Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American writer and film director. 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 ''The Brooklyn Follies'' is a 2005 novel by Paul Auster. Plot summary 59-year-old Nathan Glass returns to Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York after his wife has left him. He is recovering from lung cancer and is looking for "a quiet place to die". ...

'' (2005), ''

Invisible Invisibility is the state of an object that cannot be seen. An object in this state is said to be ''invisible'' (literally, "not visible"). The phenomenon is studied by physics and perceptual psychology. Since objects can be seen by light in ...

'' (2009), '' Sunset Park'' (2010), '' Winter Journal'' (2012), and '' 4 3 2 1'' (2017). His books have been translated into more than forty languages.

Early life

Paul Auster was born in

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area."At home with Siri and Paul"
, ''

The Jerusalem Post ''The Jerusalem Post'' is a broadsheet newspaper based in Jerusalem, founded in 1932 during the British Mandate of Palestine by Gershon Agron as ''The Palestine Post''. In 1950, it changed its name to ''The Jerusalem Post''. In 2004, the paper ...

'', 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." to

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

ish middle-class parents of Polish descent, Queenie (née Bogat) and Samuel Auster. He is the first cousin of the late political writer Lawrence Auster, with whom he attended high school and university, two years apart. He grew up in South Orange, New Jersey, and Newark, and graduated from

Columbia High School Columbia High School may refer to: *Columbia High School (Huntsville, Alabama) *Columbia High School (Georgia) *Columbia High School (Florida) *Columbia High School (Idaho) *Columbia High School (Illinois) *Columbia High School (Mississippi), a Mis ...

in Maplewood.

Career

After graduating from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

with B.A. and M.A. degrees in 1970, he moved to Paris, France, where he earned a living translating French literature. Since returning to the United States in 1974, he has published poems, essays, and novels, as well as translations of French writers such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Joseph Joubert. Paul Auster, Salman Rushdie and Shimon Peres

Paul Auster, Salman Rushdie and Shimon Peres

Following his acclaimed debut work, a memoir titled '' The Invention of Solitude'', Auster gained renown for a series of three loosely connected stories published collectively as '' The New York Trilogy''. Although these books allude to the detective genre, they are not conventional detective stories organized around a mystery and a series of clues. Rather, he uses the detective form to address

existential Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...

questions of identity, space, language, and literature creating his own distinctively postmodern (and critique of postmodernist) form in the process. According to Auster, "...the ''Trilogy'' grows directly out of ''The Invention of Solitude''." 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 people 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 Smoke is a suspension of airborne particulates and gases emitted when a material undergoes combustion or pyrolysis, together with the quantity of air that is entrained or otherwise mixed into the mass. It is commonly an unwanted by-produc ...

'' (which won him the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay) and ''

Blue in the Face ''Blue in the Face'' is a 1995 American comedy film directed by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster. It stars Harvey Keitel leading an ensemble cast, including Giancarlo Esposito, Roseanne Barr, Michael J. Fox, Lily Tomlin, Victor Argo, Mira Sorvino, Lo ...

''. Auster's more recent works, from '' Oracle Night'' (2003) to ''4 3 2 1'' (2017), have also met with critical acclaim. He was on the

PEN American Center PEN America (formerly PEN American Center), founded in 1922 and headquartered in New York City, is a nonprofit organization that works to defend and celebrate free expression in the United States and worldwide through the advancement of liter ...

Board of Trustees from 2004 to 2009, and Vice President during 2005 to 2007. In 2012, Auster said in an interview that he would not visit

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

, in protest of its treatment of journalists. The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan replied: "As if we need you! Who cares if you come or not?" 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". One of Auster's more recent book, ''A Life in Words,'' was published in October 2017 by Seven Stories Press. It brought together three years of conversations with the Danish scholar I.B. Siegumfeldt about each one of his works, both fiction and non-fiction. It has been considered a primary source for understanding Auster's approach to his works. Auster is 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.

Themes

Much of the early scholarship about Auster's work saw links between it and the theories of such French writers as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and others. Auster himself has denied these influences and has asserted in print that "I've read only one short essay by Lacan, the 'Purloined Letter,' in the ''Yale French Studies'' issue on poststructuralism—all the way back in 1966." Other scholars have seen influences in Auster's work of the American transcendentalists of the nineteenth century, as exemplified by Henry David Thoreau and

Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champ ...

