German Joys (Free subscription) | yesterday
For reasons that have never really been clear to me, Paul Auster seems to be Europe's favorite contemporary American writer. Perhaps it's down to his heavy-lidded, writerly good looks, or because his last name means 'oyster' in German, or because...
Conversational Reading (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
Last week I was thinking that Paul Auster's new novel, Invisible , was breaking out of his rut, but James Wood argues no: Paul Auster’s latest book, “Invisible” (Holt; $25), though it has charm and vitality in places, conforms to the Auster model. He also gets into the role of cliche in postmodern fiction (failing, I note, to name-check Gilbert Sorrentino, one of the greatest abusers...
Ill Seen, Ill Said (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
Oh, Paul Auster. You fill me with wonder. Even though you constantly like to remind me that I'm reading a book, that I should not take the words on the page at face value, that you're going to tie me up in knots, I always get sucked in and let you do it. I always fall for your characters, I always love it when you debunk my expectations and hopes. There's a coolness to your approach, but such a warmth...
the hackneyist (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
A Collaborative Show ; Henrik Potter / Surya Buck Curated by ; Alistair Wildblood / Eugenia Ivanissevich Opens ; Friday 11th December 6-9pm Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th December 2-6pm then by appointment 14th-16th December Henrik Potter " he had answered the question by asking another question, and therefore everything remained open, unfinished, to be started again. I lost my way after the first...
The Millions (A Blog About Books) (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
In this week’s New Yorker, James Wood critiques Paul Auster, while his sometime-subject Don DeLillo offers refreshingly offbeat short fiction.
Whisky Prajer (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
Uh-oh . For what it's worth, I think Wood is just about right on the money. However, for some readers (including, at one point , me) Auster's plain-faced sincerity (which Wood finds banal with clichés) is quite charming.
92Y Blog (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
Paul Auster with Michael Wood: Writers At Work Live Interview on September 3, 2002 at the 92nd Street Y.
Flavorwire (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
Invisible , Paul Auster's newest and perhaps most accomplished book, is a suspenseful, psychological query on the natures of art and life, good and evil, and truth and memory. The story begins with Adam Walker, a bright-eyed aspiring poet at Columbia University in 1967, but quickly delves into a four-decade, multi-layered saga full of sexuality, violence, philosophical puzzles, and unpredictable resolutions....
The Guardian Books Blog (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
"At the end of the story, the hints that have been scattered like mouse droppings lead us to the postmodern hole in the book where the rodent got in": James Wood, as you might have guessed, is really not terribly keen on Paul Auster . • How Jason Bourne survived his author, only to be horribly tortured . • On books as an investment (broadly: you never can tell ). • A forensic...
The New Yorker (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
Roger Phaedo had not spoken to anyone for ten years. He confined himself to his Brooklyn apartment, obsessively translating and retranslating the same short passage from Rousseau’s “Confessions.” A decade earlier, a mobster named Charlie Dark had attacked Phaedo and his wife. Phaedo was beaten to . . .
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
Jack Kerouac, William Styron and VS Naipaul among others offer stunning insights into the art of writing, says Jessica Holland Writing is difficult and painful and writers are all a little mad. That's the first impression you get from this fourth anthology of interviews with authors about their art, which are arranged chronologically from William Styron in 1954 to Marilynne Robinson in 2008. "Let's...
AppShopper.com: Price Changes (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
Soundwalk NYC Bronx Hip Hop (EN) 1.2 Category: Travel Price: $1.99 -> Free ( iTunes ) Description: SOUNDWALK BRONX HIP HOP SOUNDWALK Soundwalks are audio tours that use the cityscape as a backdrop for a fiction, like in a movie. You can escort Virginie Ledoyen through a romantic flanerie at the steps of musician Benjamin Biolay’s in Saint-Germain-des-Prés... Paul Auster evokes the...
The Millions (A Blog About Books) (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
Late November brings work of another favorite Madrileño to the forefront. The final book of Javier Marías’s Your Face Tomorrow trilogy, Poison, Shadow, and Farewell, will be published at the end of the month by New Directions. The incomparable Marias will make two New York appearances, a reading at the 92nd St Y (with Paul Auster) [...]
A.V. Club (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
Throughout his career, Paul Auster has invented puzzle-box novels where the puzzle is less in the plot, which often seems to bore him slightly, and more in the construction of the novel itself. It’s common to find an Auster novel where the answers don’t emerge from the storyline or the characters, but from what tense he tells the story in, or the point of view he adopts throughout. His...
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