Paul Auster

[oceanflower]

Morty mentioned that he liked the author Paul Auster. Has anyone else read him? What has he written?

[eflo]

I read The Book of Illusions. A very good book indeed. My work also had another book that was illustrated by Auster, Auggie Wren's Christmas Story, also a good book.

[Morty]

Yes Book of Illusions was an excellent book, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. As a result of that pleasure I bought his book Oracle Night which sounds very interesting though I have yet to read it. I also gave my father, who also enjoyed Book of Illusions, another one of Auster's books for Christmas.

[Quinn]

I just found this thread using the search function.

Auster is one of my favourite writers. Why? Er, I don't know that I can answer that! The only fiction book of his that I have not read is Follies. As soon as it is out in pb, I'll be all over it like a rash.

Oracle is a great book - I urge you to put it at the top of your tbr pile.

[bloodie]

I read The New York Trilogy this past July when I was flying home to Singapore from NYC on one of those awful stopover-in-Tokyo redeye flights.

I liked it, but if I have to admit to understanding anything of it I'll need to reread.

[Quinn]

I'd recommend re-reading it. I've read it quite a number of times. There always seems to be something new or something forgotten that pops up in these re-readings.

[blp]

Your Avatar's from the cover of NY Trilogy isn't it, Quinn?

Sorry, but I think Auster's really patchy. The book I've liked most by him was 'The Invention of Solitude', an autobiographical book, which I found incredibly moving. NY Trilogy's pretty good too. But I couldn't stand 'Leviathan', a book that spins its plot largely out of the work of the French artist Sophie Calle, on whom Auster bases a character in the book. Calle's work is about spying on people and tracking them and about blurring fact and fiction, and, given the way some of his books work, you'd think Auster would be sympathetic. Instead, he depicts the Calle character as a dysfunctional idiot whose prying into other people's lives creates all the problems in the book - much as Pandora's feminine curiosity created all the evil in the world. The link is fairly explicit: referring to Calle's address book piece, in which she created a profile of the owner of a lost address book by calling up the people listed in it, Auster writes, 'She opened the book and out flew the devil.' He even has his protagonist (clearly based on him) have a relationship with the Calle character, whom he relievedly dumps when he meets a blond bombshell (seemingly based on Auster's real wife Siri Hustvedt). And after that, the book basically goes nowhere. It's really dumb and sexist in such a stupid, by numbers, Laura Mulvey gonna git ya kind of way that for a while I wondered if he was doing it on purpose. But no, I don't think so. I think it's just dumb.

[Quinn]

Interesting post, blp.

I’m not familiar with Calle’s work, so this is something I will now have to investigate. It’s been some time since I read Leviathan, but I thought it was ok. I will have to re-read it some time, armed with this new information.

Yes, my avatar is from the NYT cover.

Q.

[blp]

The Calle/Auster nexus continued after the book. Calle did a show based on references to her in the novel. When he described a piece of her work, she pinned up the pages and displayed the work itself. Occasionally he invented a new piece of work and she made versions of these too. Then she asked him to suggest another artwork for her to do - and he played along, but always sniffily, as if he thought she was acting stupid.

Yes, do have a look. I think she's great. Just did a search that didn't turn up much, but here's this:

http://www.sophiecalle.net/wrtings.htm

[Quinn]

Thanks blp, I'll take a look.