. The transcendentalists believed that the symbolic order of civilization has separated us from the natural order of the world, and that by moving into nature, as Thoreau did, as he described in ''

Walden ''Walden'' (; first published in 1854 as ''Walden; or, Life in the Woods'') is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part ...

'', it would be possible to return to this natural order.

Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wid ...

, Samuel Beckett, and

Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that t ...

have also had a strong influence on Auster's writing. Auster has specifically referred to characters from Poe and Hawthorne in his novels, for example William Wilson in ''City of Glass'' or Hawthorne's Fanshawe in ''The Locked Room'', both from '' The New York Trilogy''. Paul Auster's recurring themes include: * coincidence * frequent portrayal of an ascetic life * a sense of imminent disaster * an obsessive writer as central character or narrator * loss of the ability to understand * loss of language * loss of money – having a lot, but losing it little by little without earning any more * depiction of daily and ordinary life * failure * absent father * writing and story telling, metafiction *

intertextuality Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text, either through deliberate compositional strategies such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche or parody, Gerard Genette (1997) ''Paratexts'p.18/ref>Hal ...

* American history * American space

Reception

"Over the past twenty-five years," opined

Michael Dirda Michael Dirda (born 1948) is a book critic for the ''Washington Post''. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Career Having studied at Oberlin College for his undergraduate degree in 1970, Dirda took an M.A. in 1974 a ...

in ''

The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...

'' in 2008, "Paul Auster has established one of the most distinctive niches in contemporary literature." Dirda also has extolled his loaded virtues in ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'':

Ever since ''City of Glass'', the first volume of his ''New York Trilogy'', Auster has perfected a limpid, confessional style, then used it to set disoriented heroes in a seemingly familiar world gradually suffused with mounting uneasiness, vague menace and possible hallucination. His plots – drawing on elements from suspense stories, existential récit, and autobiography – keep readers turning the pages, but sometimes end by leaving them uncertain about what they've just been through.

Writing about Auster's most recent novel, ''4 3 2 1'', ''Booklist'' critic Donna Seaman remarked:

Auster has been turning readers' heads for three decades, bending the conventions of storytelling, blurring the line between fiction and autobiography, infusing novels with literary and cinematic allusions, and calling attention to the art of storytelling itself, not with cool, intellectual remove, but rather with wonder, gratitude, daring, and sly humor. ... Auster's fiction is rife with cosmic riddles and rich in emotional complexity. He now presents his most capacious, demanding, eventful, suspenseful, erotic, structurally audacious, funny, and soulful novel to date. ... Auster is conducting 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. ... A paean to youth, desire, books, creativity, and unpredictability, it is a four-faceted bildungsroman and an ars poetica, in which Auster elucidates his devotion to literature and art. He writes, 'To combine the strange with the familiar: that was what Ferguson aspired to, to observe the world as closely as the most dedicated realist and yet to create a way of seeing the world through a different, slightly distorting lens.' Auster achieves this and much more in his virtuoso, magnanimous, and ravishing opus.

The English critic James Wood, however, offered Auster little praise, criticizing his "Clichés, borrowed language, bourgeois bêtises... intricately bound up with modern and postmodern literature"; he drew a distinction between Auster- "probably America's best-known postmodern novelist"- and "Beckett, Nabokov, Richard Yates, Thomas Bernhard, Muriel Spark, Don DeLillo, Martin Amis, and David Foster Wallace", who to Wood "have all employed and impaled cliché in their work", where Auster, who "clearly shares this engagement with mediation and borrowedness- hence, his cinematic plots and rather bogus dialogue", "does nothing with cliché except use it". Considering this "bewildering", Wood opines that "Auster is a peculiar kind of postmodernist", going on to question "is he a postmodernist at all?", observing that "Eighty per cent of a typical Auster novel proceeds in a manner indistinguishable from American realism; the remaining twenty per cent does a kind of postmodern surgery on the eighty per cent, often casting doubt on the veracity of the plot". Wood however noted that "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." There are no semantic obstacles, lexical difficulties, or syntactical challenges. The books fairly hum along." He stated that "The reason Auster is not a realist writer, of course, is that his larger narrative games are anti-realist or surrealist." Wood also bemoaned Auster's 'b-movie dialogue', 'absurdity', 'shallow skepticism', 'fake realism' and 'balsa-wood backstories'. Paul Auster John Ashbery BBF 2010 Shankbone

Paul Auster John Ashbery BBF 2010 Shankbone

Personal life

Auster was married to the writer

Lydia Davis Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947) is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, who often writes short (one or two pages long) short stories. Davis has produced several new translations of ...

