Conversations with Paul Auster

by James M. Hutchisson (Editor)

Overview

Paul Auster (b. 1947) is one of the most critically acclaimed and intensely studied authors in America today. His varied career as a novelist, poet, translator, and filmmaker has attracted scholarly scrutiny from a variety of critical perspectives. The steadily rising arc of his large readership has made him something of a popular culture figure with many appearances in print interviews, as well as on television, the radio, and the internet. Auster's best-known novel may be his first, City of Glass (1985), a grim and intellectually puzzling mystery that belies its surface image as a detective novel and goes on to become a profound meditation on transience and mortality, the inadequacies of language, and isolation. Fifteen more novels have followed since then, including The Music of Chance, Moon Palace, The Book of Illusions, and The Brooklyn Follies. He has, in the words of one critic, "given the phrase 'experimental fiction' a good name" by fashioning bona fide literary works with all the rigor and intellect demanded of the contemporary avant-garde.

This volume--the first of its kind on Auster--will be useful to both scholars and students for the penetrating self-analysis and the wide range of biographical information and critical commentary it contains. Conversations with Paul Auster covers all of Auster's oeuvre, from The New York Trilogy--of which City of Glass is a component--to Sunset Park (2010), along with his screenplays for Smoke (1995) and Blue in the Face (1996). Within, Auster nimbly discusses his poetry, memoir, nonfiction, translations, and film directing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496828200
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	04/20/2020
Series:	Literary Conversations Series
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.02(d)

About the Author

James M. Hutchisson is a professor of American literature and southern studies at The Citadel.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Chronology xxi

Translation Stephen Rodefer / 1985 3

Interview with Paul Auster Joseph Mallia / 1987 5

An Interview with Paul Auster Larry McCaffery Sinda Gregory / 1989 13

Memory's Escape-Inventing the Music of Chance: A Conversation with Paul Auster Mark Irwin / 1992 40

The Making of Smoke Annette Insdorf / 1994 50

The Manuscript in the Book: A Conversation Michel Contat / 1994 64

An Interview with Paul Auster Ashton Applewhite / 1994 95

The Futurist Radio Hour: An Interview with Paul Auster Stephen Capen / 1996 100

Paul Auster: Writer and Director Rebecca Prime / 1998 106

Off the Page: Paul Auster Carole Burns / 2003 125

Paul Auster: The Art of Fiction Michael Wood / 2003 132

Jonathan Lethem Talks with Paul Auster The Believer / 2005 149

A Conversation with Paul Auster Mary Morris / 2005 163

The Making of The Inner Life of Martin Frost Céline Curiol / 2006 179

Interview: Paul Auster Greg LaGambina / 2008 193

A Connoisseur of Clouds, a Meterologist of Whims: The Rumpus Interview with Paul Auster Juliet Linderman / 2009 198

Interview: Paul Auster on His New Novel, Invisible Nick Obourn / 2010 203

Index 000