Baumgartner

by Paul Auster, Jorio Dauster (Translator), Elisa von Randow (Artist)

Overview

Uma história sobre amor, luto e memória; o último romance do premiado autor de A trilogia de Nova York e Desvarios no Brooklyn.

Sy Baumgartner é um professor de filosofia às vésperas da aposentadoria. Sua vida é definida pelo profundo amor pela esposa, morta há quase uma década num acidente no mar. Aos 71 anos, Baumgartner segue lutando para superar a ausência de Anna, enquanto os dias se sucedem em espirais de lembranças e conflitos mentais.
Aos poucos, somos arremessados "rumo ao passado, o passado remoto, tremeluzindo nas fronteiras da memória". Dos anos 1960, quando os dois personagens se conhecem como estudantes sem dinheiro trabalhando e escrevendo em Nova York, ao relacionamento apaixonado que constroem ao longo de quarenta anos; da juventude de Baumgartner ao passado revolucionário de seu pai, um polonês dono de uma alfaiataria em Newark, Paul Auster explora os mistérios e complexidades da alma humana com a destreza que o tornou um dos autores mais lidos e celebrados da literatura mundial.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788535938999
Publisher:	Companhia das Letras
Publication date:	08/20/2024
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	1 MB
Language:	Portuguese

About the Author

PAUL AUSTER nasceu em Newark, Nova Jersey, em 1947. Escritor, roteirista e poeta, estudou literaturas inglesa, francesa e italiana na Universidade Columbia. Após concluir os estudos, mudou-se para Paris, onde trabalhou como tradutor. Estreou na literatura em 1982 com A invenção da solidão e ganhou fama internacional com A trilogia de Nova York, de 1987. Sua obra foi traduzida para mais de quarenta idiomas. Morreu em 2024, aos 77 anos, em decorrência de um câncer, em Nova York.

Hometown:

Brooklyn, New York

Date of Birth:

February 3, 1947

Place of Birth:

Newark, New Jersey

Education:

B.A., M.A., Columbia University, 1970

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Baumgartner: 

“Baumgartner’s mind is full of late-life insights and angst, while his capacity for love provides a rich emotional seam. Auster packs a lot into this slim novel… An always intriguing writer.” – Kirkus

“The subject of lost loved ones and all that follows in the wake of such a loss is hardly unusual in contemporary literature, but Paul Auster's Baumgartner is a worthy addition to the body of fiction that treats the subject. It's a well-drawn portrait of a man wrestling with grief, and a sensitive character study that displays many of the qualities for which Auster's been lauded in a long literary career… Baumgartner's story is revealed in episodic fashion and with precise, observant, and sometimes touching detail… Poignant.” – Shelf Awareness

“Auster presents his eighteenth novel, a finely distilled tale of a charmingly self-deprecating and forthright intellectual and romantic… Auster's portrait of a thoughtful man embracing loss and love is a gorgeous, subtly suspenseful revelation of the covert dramas of a contemplative, kind, and expressive life.” — Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

Praise for Paul Auster: 

“One of the great American prose stylists of our time.”  —New York Times

“Auster really does possess the wand of the enchanter.”  —New York Review of Books

“One of the great writers of our time.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Contemporary American writing at its best.” —New York Times Book Review, on Invisible

“A literary original who is perfecting a hybrid genre of his own.” —Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher

2023-07-26
An elderly philosophy professor sorts through grief, mortality, and late love.

Raised by a mother surnamed Auster in Newark, New Jersey, educated at Columbia University and in Paris, married to a translator—for the title character of his latest, Auster dips often into the autobiographical well. As the book opens, S.T. Baumgartner, age 70, has been mourning his late wife, Anna, for 10 years when mishaps darken an otherwise ordinary day. He has a nasty fall, he learns that his cleaning lady’s husband has severed two fingers in a work accident, and he burns a pot he’s had since he first met his wife. Auster likes to stir up apprehension, but none of these misfortunes can match the frisson when a disconnected phone in his late wife’s study impossibly brings a call from her, telling him about the afterlife and how they remain connected. As Baumgartner, amid typical worries about how much future he has, frequently revisits the past, the narrative of his falling for Anna and their marriage takes shape—yet the strange phone call also frees him to enjoy love again, with a colleague at Princeton. Then another woman appears and seems to promise a different sort of emotional investment, this one tied to his late wife. Auster is not as textually tricky here as he has been in previous novels. He does bring back publisher Morris Heller and son Miles from Sunset Park (2010). He has Baumgartner working on “a serio-comic, quasi-fictional discourse on the self in relation to other selves,” which sounds like a study of Auster’s fiction. Baumgartner’s mind is full of late-life insights and angst, while his capacity for love provides a rich emotional seam. Auster packs a lot into this slim novel, including, alas, prose so prone to cliché that the mind winces.

An always intriguing writer mostly playing to his strengths.

Kirkus Reviews