. They had one son together, Daniel Auster, who was arrested on April 16, 2022, and charged with manslaughter and negligent homicide in the death of his 10-month old infant daughter, who consumed heroin and fentanyl he was using. On April 26, 2022, Daniel, who was found to be in possession of drug paraphernalia, died from an overdose. Auster and his second wife, writer Siri Hustvedt (the daughter of professor and scholar Lloyd Hustvedt), were married in 1981, and they live in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. Together they have one daughter, Sophie Auster. He has said his politics are "far to the left of the Democratic Party" but that he votes Democratic because he doubts a socialist candidate could win. He has described right-wing Republicans as "jihadists" and the election of

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...

as "the most appalling thing I've seen in politics in my life." In September 2009, he signed a petition in support of

Roman Polanski Raymond Roman Thierry Polański , group=lower-alpha, name=note_a ( né Liebling; 18 August 1933) is a French-Polish film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, tw ...

, calling for his release after he was arrested in Switzerland in relation to his 1977 charge for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl.

Awards

*1989 Prix France Culture de Littérature Étrangère for ''The New York Trilogy'' *1990 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...

*1991

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living American citizens. The winner receives US$15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US$5000. Fi ...

finalist for ''The Music of Chance'' *1993 Prix Médicis Étranger for ''Leviathan'' *1996

Bodil Awards The Bodil Awards are the major Danish film awards given by the Danish Film Critics Association. The awards are presented annually at a ceremony in Copenhagen. Established in 1948, it is one of the oldest film awards in Europe. The awards are give ...

– Best American Film: ''

'' *1996

Independent Spirit Award The Independent Spirit Awards (abbreviated Spirit Awards and originally known as the FINDIE or Friends of Independents Awards), founded in 1984, are awards dedicated to independent filmmakers. Winners were typically presented with acrylic glas ...

– Best First Screenplay: ''Smoke'' *1996 John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence *2001

International Dublin Literary Award The International Dublin Literary Award ( ga, Duais Liteartha Idirnáisiúnta Bhaile Átha Chliath), established as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, is presented each year for a novel written or translated into English. ...

longlist for ''Timbuktu'' *2003 Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

*2004 International Dublin Literary Award shortlist for ''The Book of Illusions'' *2005 International Dublin Literary Award longlist for ''Oracle Night'' *2006

Prince of Asturias Award The Princess of Asturias Awards ( es, Premios Princesa de Asturias, links=no, ast, Premios Princesa d'Asturies, links=no), formerly the Prince of Asturias Awards from 1981 to 2014 ( es, Premios Príncipe de Asturias, links=no), are a series of a ...

for Literature *2006 Elected to the

for Literature *2007

Honorary doctor An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...

from the

University of Liège The University of Liège (french: Université de Liège), or ULiège, is a major public university of the French Community of Belgium based in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium. Its official language is French. As of 2020, ULiège is ranked in the 301 ...

*2007 International Dublin Literary Award longlist for ''The Brooklyn Follies'' *2007 Commandeur de l' Ordre des Arts et des Lettres *2008 International Dublin Literary Award longlist for ''Travels in the Scriptorium'' *2009 Premio Leteo (León, Spain). *2010 Médaille Grand Vermeil de la ville de Paris *2010 International Dublin Literary Award longlist for ''Man in the Dark'' *2011 International Dublin Literary Award longlist for ''Invisible'' *2012 International Dublin Literary Award longlist for ''Sunset Park'' *2012 NYC Literary Honors for fiction *2017 Booker Prize Shortlist for "4321"

Published works

Fiction

*''Squeeze Play'' (1984) (Written under pseudonym Paul Benjamin) *'' The New York Trilogy'' (1987) **''City of Glass'' (1985) **''Ghosts'' (1986) **''The Locked Room'' (1986) *'' In the Country of Last Things'' (1987) *'' Moon Palace'' (1989) *'' The Music of Chance'' (1990) *''

Leviathan Leviathan (; he, לִוְיָתָן, ) is a sea serpent noted in theology and mythology. It is referenced in several books of the Hebrew Bible, including Psalms, the Book of Job, the Book of Isaiah, the Book of Amos, and, according to some ...

