Paul Auster

Paul Benjamin Auster (Newark, New Jersey, February 3, 1947) is an American writer, screenwriter, and film director. His texts have been translated into more than forty languages.He was named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of France in 1992 and received the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters in 2006.

His work stands out for containing absurdism, existentialism, detective fiction, and the search for meaning and personal identity.

Biography

Childhood

Paul Benjamin Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey, United States, to a middle-class Jewish family of Polish descent. His parents were Queenie and Samuel Auster. He was introduced to literature at an early age thanks to the library of an uncle of his, who was a translator. He started writing at the age of 12.

Training

Between 1965 and 1967 he studied French, Italian, and English literature at Columbia University in New York. He began translating French authors such as Jacques Dupin and André du Bouchet. As part of the job he traveled to Paris, where he returned in 1967 to avoid going to the Vietnam War. In the French capital he tried to work in the cinema, although he failed the entrance exam to the Institute of Higher Studies in Cinematography (IDHEC). He wrote scripts for silent films that were never filmed, but were later embodied in The Book of Illusions. In his youth he translated French poetry and wrote his own poems.

During the next ten years he wrote articles for magazines and began the first versions of The Country of Last Things and The Palace of the Moon, a semibiographical novel. He worked on a tanker and returned to France where he stayed for three years (1971-1974) thanks to his translations of Stéphane Mallarmé, Jean-Paul Sartre and Georges Simenon. During that time he conducted an important interview with Edmond Jabès (collected in Takeoff Runway ). There, too, he wrote poetry and one-act plays.

Career

In 1976 Auster wrote his first novel: The Pressure Play, a kind of crime novel in the classic style of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet under the pseudonym "Paul Benjamin", with which he earned little editorial success. Shortly after divorcing fellow writer Lydia Davis —with whom he had a son named Daniel Auster—, his father's death provided him with a small inheritance that got him out of financial trouble and inspired him to write The Invention of loneliness.

In the following years he met the novelist Siri Hustvedt, whom he married in 1981 and with whom he had his first daughter: Sophie Auster. Between 1986 (the year City of Glass was published) and 1994 (the year Mr. Vertigo was published) Auster published the novels The Palace of the Moon and Leviathan; she obtaining the Médicis Prize in 1993 for this last novel. In 1995 she wrote and co-directed with director Wayne Wang the independent films Cigars and Neighbour's Smoke , based on her short story "The Tale of Auggie Wren." Subsequently, he wrote and directed solo Heridas de amor (1998).

He returned to the novel with Timbuktu (1999), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Night of the Oracle (2004) and with Brooklyn Follies (2005). In 2006 he received the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature and that same year he published Viajes por el Scriptorium and began what would be his second film as director: The Inner Life of Martin Frost . In 2008 he published A Man in the Dark..

Ideology

Auster is a defender of freedoms and refuses to visit countries "that do not have democratic laws." He has refused to visit China and refused —in protest against the more than one hundred journalists and writers who had been imprisoned— the invitation he was given to Turkey for the publication there of his book Winter's Diary. He heads the group of writers opposed to the Donald Trump government in the United States.

Analysis of Auster's work

Themes

Auster is, par excellence, the writer of chance and contingency. Because he does not believe in causality, Auster pursues bifurcations that arise from errors or seemingly innocuous events in everyday life. The latter happens in The New York Trilogy, in Music of Chance and, above all, in Leviathan, especially in its central scene. Illness, mime in the description of stationery objects and metaliterature are recurring hallmarks that occur in his work.

Style

Auster's style is apparently simple, thanks to his work and knowledge of poetry, but still hides a complex narrative architecture composed of digressions, metafiction, stories within a story and mirages (as in his short story "The Tale of Auggie Wren"). He existentially describes loss, dispossession, attachment to money, wandering and also questions identity, especially in The New York trilogy, in which one of his characters (who is not the narrator) is named after him; in Leviathan , in which the narrator has his initials (Peter Aaron) and meets a woman named Iris (anagram of his wife Siri his); or in The Night of the Oracle, where a character is called Trause (anagram of Auster).

Criticism

Auster has been criticized on several occasions for his abuse of chance in his work, something he defended against in the interviews contained in the book Dossier Paul Auster.

Influences

In his beginnings, Auster was influenced by several authors, something he himself has spoken about in this regard:

"Kafka and Beckett. They both had a big impact on me. Beckett's influence was so strong that I almost couldn't get out of it. Among the poets I was very attracted by contemporary French poetry and by American objectivists, particularly George Oppen, who became my friend; also the German poet Paul Celan, who in my opinion is the best post-war poet in any language. Of the classic poets, were Hölderlin and Leopardi, the essays of Montaigne and Don Quixote, of Cervantes, which remains a great source of inspiration for me. »

