Paul Auster Biography

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Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947, Newark, New Jersey) is a Brooklyn-based author. He is probably most famous for his collection of three tenuously connected novels, The New York Trilogy.

He is also a translator, poet, editor, contributor, script writer and more recently film director.

Biography

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

He married his second wife, writer Siri Hustvedt, in 1981. Previously, Auster was married to the acclaimed writer Lydia Davis. He is the father of Daniel and Sophie.

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

Writing

Auster's first novel was a detective novel called Squeeze Play and was written under the pseudonym Paul Benjamin (Benjamin is his middle name).

Auster gained renown for a series of three experimental detective stories published collectively as The New York Trilogy (1987). 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, creating his own distinctively postmodern form in the process. The search for identity and personal meaning has permeated Auster's later publications.

Later Auster's works 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, Leviathan). Auster's heroes often find themselves obliged to work as part of someone else's inscrutable and larger-than-life schemes.

Not all criticism has been positive. B.R.Myers attacked Auster in "A Reader's Manifesto." In a review in the 11 October 2006 edition of the TLS, Deborah Friedell described Travels in the Scriptorium as "a slim homage to the novels of Paul Auster" [1].

He was awarded the 2006 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, received in previous years by Günter Grass, Arthur Miller and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Published works

Fiction

• 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 (1992)
  
• Auggie Wren's Christmas Story (1992)
  
• Mr. Vertigo (1994)
  
• Timbuktu (1999)
  
• The Book of Illusions (2002)
  
• Oracle Night (2004)
  
• The Brooklyn Follies (2005)
  
• Travels in the Scriptorium (UK 2006, USA 2007) (Denmark 2006)
  

Poetry

• Disappearances: Selected Poems (1988)
  
• Ground Work (1990)
  
• Selected Poems (1998)
  
• Collected Poems (2004)
  

Screenplays

• Smoke (1995)
  
• Blue in the Face (1995)
  
• Lulu on the Bridge (1998)
  
• The Inner Life of Martin Frost (2006)
  

Essays, memoirs, and autobiographies

• The Art of Hunger (1982)
  
• The Invention of Solitude (1982)
  
• The Red Notebook (1995)
  
• Why Write (1996)
  
• Hand to Mouth (1997)
  
• Collected Prose: Autobiographical Writings, True Stories, Critical Essays, Prefaces, and Collaborations with Artists (2005) (includes The Invention of Solitude and Hand to Mouth)
  

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 History Project) (2001)
  

Translations

• A Tomb for Anatole, by Stéphane Mallarmé (1983)
  
• Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians (1998) (translation of Pierre Clastres' ethnography Chronique des indiens Guayaki)
  
• The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert (2005)
  

Misc

• The Story of My Typewriter (2002)
  

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 1993, a movie adaptation of The Music of Chance was released.

In 1994 City of Glass was adapted as a Graphic Novel by David Mazzucchelli (artist) and Paul Karasik.

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.

External links

• Paul Auster (The Definitive Website), Stuart Pilkington's website about Paul Auster, first set up in 2000, with comprehensive information on the author's work and life
  
• Reflections on the Work of Paul Auster, California Literary Review
  
• Weblog about Paul Auster, news and more, News site, first site in Spain dedicated to Brooklyn's author.
  
• A fragment of 'Auggie Wren's Christmas Story' ilustrated by Isol -in spanish
  
• Author interview at failbetter.com
  
• Interview with 3:AM Magazine
  
• 1987 Audio Interview with Paul Auster by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio
  
• Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles.
  
• A review of 'The Country of last things' in a urban key -in spanish
  
• Faber and Faber - Paul Auster's UK publisher
  
• The searcher - The Guardian, May 29, 1999.
  
• I want to tell you a story 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"
  
  • In-depth profile and interview.
    
  
  
• 2004 Times Online article
  
• Summary of "The Book of Illusions"
  
• Academic Article: 'Regeneration through Creativity' - The Frontier in Paul Auster's Moon Palace
  
• Condalmo (discussion of "Travels in the Scriptorium" and other Auster works) (he is also doing a give away of "Travels" at his site)
  

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