Paul Auster, a true literary lion, has passed away. I interviewed him in about his creative process and how he sustained narrative momentum on a project. Paul Auster, the ferociously ambitious writer behind such masterpieces as The Book of Illusions and Oracle Night , has passed away. He was 77 years old. During the summer of , on the occasion of Man in the Dark being published, I had the good fortune of interviewing Auster at his Park Slope home.
He sized me up fairly fast with some off-tape banter concerning the most creative methods of scoring free and cheap drinks, which we both laughed about. I played my usual role of delivering questions for Auster to parry and punch through. That dynamic resulted in some revealing answers about his creative process, which was rightfully different from my speculations. Blank, the relationship between Travels in the Scriptorium and Man in the Dark , shorter baroque novels vs.
Again, it plays up here in the Pulaski Diner, where everything is five dollars. And I also think about the scenario with M. Correspondent: And again it becomes completely, ridiculously violent. But there is something about the propinquity of the dollar amount that you keep coming back to in your work. What is it about money? And what is it about a specific figure like this? I never, never thought about that. Everyone cares about money. I wrote a whole book about that. Auster: Hand to Mouth.
And for a long period in my life, I was crushed. And so maybe this is a reflection of those tough years. Correspondent: Or maybe there is something absurd about a specific dollar amount or something.
I mean, certainly, when I go to a store and I see that something is set at a particular dollar amount or it fluctuates, it becomes a rather ridiculous scenario. Because all you want to do is get that particular object. Auster: Yes, yes, yes. So they have to budget themselves carefully. Correspondent: Well, not always. You tend to have characters like, for example in The Brooklyn Follies , people who have a good windfall to fall back on and who also offer frequently to help pay for things, and their efforts are often rejected out of pride by your supporting characters.
