Paul Auster

The cover art of his most recent novel was so terrible I could barely bring myself to read the blurb.

I agree wholeheartedly here.

I was especially disappointed by The Music of Chance. Something about it seemed so leaden in comparison to "City of Glass." Leviathan was just a long "Locked Room." Dull, somber, literal, predictable. I kept asking, Where's the FUN at?

i just read his autobio 'word of mouth' which eh, he's very proud of himself for having had, you know ... jobs ... and shit. well done!

it includes as an appendix his previously suppressed detective novel 'squeeze play', pub. under the name paul benjamin, which is more fun and funnier than his pomo takes on same. in fact it would probably add to the trilogy if it were a tetralogy, really.

So I went and bought Shel Silverstein's Runny Babbit instead.

"Adds" is an odd word here; but the comic book uses the comic medium in a more interesting way than the novel uses the novel medium. The underlying narrative ends up the same.

Another way of putting it might be that it's one of the few "comicizations" that doesn't read like one! It comes off as perfectly suited for the medium it's in.

it seems to kind of disturb the metafictional aspect of the plot, though the metafictional whatsit does nothing interesting at all so you know whatever.

the baseball card game auster designed looks pretty neat, i want to try and play it with someone. i don't really understand baseball, though.

I agree with this. Moon Palace was actually the first Auster I read, and it inspired me to go on to read the Trilogy.

I wouldn't say that the metafictional stuff does nothing interesting. I think it adds to the atmosphere of Ben Katchor-esque, low-rent, NYC-existential noir - said atmosphere being the novels' greatest accomplishment.

he continually repeats himself and the meta tropes are way old hat, but i think he can still write, and find him infinitely more enjoyable than other middlebrow writers who rewrite the same stuff alla time a la murakami. i quite liked the one about the dude who destroys the only copies of his films, and i am embarrassed to say i was genuinely moved by 'timbuktu,' the one told from the point of view of a homeless dude's dog.

i think i like his devotion to the idea that we're controlled by weird coincidences we can't even begin to understand.

This weekend, read a compilation of true-life stories from NPR listeners, a project that Auster initiated and edited into book form.

Enjoyed it all very much, except the last section of 'Meditations', which rambled like a drunk at a party who's clapped his hand on your shoulder and won't let you go. Genuinely affecting submissions of coincidences and touches of the divine.

Was it David Mazzucchelli who did the comic version of CoG? WAS IT??? (what, I don't know how to use google anymore?)

Google says yes.

Around these parts, the thing about Auster is that he fills a need. If he didn't exist, we'd have to invent him. And increasingly,
we do.

James Wood rips Auster another one:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/30/091130crbo_books_wood?currentPage=all

I always thought I didn't have much time for Wood as a critic but I have to say I agree absolutely with him here. Auster gets away with murder.

Kind of makes me feel a bit relieved, as I've felt similar diminishing returns with the Auster I've read.

yea i usually loathe wood but hes otm here

is this guy more popular abroad or am I just more in the dark than I think I am? I had never heard of him until I read that NYorker article earlier this week.

I found the NY Trilogy a bit Jewish.

i remember being 17 or so and reading the first half of leviathan thinking it was so fuckin brilliant

"is this guy more popular abroad or am I just more in the dark than I think I am?"

he's pretty well known in the u.s! and pretty popular too.

he's always been big with hip college kids and hip 20 and 30somethings. since the 80's at least. plus, people know him from the movies smoke and blue in the face.

yea j0hn sorry yr just in the dark :(

haha my wife loathes the new york trilogy so much

this is a pretty amazing takedown.

did not realise he used to be married to lydia davis!

Indeed!

Some of their best work (Davis's Break It Down and Auster's The Invention of Solitude) seem to have sprung from their tumult.

funny that they were both reviewed by james wood w/in a few weeks (he likes lydia davis a lot more)

B-b-but what does he think of Siri Hustvedt?

I always thought I didn't have much time for Wood as a critic but I have to say I agree absolutely with him here. Auster gets away with murder.
That piece was great, thanks. Anytime reading or trying to read either of those guys has finally resulted in a payoff.

Auster makes a serious play for the Bad Sex Award in his upcoming novel Sunset Park:

“The first time they went to bed together, she assured him she was no longer a virgin. He took her at her word, but when the moment came for him to enter her, she pushed him away and told him he mustn’t do that. The mommy hole was off-limits, she said, absolutely forbidden to male members. Tongues and fingers were acceptable but not members, under no condition at any time, not ever… Did he understand? Yes, he understood but what was the alternative? The funny hole, she said. Angela had told him all about it and he had to admit that from a strictly biological and medical standpoint it was the one truly safe form of birth control in the world. For six months now he has abided by her wishes, restricting all member penetration to her funny hole and putting nothing more than tongue and fingers in her mommy hole.”

http://abcofreading.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-paul-auster-should-have-stopped.html

The mommy hole was off-limits

please every ILE regular who might enjoy this as much as I, find this thread in time

Lord hear my prayer

.......

no words

mommy hole vs. daddy daycare

in a steel cage

I knew a guy who referred to the vagina as the 'ha-ha hole'

obv. because it's polite for a child to refer to it as such but I like to imagine that when he finally entered one he chortled "ha-HA!"