'' (1992) *'' Mr. Vertigo'' (1994) *''

Timbuktu Timbuktu ( ; french: Tombouctou; Koyra Chiini: ); tmh, label=Tuareg, script=Tfng, ⵜⵏⴱⴾⵜ, Tin Buqt a city in Mali, situated north of the Niger River. The town is the capital of the Tombouctou Region, one of the eight administrativ ...

'' (1999) *'' The Book of Illusions'' (2002) *'' Oracle Night'' (2003) *''

'' (2005) *'' Travels in the Scriptorium'' (2006) *'' Man in the Dark'' (2008) *''

'' (2009) *'' Sunset Park'' (2010) *''Day/Night'' (2013)This reprints both ''Travels in the Scriptorium'' and ''Man in the Dark,'' together in a single volume *'' 4 3 2 1'' (2017) *''Baumgartner'' (2023)

Nonfiction

*'' The Invention of Solitude'' (1982) *''The Art of Hunger'' (1992) *'' The Red Notebook'' (1995) (The Red Notebook was originally printed in Granta (44)). (1993). *''Hand to Mouth'' (1997) *''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) *'' Winter Journal'' (2012) *'' Here and Now: Letters, 2008–2011'' (2013) A collection of letters exchanged with

J. M. Coetzee John Maxwell Coetzee OMG (born 9 February 1940) is a South African–Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in ...

. *'' Report from the Interior'' (2013) *''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)

Poetry

*''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)

Screenplays

*''

'' (1995) *''

'' (1995) *'' Lulu on the Bridge'' (1998) *'' The Inner Life of Martin Frost'' (2007) "The Inner Life of Martin Frost" is a fictional movie that is described in full in Auster's novel ''The Book of Illusions''. It is the only film that the protagonist watches of Hector Mann's later, hidden films. It is the story of a man meeting a girl – an intense relationship with a touch of supernatural elements. Auster later created a real movie of the same name (see "Other Media" section below).

Edited collections

*''The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry'' (1982) *''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)

Translations

*''Fits and Starts: Selected Poems of Jacques Dupin'', translated by Paul Auster, Living Hand Editions, 1974 *"The Uninhabited: Selected Poems of André du Bouchet" (1976) *''Life/Situations'', by

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lit ...

, 1977 (in collaboration with

) *'' A Tomb for Anatole'', by Stéphane Mallarmé (1983) *''Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians'' (1998) (translation of

Pierre Clastres Pierre Clastres (; 17 May 1934 – 29 July 1977) was a French anthropologist, ethnographer, and ethnologist. He is best known for his contributions to the field of political anthropology, with his fieldwork among the Guayaki in Paraguay and h ...

' ethnography ''Chronique des indiens Guayaki'') *''Vicious Circles: Two fictions & "After the Fact"'', by

Maurice Blanchot Maurice Blanchot (; ; 22 September 1907 – 20 February 2003) was a French writer, philosopher and literary theorist. His work, exploring a philosophy of death alongside poetic theories of meaning and sense, bore significant influence on pos ...

, 1999 *''The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert'' (2005)

Miscellaneous

* ''Auggie Wren's Christmas Story'' (1990)A Christmas story that first appeared on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times on December 25, 1990. It led to Auster's collaboration on a film adaptation, “Smoke”. *'' The Story of My Typewriter'' with paintings by Sam Messer (2002) *"The Accidental Rebel" (April 23, 2008: article in New York Times) *"ALONE" (2015) Prose piece from 1969 published in six copies along with "Becoming the Other in Translation" (2014) by Siri Hustvedt. Published by Danish small press Ark Editions

Other media

* 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 David John Mazzucchelli (; born September 21, 1960) is an American comics artist and writer, known for his work on seminal superhero comic book storylines '' Daredevil: Born Again'' and '' Batman: Year One'', as well as for graphic novels in other ...

and Paul Karasik. Auster's friend, noted cartoonist

Art Spiegelman Art Spiegelman (; born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel '' Maus''. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines ''Arcade'' and '' Ra ...

