Paul Auster – A primitive pen and a life haunted by chance

Paul Auster, a literary luminary, was renowned for his prolific nature—having authored thirty-four books in forty-two years—and his unwavering discipline. He wrote six hours a day, often seven days a week, for months until he completed his work, a testament to his unparalleled work ethic that can inspire any aspiring writer. The first draft was always by pen, then assiduously typed out. He needed and loved the tactile feeling of pen on paper. It could not be any other way.

The man’s legacy is secure, with some notable literary critics perhaps looking at Auster’s work and seeing only the holes, whether intended by the author or not. Reading his books, one comes across repeated tropes – the main protagonist is almost always male, often a writer or some intellectual. He lives a spartan life, coming to terms with a heartbreaking loss of some sort. The stories are filled with violent accidents and incredible coincidences. An established book by a revered writer also slips into the narrative. There is often a character named Paul Auster. As a boy, Auster was at camp when he saw the boy next to him struck by lightning and die. This fortune of fate has manifested itself in many ways in his works and, at times, disappointingly. Literary fiction abhors too many coincidences and leaves the device of fortune and chance to life. But at the same time, Auster is not the first or only one to use this device. Reading his interviews and response to some criticism, one realises he feels very strongly about and is also fully aware of it. Rarely is it a lazy excuse for connecting the dots.

Auster’s path to becoming the writer he is today needed to be more direct. After completing his BA and MA in Comparative Literature, he embarked on a journey to France, where he spent most of his time translating French literature. He was married to the writer Lydia Davis, whom he had met in Columbia, and they were making ends meet. Auster’s first book, The Invention of Solitude, was written as a response to his father’s death. The death was sudden and unforeseen and affected Auster deeply. The book profoundly reflected many themes reappearing in his subsequent writing – coincidence, fate, and solitude.

The Invention of Solitude put Auster on the map as a writer to watch out for. But his reputation as a writer was firmed by his 1985 novel City of Glass, a postmodern detective story. The book arose from an incident that happened to Auster when he was mistaken repeatedly on the phone for someone else. As was the case, Auster was able to turn a slight strand of unusuality in his life into literary gold. City of Glass was not a regular detective noir fiction; it was profoundly postmodern and addressed existential themes. And in some ways, Auster broke the form. He set the tone for an approach to criminal fiction, as written by Jonathan Lethem and Michael Chabon.

City of Glass was quickly followed by Ghosts and The Locked Room, which made up the acclaimed New York Trilogy. Each book in the trilogy is short, intense, and cerebral, telling a page-turning story while engaging the mind. Through the rest of his career, this became Auster’s calling card. Easy to read, hard to forget and riches to mine whenever we thought of his books. Brooklyn was a big presence in his books. Indeed, Auster created a literary Brooklyn, similar to Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, with the critical difference that Faulkner’s was made up. Eventually, Auster came to be seen as both an example and a defender of the rich literary culture of Brooklyn, a place he had always thought of as home, even though he was from New Jersey.

The very books revered by many Auster fans are also shown as examples of his limitations by his critics. Auster came to be considered past his prime after the nineties. It was felt that he was using the existential dread of his characters as shorthand without it pointing to anything more profound; the plots were becoming repetitive, and the insights weren’t that insightful. Writing one of his last works, he tried to issue a corrective of sorts. 4 3 2 1 is his penultimate book, more than twice as long as any of his other books and an actual labour of love – he wrote it entirely in longhand, working on it seven days a week for three years. The main protagonist is pointedly born one month after Auster, a stand-in for the author but not himself. For a book of this height, 4 3 2 1 is surprisingly tiny in ambition. The novel is built on a trick of multiple narratives – Auster gives us four possible lives of the same protagonist, Ferguson. As we go through the book, each Ferguson’s fate splits from the others, meaning each chapter is divided into four parts, hence the title. One of the four dies relatively early in the book; therefore, we get a blank page after he dies. Auster’s point seems to be that life is governed by chance, a theory we know well after reading Auster’s early work. But there are no deeper insights in the book beyond this fortune cookie wisdom of needing to embrace every day as if it were your last. Structurally and craft-wise, Auster maintains supremacy, but when attempting to write a tome of a book, he shows the limitations of his philosophies. The book appears to have no ambition outside of being massive. Sometimes, slender books are slender for a reason.

4 3 2 1 was very well received, especially in Europe, where Auster’s standing is higher than in his home country. The book was nominated for the 2017 Man Booker; Auster was even being mentioned as a possible Nobel candidate. Now, that will not happen; perhaps it was never going to.

In The Invention of Solitude, Auster desperately tries to create a narrative about his father, whose life he felt an urgent need to save (“My father is gone. If I do not act quickly, his entire life will vanish along with him.’’, he writes). As he explores his father’s life, he comes across a big thick leather album, stamped in gold with the words ‘This Is Our Life – the Austers’. But the book is empty. A photograph from his father’s childhood even has the image of Auster’s grandfather torn out. Something had to be done to remember his father and, by extension, his grandfather. Indeed, this is why his books are filled with the themes of loss and pain.

But life was not done in throwing curveballs at Auster. In a cruel mirror image of Auster’s limited relationships with his father and grandfather, he faced horrible tragedy with his son and grandson. In 2022, Auster’s son, Daniel, died of a drug overdose, aged 44. This happened ten days after Daniel had been charged with the death of his 10-month-old son. Tragedy upon tragedy, grief multiplying grief. One understand when Auster says, People who don’t like my work say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that’s how life is. He knows better than most how wicked chance can be.

Unable to find any real connection from his father and grandfather, and losing his son and grandson, all that Auster had was his books. The books remain. The critics will fade. The prose, the masterful craft, the ease of reading, and the inventiveness will ensure that at least one page can be added to ‘This Is Our Life—The Austers.’