Lord hear my prayer

In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

woulda preferred "mothering hole" tbf

if anyone has a(n) LRB account i would gratefully read 3000 words trashing auster's latest

http://pastebin.com/ySP2zmRX

thanks!

Christ, Son of Author Paul Auster Charged in Fatal Overdose of 10-Month-Old Daughter

Also:

In 1996, Daniel Auster played a minor role in a notorious nightlife murder case, in which the club promoter Michael Alig and an accomplice killed and dismembered a drug dealer, Andrew Melendez, also known as Angel, and threw his body in the Hudson River.

Mr. Auster pleaded guilty in 1998 to possessing $3,000 that had been stolen from Mr. Melendez and was sentenced to probation. He was not implicated in the killing.

The article describes Siri Hustvedt as his stepmother, which would mean Lydia Davis is his mother.

Yes to all of the above.

I used to run into Paul Auster quite a bit in NYC and talked to him briefly sometimes and once even to SIri but the son never came up for some reason.

Not sure if I understand the story
So this was not an accident?
This guy killed a baby…on purpose?

Could have been some form of negligence. However you slice it, it’s not pretty.

"Wouldn't stop cryin;, so I gave 'er just a little bit," maybe

Ugh

Maybe the baby was digging around and came across heroin and fentanyl and chewed on it. Whatever happened, so damn grim.

Dan is a childhood friend of one of my oldest and closest friends. We hung out a bunch of times before the Angel menendez thing. He seemed to have eventually turned his life around and my friend reconnected with him while his gf was pregnant with the baby. He was so happy.

They spoke after her death and he was distraught. Said it was SIDS. This is all so horrific and fucked up. I think it was almost certainly accidental ingestion knowing what I know but fucking hell. And, yeah, his mom is Lydia D.

many x-posts - I sincerely doubt it was on purpose. Horrific regardless though.

I'm sorry. A social worker friend has told me about such things, but gratuitous speculation here, and an accident does seem more likely.

If his mom is Lydia Davis, why does the NYT article focus exclusively on his dad? (I had no idea that Davis and Auster had been married, though I see it was brief.)

Because Auster is more famous than Davis, I imagine.

Yes.

But still.

Just realized I wrote Menendez but obv meant Melendez. Yeah I assume because he’s more famous. Also - he’s written characters that are very obviously based on him and it’s been a very fraught relationship from what I can tell so maybe that’s why? And no need for sorries. I haven’t seen the guy since the late 90s and then only socially etc. It’s just an awful situation and my friend is so upset. I can’t stop thinking about it though. It’s just horrific.

Daniel Auster is dead of an overdose:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/nyregion/daniel-auster-dead-arrest-overdose.html

awful

Ugh

Yeah. The details surrounding it are fucking awful too but not anything I could/would share. Just unimaginably tragic.

And now the man himself.

As always with Auster, profound coincidences:

Amidst police violence at Columbia, CUNY and UCLA, the news that my friend Paul Auster has died. In 1968 he was one of the Columbia student occupiers, fleetingly captured by British filmmaker Peter Whitehead in a documentary called The Fall pic.twitter.com/9G98p0hTM1

— Hari Kunzru (@harikunzru) May 1, 2024

It’s weird to me that all the obits describe him as the literary avatar of Brooklyn. I’ve only read a handful of his books but Brooklyn as setting or theme is not something that I would point to.

It’s kind of superficial, but I think Smoke and Blue in the Face, combined with his physical presence in Park Slope, tie him to Brooklyn. I mean, Blue in the Face was practically a tourism-board sponsored film, emerging at the same time as Brooklyn Brewing and the rise of Williamsburg and all those things that made it acceptable for a maturing consumer to live there.

I’ve never heard of those movies but that makes sense.

I don't remember much about Music of Chance (something to do with trimming hedges, or I might be getting it confused with The Restraint of Beasts?) but I definitely remember the brutal ending.

New York Stories is "a good one, a boring one, a confusing one"

Ah OK now I get some of the IG stories I was seeing last night. I'm still so angry at his son. Sucks though. RIP.

Never specifically thought of him as Brooklyn, more just NYC. When I think Brooklyn writers, I think Jonathan Lethem.

Anyway, RIP. In my college and post-college years, Auster loomed very large for me. I eventually found him a bit repetitive, but City of Glass remains all time for me. I should reread.