, produced the adaptation. * From 1999 to 2001, Auster was part of

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

's ''"National Story Project"'', a monthly radio show in which, together With NPR correspondent Jacki Lyden, Auster read stories sent in by NPR listeners across America. Listeners were invited to send in stories of "anywhere from two paragraphs to two pages" that "must be true", from which Auster later selected entries, edited them and subsequently read them on the air. Auster read over 4,000 stories submitted to the show, with a few dozen eventually featured on the show and many more anthologized in two 2002 books edited by Auster. * Jazz trumpeter and composer

Michael Mantler Michael Mantler (born August 10, 1943) is an Austrian avant-garde jazz trumpeter and composer of contemporary music. Career: United States Mantler was born in Vienna, Austria. In the early 1960s, he was a student at the Academy of Music and V ...

's 2001 album ''Hide and Seek'' uses words by Auster from the play of the same name. * Paul Auster narrated "Ground Zero" (2004), an audio guide created by the Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva) and

Soundwalk A soundwalk is a walk with a focus on listening to the environment. The term was first used by members of the World Soundscape Project under the leadership of composer R. Murray Schafer in Vancouver in the 1970s. Hildegard Westerkamp, from the same ...

and produced by

, which won the Dalton Pen Award for Multi-media/Audio, (2005),Dalton Pen Communications Awards
. Retrieved September 17, 2009. and was nominated for an

Audie Award The Audie Awards (, rhymes with "gaudy"; abbreviated from ''audiobook''), or simply the Audies, are awards for achievement in spoken word, particularly audiobook narration and audiodrama performance, published in the United States of America. They ...

for best Original Work, (2005).Audio Publishers Association
Retrieved September 17, 2009. * Austrian 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 interact with those of a string ensemble. A film by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster runs throughout the work featuring the cabaret artist and actress Georgette Dee. * 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. * Paul Auster's voice may 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". * On the 2006 album ''

As Smart as We Are As, AS, A. S., A/S or similar may refer to: Art, entertainment, and media * A. S. Byatt (born 1936), English critic, novelist, poet and short story writer * "As" (song), by Stevie Wonder * , a Spanish sports newspaper * , an academic male voice ...

'' by New York band One Ring Zero, Auster wrote the lyrics for the song "Natty Man Blues" based on Cincinnati poet

Norman Finkelstein Norman Gary Finkelstein (; born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist, former professor, and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a g ...

. * In 2006 Paul Auster directed the film '' The Inner Life of Martin Frost'', based on an original screenplay by him. It was shot in Lisbon and Azenhas do Mar and starred

David Thewlis David Wheeler (born 20 March 1963), better known as David Thewlis (), is a British actor, author, director and screenwriter. Thewlis rose to prominence when he starred in the film ''Naked'' (1993), for which he won the Cannes Film Festival Awa ...

, Iréne Jacob, and

Michael Imperioli Michael Imperioli (born March 26, 1966) is an American actor, writer, and musician. He is best known for his role as Christopher Moltisanti in the HBO crime drama ''The Sopranos'' (1999–2007), which earned him the Primetime Emmy Award for Ou ...

as well as Auster's daughter Sophie. Auster provided the narration, albeit

uncredited In general, the term credit in the artistic or intellectual sense refers to an acknowledgment of those who contributed to a work, whether through ideas or in a more direct sense. Credit in the arts In the creative arts, credits are an acknowledg ...

. The film premiered at the European Film Market, as part of the 2007

Berlinale The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festi ...

in Berlin, Germany on February 10, 2007, and opened in New York City on September 7 of the same year. * The lyrics of

Fionn Regan Fionn Regan (born 1981) is an Irish folk musician and singer-songwriter. Born and raised in Bray, Regan came to prominence with the release of his debut studio album, '' The End of History'' in 2006. He had been releasing extended plays for six ...

's 2006 song ''Put A Penny in the Slot'' mention Auster and his novella ''

''. * In the 2008 Russian film ''Плюс один'' (Plus One), the main character is in the process of translating one of Auster's books. * In the 2008 novel ''

To the End of the Land ''To the End of the Land'' (original Hebrew title "Isha Borachat Mi’bsora" – "A Woman Flees a Message") is a 2008 novel by Israeli writer David Grossman depicting the emotional strains that family members of soldiers experience when their ...

