Overview
Mr. Bones, die spitzohrige Promenadenmischung, sieht die Welt durch die scharfen Augen dessen, der sie stets von unten hat betrachten müssen. Und er ist nicht auf den Mund, Pardon, auf die Schnauze gefallen. Seine weisen Erkenntnisse über das Hundeleben, das wir alle führen, sind ebenso amüsant wie traurig — denn in ihrem augenzwinkernden Humor ist ihnen jede Sentimentalität fremd.
«Austers berührendstes, gefühlvollstes Buch.» (New York Times)
«Ein großer Erzähler erzählt hier eine kleine Geschichte, und er erzählt sie groß.» (Elke Heidenreich)
«Großartige Prosa.» (New York Times)
«Eine poetisch versierte Promenadenmischung.» (Stern)
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9783644018310 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rowohlt E-Book |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2012 |
| Sold by: | Bookwire |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 565 KB |
| Language: | German |
About the Author
Paul Auster wurde 1947 in Newark, New Jersey, geboren. Er studierte Anglistik und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft an der Columbia University und verbrachte nach dem Studium einige Jahre in Frankreich. International bekannt wurde er mit seinen Romanen Im Land der letzten Dinge und der New-York-Trilogie. Sein umfangreiches, vielfach preisgekröntes Werk umfasst neben zahlreichen Romanen auch Essays und Gedichte sowie Übersetzungen zeitgenössischer Lyrik.
Hometown:
Brooklyn, New YorkDate of Birth:
February 3, 1947Place of Birth:
Newark, New JerseyEducation:
B.A., M.A., Columbia University, 1970Interviews
On Wednesday, May 26th, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Paul Auster to discuss TIMBUKTU.
Moderator: Welcome, Paul Auster! Thank you for taking the time to join us online this evening to discuss your new book, TIMBUKTU. How are you doing tonight?
Paul Auster: Not too bad. Sitting in my living room in a chair. It's fairly comfortable.
Ginger Farland from Alexandria: How long did it take you to write TIMBUKTU?
Paul Auster: It took me five years to write it. From the first sentence to the last sentence. But I was involved in other things as well during that time. That's why the book is set in 1993, because it was actually started in 1993.
Jurjen from Amsterdam: Hi, Paul. My friend Pasja is a great fan of yours. About three weeks ago, on a reasonably sunny Sunday afternoon, we were roller-blading through the Vondelpark and addressing all the dogs we met (a lot, believe me!) as Mr. Bones. While people probably considered us as a mad bunch, we had some serious conversations with the dogs, too. That, of course, was a hilarious thing to do. Pasja just moved apartments and has no email for the moment, but he would probably like to know how you came up with the idea to use a dog (and his views) as the protagonist of TIMBUKTU.
Paul Auster: I never made a conscious decision to write from a dog's point of view. One day, Willy and Mr. Bones were there. They hadn't been there the day before, but now they were there. My original plan for the book was to use Mr. Bones and Willy as minor characters in a much larger story. But as I started writing the opening passages of the book, I fell in love with these two and decided to abandon my big plan and make a book entirely about these two characters. Of course Mr. Bones is a dog, but he also is a character in a book, and even through he's confined to a dog's body, he probably thinks more like a man than a canine. If anything, I thought of Willy and Mr. Bones as a rather screwball, nutty, latter-day version of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, the befuddled knight-errant and his loyal squire.
Ann from New York City: Your characters are often outsiders to the American dream and writers/scholars. Like Willy G. Christmas, they're also often a bit wacko. Where does your fascination with insanity and obsession come from?
Paul Auster: It's not a choice. These characters choose me. I can't say exactly why they do, but I know for certain that I can't write about anything or anyone who doesn't fascinate me and keep me on my toes. Often, by standing outside of things, you get a much better view of what you are looking at. And by telling my stories through these characters, maybe I'm helping to clarify the world to myself.
H. S. Wright from Washington, D.C.: I saw your excellent film "Lulu on the Bridge" during a trip to Paris in October. It's now almost June, and it still hasn't come out in the USA. Is there any hope that it will find a distributor? I thought it was very moving, the best film of 1998, and it seems a shame that no one in this country will be able to see it.
