A Life in Words: Conversations with I. B. Siegumfeldt

by Paul Auster, I. B. Siegumfeldt

Overview

An inside look into Paul Auster's art and craft, the inspirations and obsessions, mesmerizing and dramatic in turn.

A remarkably candid, and often surprisingly dramatic, investigation into one writer's art, craft, and life, A Life in Words is rooted in three years of dialogue between Auster and Professor I. B. Siegumfeldt, starting in 2011, while Siegumfeldt was in the process of launching the Center for Paul Auster Studies at the University of Copenhagen. It includes a number of surprising disclosures, both concerning Auster's work and about the art of writing generally. It is a book that's full of surprises, unscripted yet amounting to a sharply focused portrait of the inner workings of one of America's most productive and successful writers, through all twenty-one of Auster's narrative works and the themes and obsessions that drive them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609807788
Publisher:	Seven Stories Press
Publication date:	10/03/2017
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

PAUL AUSTER is one of the very few giants of English-language literature who has successfully made the leap from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. A poet and translator before he crossed over to mainstream relevance as a memoirist and novelist, Auster continues to challenge and dazzle his readers in America and around the world. But though there are many books and countless PhDs on Auster, we as a society are far from having decided what he means to us, and haven't yet begun to let him chance and provoke us as thoroughly as he must--as James Joyce or Beckett has, for example. Auster lives in Brooklyn. His most recent novel is 4 3 2 1.

I. B. SIEGUMFELDT in an associate professor of English Germanic, and Romance Studies at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the driving force behind the Paul Auster Center that is housed there.

Hometown:

Brooklyn, New York

Date of Birth:

February 3, 1947

Place of Birth:

Newark, New Jersey

Education:

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

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Prologue: Clearing the Air xiii

Part 1 Autobiographical Writings

The Invention of Solitude. (1982) "Everything Comes from Within and Moves Out" 3

"Portrait of an Invisible Man." The Spectrum of a Human Being 6

"The Book of Memory." Language and the Body 20

Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure. (1997) "Permanently Penniless" 35

The Red Notebook. (2002) Ars Poetica 45

Winter Journal. (2012) Memory and the Body 53

Report from the Interior. (2013) Becoming Human 65

Part 2 Hovels

The New York Trilogy. (1985-6) "Learning to Live with Ambiguity" 85

City of Glass. The Name and the Named 93

Ghosts. A Fable of Representation 104

The Locked Room. The Self-Destructive Text 107

In the Country of Last Things. (1987) Ephemerality 113

Moon Palace. (1989) "The Song Is in the Step" 127

The Music of Chance. (1990) "The Mechanics of Reality" 143

Leviathan. (1992) The Fall 163

Mr. Vertigo. (1994) Levitating 179

Timbuktu. (1999) "The Pure Pleasure of Language" 191

The Book of Illusions. (2002) From Page to Picture 203

Oracle Night. (2003) "The World Is in My Head" 215

The Brooklyn Follies. (2005) "An Escape from American Reality" 229

Travels in the Scriptorium. (2006) One Dark Day of Amnesia: "The Writer Rewritten" 241

Man in the Dark. (2008) One White Night of Insomnia: Confronting One's Past 257

Invisible. (2009) Three Seasons and an Epilogue 269

Sunset Park. (2010) Broken Things 287

Complete List of Works Paul Auster 305

Bibliography 309

Index 313

Editorial Reviews

"I believe this is a very important book for people who want to know what it means to be a writer." —Barry Gifford

“The most distinguished American writer of [his] generation . . . indeed its only author . . . with any claim to greatness.” –The Spectator (UK)

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

"Nabokov once said 'I divide literature into two categories, the books I wish I had written, and the books I have written.' In the former category I would put books by Kurt Vonnegut, Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Paul Auster." —Umberto Eco (in the Paris Review)

From the Publisher