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Information About

Paul Auster





BIOGRAPHY

Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey . After graduating from Columbia University in 1970 , he moved to France . Since returning to America in 1974 , he has published his own poems, essays, novels and translations of French writers such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Joseph Joubert .

He married his second wife, writer Siri Hustvedt , in 1981. Previously, Auster was married to the acclaimed writer Lydia Davis .

He is the Vice-President of PEN American Center .


WRITING

Auster's first novel was a Detective Novel called '' Squeeze Play '' and was written under the pseudonym Paul Benjamin (Benjamin is his middle name).

Auster gained renown for a series of three experimental detective stories published collectively as '' The New York Trilogy '' (1987). These books are not conventional detective stories organized around a mystery and a series of clues. Rather, he uses the detective form to address Existential issues and questions of identity, creating his own distinctively Postmodern form in the process. The search for identity and personal meaning has permeated Auster's later publications.

Later Auster's works concentrate heavily on the role of coincidence and random events (''The Music of Chance'') or increasingly, the relationships between men and their peers and environment (''The Book of Illusions'', ''Leviathan''). Auster's heroes often find themselves obliged to work as part of someone else's inscrutable and larger than life schemes. Paul Auster is regarded by many critics as one of America's greatest living writers.

B.R. Myers attacked Auster in " A Reader's Manifesto ."


PUBLISHED WORKS


Fiction



Poetry



Screenplays



Essays, memoirs, and autobiographies



Edited collections

  • ''True Tales of American Life'' ( 2001 )

  • ''I Thought My Father was God'' ( 2001 )



Translations



Misc



OTHER MEDIA

On the album ''As Smart as We Are'' by New York band One Ring Zero , Auster wrote the lyrics for the song "Natty Man Blues" based on Cincinnati poet Norman Finkelstein .

In 1993 , a movie adaptation of The Music Of Chance was released.

Michael Mantler 's album ''Hide and Seek'' uses words by Auster from the play of the same name.


EXTERNAL LINKS