Paul Auster Talking Books

European Union. That is the summary of the headlines. Now, on BBC News,

it is time for talking Books USA. I M Razia Iqbal, and my guest on

Talking Books USA is the novelist Paul Aster. He is in London to

promote his latest book, an autobiographical worhical wor

known for the New York Trilogy, three this they connected stories

based on the detective form, but an examination of identity and

existentialism. He is also continually drawn to the themes of

chance and fate. From his very first memoir, the invention of

father, father, to his latest witty journal,

an exposition on age and mortality. -- went to a journal.

The port Paul Auster, welcome to Talking Books. Your latest book,

Winter Journal, is written in the winter of your life. I hope you

don't mind me pointing that out. I made that point myself. It is set

on New York. It is about ageing and the physicality of the body in

decline. It is written in second person, which is unusual, because

you tend to write very much in the first person. It is not the first

wanted to ask you why you would draw Timman war again. Well, I will

tell you. I don't think of this book as a memoir at all. It is an

autobiographical book, a book of fragments, as you know, having read

it. To me, and then why is to continue the story. And narrative

that moves chronologically to retire. This book jumps around. I

think a bit more as music, actually. Composed of little

pieces. Now, the second person was an instinctive decision. I did not

question it. But then, as I got into the book, I began reflecting

on why I was writing it in that way. I came to these conclusions. 1, my

life is not interesting at all. I have got nothing momentous to tell

anybody about. Therefore, I think of this book as a way of sharing

with others simply what it means to be alive, in the body, in space.

What it feels like to be alive. The first person, therefore, seems to

if I was announcing a story to the world. But that truly does not

interest me very much. Third person would have been too distant. I have

used to third person, in the Invention of Solitude. It can be

very effective in the right place. But this was not the right place.

What is left his second person, which establishes, I think, a kind

of distance, and at the same time, intimacy. It gave me a chance to

enter into some quiet dialogue with myself. Then I think there is a

subsidiary effect. The in the hands of the reader, second person

automatically draws that person in. It makes him or her feel that it is

a two-way street. Both the Ryder and the read-out participate in

making this book. -- the writer. want to talk to you about intimacy,

and water are trying to do in the book. You look at your body and you

are thinking about the physical body. You are sharing the stories

of your life. But you are also same, this is a quote from the book, but

we are aliens to ourselves. If we have any sense of who we are, it is

only because we live inside the eyes of others. What do you mean by

that? Well, we don't look at ourselves. Except in mirrors, we

almost never see ourselves. We certainly never see ourselves from

behind, except in photographs. We are not in constant touch with how

we look to other people. It is only by my booking into your eyes, and

you are looking into my eyes, that I had the sense that I am here,

really. I can see my legs. I can see my hands. But I certainly

cannot see my face. And the faces what identify as us. So it is

curious. You bought through life not knowing what to look like. You

certainly don't know what to affect his when you're with other people.

Another quote from the book which actually shocked me, even though I

had read a lot of you are the works, no doubt you are flawed and wounded

person, a man who has carried a went with him from the very

beginning. Why else would you spend the whole of your adult life

leading your words onto the page? - - bleeding. That sounds like the

classic tortured writer speaking to himself. My feeling is that all

artists are damaged people. I have slowly come to this conclusion over

many years of experience, not only my own experience but the

experiences of writers and painters and artists that I know. We are the

people for whom the World Is Not live in and Swindin reality as we

know what. -- swimming in a reality. But artists have to create other

worlds. But two in their right mind wants to spend 50 years of a

lifetime sitting alone in a room? Most people don't want to do this,

but writers do. So I think truly happy successful people don't need

to make art. I think the ones to a damaged in one way or another are

the ones who feel the necessity. Your very first book, The Invention

of Solitude, which watched your career, was written in the

aftermath of your father's death. It -- all watched your career. It

is an incredibly difficult book to forget. You had been writing poetry

before that, and I wondered why you felt the need to write that book.

Was it Qatada us -- was it catharsis? My father's death was so

sudden and unexpected. He was only 66, and in perfect health. He never

smoke or drink, he played tennis every day. I thought he would live

to be 90. And we had, it was not a difficult relationship, it was a

strange relationship. A distant one. I describe him in the book. He was

somebody she was not quite there. And it was hard to make connections

with him. There was no hostility towards me at all. And I certainly

did love him. But he was dense, opaque. Losing him like that, so

unexpectedly, filled me with an immense regret. I regret that I

would never be able to talk to him again. All of the things I had been

saving up to speak to him about were born. Thinking that one day

you would have been able to, despite his remoteness? Exactly. I

thought I had to write about him, Elsie would disappear completely.