'' by

David Grossman David Grossman ( he, דויד גרוסמן; born January 25, 1954) is an Israeli author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages. In 2018, he was awarded the Israel Prize for literature. Biography David Grossman was born i ...

, the bedroom bookshelf of the central IDF soldier character Ofer is described as prominently displaying several Auster titles. * In the 2009 documentary '' Act of God'', Auster is interviewed on his experience of watching another boy struck and killed by lightning when he was 14. * In the 2011 documentary on Charlotte Rampling ''The Look'', Auster meditates on beauty with Charlotte Rampling on his moored tug boat on the Hudson river. *Pedro Almodovar's 2019 movie, "Pain and Glory" ("Dolor y Gloria"), is in many ways an homage to the works of Paul Auster. While Salvador is in his heroin induced stupor, Alberto logs on to his computer. As the camera pans across the desktop screen, we see an icon entitled "Paul Auster." The narrative structure and arc of the film, with its many coincidences (Federico stumbling on to the performance of the play; the discovery, many years later, of Eduardo's painting), are a visual depiction of an Auster novel.

Notes

References

External links

* * *

interview with ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' in May 1999 *
'An Interview with Paul Auster'
interview with '' 3:AM Magazine'' in November 2001
'Dem old Bush blues'
interview with ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' in April 2004
'The Tyrannies and Epiphanies of Chance'
interview in the '' Oxonian Review'' in June 2004
'Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt in conversation'
at the Key West Literary Seminar in September 2007 (audio)
George Dunford interviews Paul Auster
interview with ''Cordite Poetry Review'' in August 2008
'Interview: Paul Auster on His Newest Novel, ''Man in the Dark
interview with ''

Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the cr ...

'' in September 2008
Interview with Auster
discussing '' Man in the Dark'' with George Miller in November 2008 (audio)
'The mechanics of reality'
discussion between Paul Auster and school students in January 2009 (includes audio)
A career evaluation
of Auster and his new memoir at Open Letters Monthly

piece by Auster at ''The Guardian'', November 6, 2006. The subtitle reads: "one of America's greatest living novelists, argues that fiction is 'magnificently useless', but the act of creation and the pleasure of reading are incomparable human joys that we should savour"
Paul Auster
Bio, excerpts, interviews and articles in the archives of the

Prague Writers' Festival The Prague Writers' Festival (PWF) is an annual literary festival in Prague, Czech Republic, taking place every spring since 1991. In 2005 the festival was also held in Vienna. Many of the events are broadcast via the internet. International lite ...

'Dossier – ''The Brooklyn Follies
a collection of essays on Paul Auster's ''The Brooklyn Follies'' (English and French), on ''La Clé des Langues'' *
Paul Auster presents ''Winter journal'' in Barcelona and talks about Mexico, Turkey, Iran and Occupy Wall Street movement, very interesting, book channel Canal-L

How I Became a Writer. An interview with Paul Auster, 2015
Video by Louisiana Channel
Bookworm
Interviews (Audio) with

Michael Silverblatt Michael Silverblatt (born August 6, 1952) is a literary critic and American broadcaster who hosted '' Bookworm'', a nationally syndicated radio program focusing on books and literature, from 1989 to 2022. ''Bookworm'' is broadcast by Los Angeles ...

January 1993October 1999December 2002

Sauli Niinistö & Paul Auster.
An interview conducted in 2017 by the President of Finland. Yleisradio.
Finding aid to the National Story Project records at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Auster, Paul 1947 births Living people 20th-century American poets 21st-century American poets 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American novelists Writers from Newark, New Jersey People from South Orange, New Jersey American crime fiction writers American expatriates in France American male novelists American people of Polish-Jewish descent American male screenwriters Jewish American novelists Jewish American poets Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Independent Spirit Award winners Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Postmodern writers Prix Médicis étranger winners Columbia College (New York) alumni Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres American male poets 20th-century American translators 21st-century American translators American male essayists 20th-century American essayists 21st-century American essayists PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winners Columbia High School (New Jersey) alumni 21st-century American male writers Novelists from New Jersey Film directors from New Jersey Screenwriters from New Jersey Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni 21st-century American Jews