Paul Auster

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Auster, Paul (1947–), born in Newark, N.J., and educated at Columbia University, worked in relative obscurity until the publication of his “New York Trilogy”—City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986), and The Locked Room (1987), all postmodern detective novels. The Locked Room is the least abstract and most accessible of the trio. Auster's vision of humanity is dark, seen best perhaps in In the Country of Last Things (1988). Here New York City and surroundings have become a dystopia, a horrible place where shills lure people to human abattoirs, where the New York Public Library, deserted, cold, and dark, provides shelter for a couple who meet there by chance and fall in love. Circumstances defeat them—even the weather has gone crazy, with snow in July, a hint of nuclear winter. Moon Palace (1989) has its protagonist driving from New York to the Far West to unearth an inheritance whose location has only been roughly described to him. Leviathan (1992) chronicles Peter Aaron's attempt to tell the truth (ultimately, for the FBI) about his best friend Benjamin Sachs, who lately blew himself to bits constructing a bomb. Aaron also seeks to discover his friend's true identity. It is the story of a deep friendship within which are elements of betrayal. Both friends are writers; Aaron is interrupted in his writing by an FBI agent who has solved the mystery of Sachs's identity. Aaron then hands over his manuscript, which we have been reading, to the agent. In Mr. Vertigo (1994) Walter Rawley tells mostly his boyhood story as he remembers it in old age. The story begins in 1924. Walter, like Huck Finn, is from Missouri and speaks a modern version of Huck's dialect. He is a similar free spirit, having not a mean father but a bad uncle. He is taken off the uncle's hands by Mr. Yehudi, a sort of Zen showman, who promises to teach Walt to fly. This is accomplished in three years in an arduous 33‐step series of trials, including live burial. Walt learns to levitate and becomes famous as Walt the Wonder Boy. As the result of an ugly accident, he develops terrible headaches after each levitation and has to give up this gift. His mean Uncle Slim waylays him and Mr. Yehudi, stealing all their money. Mr. Yehudi, suffering from cancer, kills himself. Walt then hunts down and kills the uncle by making him drink strychnine. Walt goes through many other picaresque adventures before washing up in Wichita. The novel is redolent of the spirit of the times. At the end, Walt believes we all have it in us to fly—you let your self evaporate, and then you lift off. Auster published prolifically in the 1990s, including the novels Blue in the Face (1995), Smoke (1995), Lulu on the Bridge (1998), and Timbuktu (1999). His novel The Book of Illusions appeared in 2002, and Oracle Night in 2004. “Like so.” The Invention of Solitude (1982) is a memoir of his dead father, seeking to rescue him “from vanishing completely.” Disappearances: Selected Poems appeared in 1989. The Art of Hunger (1991) collects essays.

Auster, Paul (1947– ), American novelist, screenwriter, poet, and playwright, born in Newark, New Jersey, and educated at Columbia University. He worked as a translator, caretaker, switchboard operator, editor, and cook on an oil tanker. Auster's early one-act plays were influenced by Pinter and Beckett. He gained critical recognition with his New York Trilogy (City of Glass, 1985; Ghosts, 1986; and The Locked Room, 1987), which uses the conventions of the detective novel to investigate urban isolation, identity, and the link between language and meaning. Further examination of the possibilities and limitations of fictional genres followed with the dystopian fable In the Country of Last Things (1987), and Moon Palace (1989), which links a picaresque plot to developments in American history. The Music of Chance (1991, filmed by Philip Haas, 1993) is an allegory of two men forced to build a wall. The Book of Illusions (2002) is a tragi-comic account of a grief-stricken widower's obsession with the shadowy world of a silent movie comedian. An adaptation of his own short tale, Auggie Wren's Christmas Story, began Auster's collaboration with the director Wayne Wang. In 1995 they produced two films: Smoke (with a script by Auster) and Blue in the Face (directed by Wang and Auster).

Paul Auster , 1947–, American writer, b. Newark, N.J. After publishing four volumes of poetry, he wrote his first novel, Squeeze Play (1982). A compelling storyteller, Auster became well known for the short novels of The New York Trilogy — City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986), and The Locked Room (1986)—tautly surreal variations on the urban detective story. Written with great clarity, extremely stylized, filled with elements of symbolism and the surreal as well as metaphysical and epistemological concerns; employing cinematic plots and pulp novel conventions; displaying a fascination with doppelgängers and coincidences; and featuring a sharply contemporary, postmodern sensibility, his later novels include Moon Palace (1989); The Music of Chance (1991); Leviathan (1992); Timbuktu (1999), a tale of dog and master told from the dog's point of view; The Book of Illusions (2002); Oracle Night (2003); The Brooklyn Follies (2005); Travels in the Scriptorium (2007); Man in the Dark (2008); Invisible (2009), in which the central character learns about love from several people in varying situations, including an incestuous affair with his sister; and Sunset Park (2010). Auster is also an essayist, translator, screenwriter, and memoirist.

Bibliography: See his memoir, The Invention of Solitude (1982, repr. 2007); C. Springer, A Paul Auster Sourcebook (2001); studies by D. Barone, ed. (1995), A. Varvogli (2001), I. Shiloh (2002), H. Bloom, ed. (2004), M. Brown (2007), B. Martin (2008), and J. Peacock (2010).