It was a way to keep him alive a little longer. And that is why I

did it. When I started writing, I had no idea it would be a book. I

was just writing for myself. But it turned into something longer, full

board, and it seemed to be publishable. So I eventually

published it. Your agent, who has represented due since the beginning

of your career, says that the beginning of all your novels are in

that autobiographical work, The Invention of Solitude. Do you think

that is true? No, I don't think that is true at all. But I do think

that is the foundation will work for me. -- Foundation off. The

fiction I have written since these emerging out of a lot of the

preoccupations that are articulated in that book. I picked that book

out of the pile my shop, which I knew I had to read it to prepare

for this interview, a few days after my father died. Oh my

goodness. And I had no idea the book was a meditation on your

relationship with your father. After I finished it, I was thinking

about some things in your work, such as the nature of chance and,

incidents. It really spooked me that that was the first book that I

picked up. I wondered why you were continually drawn to the themes of

chants? It is an indisputable fact that chance is part of what I call

the mechanics of reality. Unexpected things happen all the

time, to everybody. Much of life is about chance. There are very few

necessary facts. I suppose the only one is that once we are born and we

are destined to die. Pretty much everything in between is up for

grabs. I think the thing that I read about in the Red Notebook,

years ago, which I referred to it in a Winter of Journal, is the

experience at the age of 14 of being in a summer camp and going on

a hike the 20 buyers -- 20 boys. We got caught in a lightning and

thunder storm. I was right next to a boy who was killed by a bolt of

lightning. This absolute be changed my life. I think about it every day.

It never goes away. It was my first big lesson in the capriciousness of

life. How unstable everything is. How quickly everything can change,

from one eye blink to another. Here was a 14-year-old boy, happy and

alive, and an instant later he was dead. I have not lived through wars,

pestilence, but this is my war experience. This is, I think, the

kind of thing that saw just go through all the time. I was very

young and it made an enormous impression on me. So if you want to

talk about my philosophy, that is the kernel of the whole thing. That

experience. The idea that you continually go back to looking at

fate, and the route not taken, the whimsy of chance, places you come

up for a lot of people, in the context of being much more of the

European writer. They said you have a European sensibility, more than

an American one. I wonder whether you accept that, at that judgement

imposed on you from the outside? don't really know what people are

talking about, to tell the truth. LAUGHTER. It is better to stop up

your ears and not listen to it. I have always written about America.

America is my country and my subject. I think that the American

writers I'm closest to are the ones from the 19th century, not the 20th

century. People like Hawthorne and Melville are very important to me.

I think that if I work more in line with their eyes, it is more in line

with the questions I am asking. They are the quintessential

American writers. I suppose today they look bizarre, in the context

of contemporary life. I do not know. Tell me what it is about somebody

like Hawthorne, that really makes an impact on you. Is it to do with

the idea of the illusion of writing that is interesting to? I am

thinking about the scarlet letter now, in particular. Why is it that

to trace your own profile, if you like, in terms of writing back to

him? Hawthorne, you see, is involved in philosophical questions.

He is a master psychologist at the same time. These are the things

that strongly to him. His best stories are utterly captivating.

But they always have a kind of philosophical question that they

are examining. Novel, even more. -- Melville. That is a truly

philosophical novel, or the level of Shakespeare. Melville comes out

of the Bible and Shakespeare. And he was so derided during his

lifetime, so ignored, so absolutely considered and nobody, that when he

died people thought he was already dead. He died in 1891. And he was

utterly, utterly erased from the history of American literature. It

was not until 1920 that a critic, a professor from Harvard, discovered

Moby Dick in a second-hand bookstore. He picked it up,

remembering the name Melville, and readied, and understood that this

was the great American masterpiece. Since then, his reputation has

grown and grown. But isn't it curious, that he could be eclipsed

for literally half a century, and now he is fundamental? It is like a

case of Bach, in music. Just to be raced, and then suddenly everybody

How about something that occurs with all starting with the main

character having lost something, maybe the wife for the child, and

you seem to be so interested in the alternative path that the person

may take in life. White is that the starting point for your stories of

so much interest? I somehow like to do this because it comes

instinctively. I don't just sit down and think about that way to

write the novel. It seems we're in point where it some major event has

happened. Often, a tragic event or a loss of some kind. The character

is thrown back and the ground opens reconstitute himself or Bjorn? How

does he fit around how to keep living? These are the questions

that fascinate me. We only find out who we are at a moment of crisis.

When things go along easily, you don't really know who you are and

you are never tested. I am interested in people being tested.

