel. 40:4 (Winter 2008): 447–464.
  • William Drenttel (ed.): Paul Auster: A Comprehensive Bibliographic Checklist of Published Works 1968–1994. New York: Delos Press, 1994.
  • Annick Duperray: Paul Auster: Les ambiguïtés de la négation. Paris: Belin. 2003.
  • Template:In lang Christian Eilers: Paul Austers autobiographische Werke: Stationen einer Schriftstellerkarriere. Winter, Heidelberg 2019. (= American Studies – A Monograph Series; 301). Template:ISBN
  • Template:In langSven Gächter: Schreiben ist eine endlose Therapie: Der amerikanische Romancier Paul Auster über das allmähliche Entstehen von Geschichten. Weltwoche (December 31, 1992), p. 30.
  • François Gavillon: Paul Auster, gravité et légèreté de l'écriture. Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2000.
  • Charles Grandjeat: "Template:Lang". In: Annick Duperray (ed.). Template:Lang. Aix-en-Provence: Actes Sud, 1995, pp. 153–163.
  • Template:In lang Ulrich Greiner: Gelobtes Land. Amerikanische Schriftsteller über Amerika. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1997
  • Claude Grimal: "Paul Auster au cœur 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) Template:ISBN
  • Template:In lang Beate Hötger: Identität im filmischen Werk von Paul Auster. Lang, Frankfurt am Main u.a. 2002. (= Europäische Hochschulschriften; Reihe 30, 84) Template:ISBN
  • Template:In lang 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: "Template:Lang". In: Annick Duperray (ed.). Template:Lang. Aix-en-Provence: Actes Sud, 1995, pp. 245–257.
  • Template:Cite magazine
  • James Peacock: "Carrying the Burden of Representation: Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions". Journal of American Studies, 40:1 (April 2006), pp. 53–70.
  • Template:In lang 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.
  • Template:In lang 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.
  • Template:In lang Steffen Sielaff: Die postmoderne Odyssee. Raum und Subjekt in den Romanen von Paul Auster. Univ. Diss., Berlin 2004.
  • Template:In lang 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.
  • Ilana Shiloh: "Paul Auster and Postmodern Quest: On the Road to Nowhere." New York, Peter Lang 2000.
  • Carsten Springer: Crises. The works of Paul Auster. Lang, Frankfurt am Main u.a. 2001. (= American culture; 1) Template:ISBN
  • 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 an 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).
  • Aliki Varvogli: World That is the Book: Paul Auster's Fiction. Liverpool University Press, 2001. Template:ISBN
  • 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.
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