Paul Auster: Thank you for your very kind words. Yes, we do have an American distributor, but alas, it looks as though the American release will be confined to video. As far as I know, it's been scheduled for September. Perhaps at that point we'll be able to arrange for a small theatrical release, but nothing is sure yet.
Roland from Germany: Paul: I'm always surprised by the twists and turns in your works. What is the secret of your creativeness, and how do you always come up with such great new ideas?
Paul Auster: You're too kind to me. If I knew where these things came from and what they meant, I probably wouldn't feel the need to do them. It's a great mystery to me. I often feel as though I am not actually responsible for the works I create but simply the instrument for expressing them.
Laurent Sagalovitsch from Vancouver (after Paris...): You often declared in the past that you were writing the novels you dreamed of as a teenager. What about TIMBUKTU? Did you dream about it as a young man? P.S. Do you remember me? We used to write to each other a few years ago...since then I had two novels published by Actes Sud.
Paul Auster: Yes, of course I remember you. How are you doing, and what are you doing in Vancouver? This book is a product of my middle age and was dreamed of and written between the years 1993 and 1998. P.S. Good luck with your work.
Jennifer J. from the East Village: I find your writing nothing short of brilliant. I must admit, however, that I'm more drawn to your darker, complex works like THE NEW YORK TRILOGY, LEVIATHAN, THE MUSIC OF CHANCE, et cetera, as opposed to MR. VERTIGO. I haven't had a chance to look at TIMBUKTU, but I'm wondering if this work is in the lighter vein of MR. VERTIGO. If so, is this a new trend for you? Do you feel you've grown beyond your former vision? Do you think the fact that your writing is more lucrative has given you a lighter view of the world?
Paul Auster: Money has nothing to do with it. You write at any given moment what you are capable of writing, what you need to write. As for TIMBUKTU, I don't know what category this book falls into. It feels like a new departure to me, but I felt this about every book I've ever written. When I come to the end of a book, I always think I'll never be able to write again. And if I do find the strength to start something else, I always have the feeling that I'm starting all over again from the beginning, reinventing myself with every word.
David Corts from France: You quote once again this peculiar person, Don Quixote. What do you find so fascinating in that character?
Paul Auster: For me, DON QUIXOTE is the novel of novels. It's one of the earliest works of fiction, as we define it today, and also one of the richest, most complex -- the one that asked all the questions that people are still asking today. The idea of a man immersed in the fictional world of books thrashing out into the world to try to make the world a better place, completely bewitched by his own delusions, is to me the very essence of what all stories are about. Don Quixote is the quintessential fictional character because he is all of us, in each one of us.
Keyle from L.A.: You wrote that one can gain a better view "by standing outside of things"...practically speaking, how does this work when you are writing? And you say your characters "choose" you.... How does that happen? They -- pardon the pun -- hound you until you write about/through them?
Paul Auster: I'm always looking for ways not to write something. A lot of ideas pass through my head, and I try not to pay any attention to them. But if an idea or character or situation keeps returning to me, then I begin to look at it a little more carefully. I do everything I can to belittle it and undermine it and find its weaknesses. And if I still can't destroy it and it keeps coming back to me, especially at moments when I'm least expecting to find it, then I begin to realize that the only way to get rid of it is to begin writing. By standing outside, I mean this: that if you're inside something, you literally can't see it. For example, when I was a young person in my early 20s, I moved away from America for a few years and lived abroad. But I wasn't running away from America so much as trying to find another way of looking at it. And by being away from the place where I lived, I think I began to understand it better -- to see it in more objective terms. I had a similar experience when I was writing my first prose book, THE INVENTION OF SOLITUDE. The second part, the book of memory, is an intensely autobiographical and personal narrative, and yet I couldn't find a way to write it until I decided to do it in the third person. In order to see myself, I had to step back from myself and give myself a little room.
John from Madison, WI: Before your literary and cinematic stars really found a place in the North American sky, you were already much revered in Europe and particularly France, where you're a recognized literary celebrity/sensation. What do you think it is about your writing that speaks to a European sensibility?
Paul Auster: I have no idea. It's the only honest answer I can give.
Greg Potter from Darien, CT: I recently read a quote in The New York Times from your wife, describing how you first met. If you don't mind my asking, what's next for your wife, Siri Hustvedt? When does she have another book coming out? What is it like to live with another novelist -- are you more understanding of one another; does it ever get competitive?