At the same time, all walks work that way. I have written many

novels now. I think up things about Mr Vertigo, that's completely

different. Timbuktu is different in the country of Last Things is

different. They don't follow that pattern I understand what you are

talking about. I was intrigued about the distinction between the

description of the Winter Journal as a memoir and use it it's

autobiographical. But like to ask about those things that you draw

upon your eyed my that end up in your fictional works. For example,

Oracle Nights, it's an anagram about Forster and many of them are

writers living in ruckman. The relationship between fiction and

fact and the elements of your own life. Is it just about identity, is

that the only thing you tried to explore? I in his things that are

close to me. Once in the novel they are fictional. You mentioned

leviathan, that's a great example. I wrote that book in New York and

also of the Mont where I went every summer and for reasons that had

nothing to do with anything and the reader would not here to include

this house in the book and the table that I was writing upon.

That's also when the book. It was a way of making everything immediate

for me and at the same time I felt I was dwelling in a completely

fictional universe. It's kind of strange, it's a strange stone that

I was in writing the novel. Having written all of the biographical

works, that was strictly fact as they say. No invention. Let's look

at the works associated with your profound interest in New York, The

New York Trilogy connecting detective stories in which you use

a detective form addressing existential issues and questions of

identity and the annihilation of identity against the kind of urban

setting. You have been seen as it modern post-modern writer. As you

explain, the view of yourself as a right it is traditional rigid in

19th century writing, off on, Edward Allan Poe, -- Edgar Allan

Poe. The first writer I fell in love with, Edgar Allan Poe, he had

a big influence on me. Do you reject the post-modern label?

don't think about it. It does not interest me interest meelf

from the app side. I just write, I did the best they can. Every book I

do is a new project. I feel I start from scratch every time. Each ball

and a story somehow imposes its own form and I find the way to tell the

story out of the material. Many people would be a way. They have

something in mind, they may write this on it. They have only 14 lines.

I never think about those terms. The big question is, is it in the

first person or third person or second person? Is at the present

tense? Is it the past tense? Is the dialogue? No dialogue? On and on,

all the things he me to figure out when you work on a new project. The

solution is different every time according to the type of story.

Reflect a little bit on New York. The city that you have chronicled

time and again as the backdrop to your books. The city that you

Chronicle mentally, it's quite different to the one that you

inhabit physically. How far does back or alienated is that? Well,

you see, there are many New York's. I cannot put myself down. The New

York Trilogy captures an era of New York that's now gone. It's really a

book about the late 70s or early 80s when New York was a complete

disarray. Crumbling, a dirty Third World city. It is not like that

anymore. It's a book about isolation. It's about loneliness. I

write about New York in different ways. Smoke is about people forming

friendships and inventing families for themselves. The book and

follies -- Roman Follies is about and neighbourhood in Brooklyn. The

Brooklyn Follies. It's a comedy. I feel that's another side at New

York. The New York of Oracle Nights is a grim moment of New York. As

many types of New York and I keep them happening in different ways or

simultaneously. How about the process of writing. Been several

novels notebooks are the key to the character. City of Glass, The Book

of Illusions, Oracle Nights, what's all that about? The right in his

kind of a fetish. A paper palace. The Magic Notebook, maybe, he

thinks. Are you interested in the process of writing? Exactly, I

worked in notebooks. Notebooks is a kind of house of words wet every

match will think that the language can do resides in the air. It's

also about the physicality of writing and scratching the pencil

on to that page in the notebook. It's a weigh into thinking about

the world through a sandwich. It's a fixation on the notebook. You go

from the notebook to an old fashioned type writer. Yes, I have

an old typewriter, it will outlive us all, it's built for another 100

years. It's an Olympia Portable, a wonderful machine. I'm not against

computers and I have used them. I don't like the touch of the

keyboard compared to the resistance that like many will play begins. It

couple tunnel syndrome. reflecting on writing and notebooks,

it reflects again in the structure of your novels, the interest within

the story within the novel, What is it that its most obvious in Oracle

Nights and Lovatt and, you get to the end and you are told it's

double that you walk are constantly saying its post-modernism but what

are you St by constantly doing this, a story within a story that never

In the. -- never ends. As I have developed as a writer I went

further and further into this realising that there's a certain

power in what I call it art of collage. That's when you have more

than one been in the frame and the space in between. Some of the

novel's had to walk three stories which intersect but a somewhat

distinct at the same time. I feel that this energy created within the

space between the elements. They create something greater than this

arm of its parts. Again, it's all by feeling this. It's not making

philosophical statements about anything. Figuring out how to tell

the story in the most powerful and immediate way, no hot and it seems