Editing Paul Auster (section)

==Reception==
"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>{{Cite magazine |title=Spellbound |last=Dirda |first=Michael |magazine=The New York Review of Books |date=4 December 2008 |access-date=12 November 2019 |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/12/04/spellbound/ |archive-date=November 12, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191112150204/https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/12/04/spellbound/ |url-status=live }}</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>{{Cite news |title=Strange things begin to happen when a writer buys a new notebook |last=Dirda |first=Michael |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=21 December 2003 |access-date=12 November 2019 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/2003/12/21/strange-things-begin-to-happen-when-a-writer-buys-a-new-notebook/00362b46-362a-499c-a1df-7b9db455846c/ |archive-date=August 18, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200818111831/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/2003/12/21/strange-things-begin-to-happen-when-a-writer-buys-a-new-notebook/00362b46-362a-499c-a1df-7b9db455846c/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Writing about Auster's 2017 novel ''[[4 3 2 1 (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>{{Cite book|url=https://www.booklistonline.com/4-3-2-1-Auster-Paul/pid=8436919?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1|title=Booklist review: 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster|last=Seaman|first=Donna|date=November 15, 2016|via=Booklist|access-date=November 3, 2018|archive-date=August 6, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200806061708/https://www.booklistonline.com/4-3-2-1-Auster-Paul/pid=8436919?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1|url-status=live}}</ref>

The English critic [[James Wood (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>{{cite magazine |last1=Wood |first1=James |title=Shallow Graves |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/30/shallow-graves |magazine=The New Yorker |access-date=1 May 2024 |date=22 November 2009 |archive-date=April 4, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240404214134/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/30/shallow-graves |url-status=live }}</ref>

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