Paul Auster: Last year, Siri published a book of essays entitled YONDER, which didn't get much attention in the press and not many reviews, but to my mind is an extraordinary book about art, literature, and other important subjects. For the past four years or so, she's been working on a new novel, the pages of which have grown at an alarming rate, and she tells me that she hopes to finish it by the end of the year. I can't wait to read it. Living with another writer has been a pure joy for me. It's never competitive, and I think we both are glad to have someone who understands us and supports us. This might sound corny, but it's absolutely true.
Sarah from Buffalo, NY: Periodically throughout your novels the character Daniel Quinn (introduced in CITY OF GLASS) appears or is mentioned. Similarly, Anna Blume, introduced in IN THE COUNTRY OF LAST THINGS, later is mentioned in MOON PALACE. What is the thematic significance of this, and is it meant to tie these novels together as one continuity?
Paul Auster: The problem is, I can't get rid of these characters. A part of me feels that everything I've written is connected and that it would be possible to map out a very complex and elaborate family tree that would link all these people together in some gigantic encyclopedia of my imagination.
Moderator: Is there anything that you are looking forward to reading this summer? Any books that you would recommend?
Paul Auster: I've mostly been looking forward to reading books I've read before. Reacquainting myself with books that meant great deal to me. This summer I was planning to reread the essays of Montaigne and as many plays of Shakespeare as I can.
Clayton from Chicago: Which authors have inspired you most in your writing career?
Paul Auster: There's so many I barely know where to begin. Poets, novelists, philosophers...the list is inexhaustible. If I had to confine it to just a few names, I would begin with these: Poe and Hawthorne, Melville and Thoreau, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Beckett, Shakespeare, and Cervantes.
Lew from Yardley, PA: I loved the section of THE LOCKED ROOM, Chapter 3, when you took Sophie to dinner and eventually ran home only to wake up with the TV on and a Marco Polo movie. I identified with the scene completely. Did this actually happen, or, as others have asked, where did this come from?
Paul Auster: You say "you," but I am not the nameless narrator of the book. And the novel is not autobiographical. The only bit in THE LOCKED ROOM drawn directly from my own life is the utterly bizarre story the narrator tells about working as a census taker in 1970. But I should add that I called the character Sophie in homage to Hawthorne's wife, Sophia. Three years after writing the book, my wife and I had a daughter, and we named her Sophie as an homage to the character in THE LOCKED ROOM.
Tim Dobson from Brighton, England: To what extent do you consider yourself a postmodern writer?
Paul Auster: To tell you the truth, I don't fully understand what the term "postmodernist" means. I know people have called me that and even a post-postmodernist and many other things as well, both good and bad. It reminds me of a story I once heard about James Joyce. He was apparently at a party somewhere one night, and a woman gushing with enthusiasm came up to him and asked if she could shake the hands that wrote ULYSSES. And Joyce, looking down at his right hand with a whimsical expression on his face, said to her, "Let me remind you Madam, that this hand has done many other things as well."
Donna from Northampton: Hello, Mr. Auster. I'm hoping you could tell me if you have a dog and if that was the inspiration for TIMBUKTU. Thanks.
Paul Auster: Yes, I do have a dog, but I started writing the book before I got him. But I must say that he was very helpful for me in doing research for the book.
Joshua from Owings Mills: I've just started TIMBUKTU, and Willy is in search of his teacher, Bea Swanson. Do you have a teacher or professor that you remember -- that encouraged you at all? Teachers can have such a huge effect on our lives -- although I realize TIMBUKTU is not autobiographical, I am wondering if teachers or school was a memory you recently connected with.
Paul Auster: There was an English teacher I had in high school who encouraged me to write, and I think it made a big difference. The influence of teachers is enormous, and the good ones stay with us for the rest of our lives. Other teachers, particularly in college, were very important to me, but when you are 15 or 16 years old, the impact of a good teacher in high school is immeasurable.
Moderator: Thank you, Paul Auster, and best of luck with TIMBUKTU. Before you leave, do you have any parting thoughts for the online audience?
Paul Auster: I just want to thank you for inviting me to do this. It's a very strange experience talking to people you can't see. But I know you're out there and thank you for listening in.