Work

Novels

• Pressure judge (Squeeze Play, 1982), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Anagrama in 2006. Signed under Paul Benjamin's pseudonym.
• The country of the last things (In The Country of Last Things, 1987), trad. de M.a Eugenia Ciocchini, published by Edhasa in 1989 and by Anagrama in 2006.
• The Palace of the Moon (Moon Palace, 1989), trad. de Maribel de Juan, published by Anagrama in 1990.
• The music of chance (The Music of Chance, 1990), trad. de Maribel de Juan, published by Anagrama in 1991.
• Leviathan (Leviathan, 1992), trad. de Maribel de Juan, published by Anagrama in 1993.
• Mr. Vertigo (Mr. Vertigo, 1994), trad. de Maribel de Juan, published by Anagrama in 1995.
• Timbuktu (Timbuktu, 1999), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Anagrama in 1999.
• The book of illusions (The Book of Illusions, 2002), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Anagrama in 2003.
• The night of the oracle (Oracle Night, 2003), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Anagrama in 2004.
• Brooklyn Follies (The Brooklyn Follies, 2005), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Anagrama in 2006.
• Travel through the Scriptorium (Travels in the Scriptorium, 2006), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Anagrama in 2007.
• A man in the dark (Man in the Dark, 2008), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Anagrama in 2008.
• Invisible (Invisible, 2009), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Anagrama in 2009.
• Sunset Park (Sunset Park, 2010), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Anagrama in 2010.
• 4 3 2 1 (4 3 2 1, 2017), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Seix Barral in 2017.

The New York Trilogy (1985-6)

• Crystal City (City of Glass, 1985), trad. de Maribel de Juan, published by Anagrama in 1997.
• Ghostbusters (Ghosts, 1986), trad. de Maribel de Juan, published by Anagrama in 1997.
• Room closed (The Locked Room, 1986), trad. de Maribel de Juan, published by Anagrama in 1997.

Stories

• Auggie Wren's Christmas Story (Auggie Wren's Christmas Story, 1990), trad. by Ana Nuño López, published by Lumen in 2003.

Poetry

• Disappearances: poems, 1970-1979 (Disappearances: Selected Poems, 1988), trad. de Jordi Doce, published by Editorial Pre-Textos in 1996.
• Take off. Poems and essays 1970-1979 (Groundwork: Autobiographical Writings, 1979-2012, 1991), trad. by Jordi Doce, published by Anagrama in 1998.
• Complete poetry (Collected Poems, 2007), trad. by Jordi Doce, published by Seix Barral in 2012.

Theatrical works

• Escondite (Hide and Seek, 2000).
• Laurel and Hardy go to heaven (Laurel and Hardy Go To Heaven, 2000).

Essays

• Why Write? (1996). Not translated into Spanish.
• Experiments with the truth (2001), trad. de M.a Eugenia Ciocchini, Justo Navarro & Damián Alou, published by Anagrama in 2001.
• The immortal flame of Stephen Crane (Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane, 2021), trad. by Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Seix Barral in 2021.
• A country bathed in blood (2023), published by Seix Barral. [1]

Nonfiction (memoirs, autobiographies)

• The invention of solitude (The Invention of Solitude, 1982), trad. de M.a Eugenia Ciocchini, published by Edhasa in 1990 and by Anagrama in 2006.
• The art of hunger (The Art of Hunger, 1992), trad. by Ma Eugenia Ciocchini, published by Edhasa in 1992.
• The red notebook (The Red Notebook, 1993), trad. de Justo Navarro, published by Anagrama in 1994.

• Jumping Kill: Chronicle of Early Failure (Hand to Mouth, 1997), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Anagrama in 1998.
• I thought my father was God: Veridic tales of American life (I Thought My Father Was God and Other True Tales from NPR's National Story Project, 2001), trad. de Cecilia Ceriani, published by Anagrama in 2002.
• The story of my writing machine (The Story of My Typewriter, 2002), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Anagrama in 2002.
• Winter Journal (Winter Journal, 2012), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Anagrama in 2012.
• Report of the interior (Report from the Interior, 2013), trad. de Benito Gómez Ibáñez, published by Anagrama in 2013.
• Here and now. Letters 2008-2011 (Here and Now: Letters, 2008-2011, 2013), trad. by Benito Gómez Ibáñez & Javier Calvo, published by Anagrama & Mondadori in 2013.

Filmography

• Cigarettes (Smoke1995)
• Humos of the neighbor (Blue In The Face1995)
• Love wounds (Lulu In The Bridge 1998)
• Martin Frost's inner life (The Inner Life of Martin Frost2007)
• The country of the last things (2020)

Auster Bibliography

• 1996: Dossier Paul Auster
• 2003: Part of an accident. 8 illustrators translate to Auster

Awards and distinctions

• Morton Dauwen Zabel Award 1990 (American Academy of Arts and Letters)
• Premio Médicis 1993 (France) to the best novel by a foreign author Leviathan
• Independent Spirit Award 1995 at the best original script by Smoke
• Archbishop Juan de San Clemente 2000 (Santiago de Compostela) Prize for Literary Prize Timbuktu
• Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (France, 1992)
• Premio del Gremio de Libreros de Madrid 2003 al mejor libro del año por The book of illusions
• Prize What to read 2005 by the readers of this magazine The night of the oracle
• Prince of Asturias Award of Letters 2006. In his record the jury emphasizes that Auster has been awarded "for the literary renewal that he has carried out by bringing together the best of American and European traditions, innovating the cinematographic narrative and incorporating into the literature some of his contributions".
• Latvian Prize 2009 (Leon, Spain)
• Doctorate Honoris Causa of the National University of General San Martín 2014.
• Doctorate Honoris Causa of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid