Paul Auster
Describe your latest project.
[From the publisher]
"I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness."
So begins Paul Auster's brilliant, devastating novel about the many realities we inhabit as wars flame all around us.
Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is at his daughter's house in Vermont, recovering from a car accident. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about his wife's recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus. The retired book critic imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. As the night progresses, Brill's story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts the story of his marriage. After she falls asleep, he at last finds the courage to revisit the trauma of Titus's death.
Passionate and shocking, Man in the Dark is a novel of our moment, a book that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.
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"Probably Auster's best novel, and a plaintive summa of all the books that — we now see — have gone into its making." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"This best-selling author with a cult following of literati finally offers one to please both fan bases." Library Journal (starred review)
Introduce one other author you think people should read, and suggest a good book with which to start.
J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
Offer a favorite sentence or passage from another writer.
"I write for those on whom the black ox hath trod."
—Fulke Greville
How do you relax?
By drinking enormous amounts of alcohol and watching the Mets on TV.
Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?
Yes, to Emily Dickinson's house in Amherst, MA, and to Herman Melville's house in Pittsfield.
What is your idea of absolute happiness?
Not having to answer questions about myself.
Do you read blogs?
No, for the simple reason that I don't have a computer and am not on the internet.
Dogs, cats, budgies, or turtles?
Dogs.
Recommend five or more books on a single subject of personal interest or expertise.
Needless to say, I would regret the loss of each and every one of my books, but I list the following five because they are among the longest, densest, and most absorbing I've ever read.
The Five Books I Would Most Regret Losing if My House Burned Down:
Don Quixote
Collected Works of Shakespeare
Essays of Montaigne
1,001 Nights
War and Peace
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Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Travels in the Scriptorium, The Brooklyn Follies, and Oracle Night. I Thought My Father Was God, the NPR National Story Project anthology, which he edited, was also a national bestseller. His work has been translated into thirty languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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