Thanks so much for this. I moved to Park Slope in Brooklyn in 1982, picked up Leviathan in paper back and was hooked. Some years later I moved about a mile away and was delighted when Smoke was filmed on my block . I heard of his illness while reading Baumgartner, a meditation on grief and mortality and his final work. He knew grief well and was --I understood then --confronting his own mortality. I heard about his illness from Gary Cohen, Mets play-by-play announcer, as much an Auster fan apparently as Auster was a Mets fan.
These exchanges with Auster you had are magnificent. Thanks for sharing.
As a once serious poker player I loved Music of Chance. Irrespective of the pre-existing familiarity a reader might have with the game, of all the artistic works involving poker I think MoC most poetically captures the psyche of a large, or at least the most interesting, cohort of players. Post-Chris Moneymaker WSOP triumph c. 2003 everyone online chose handle variants from Rounders. TeddyKGB1975 yeah I get it but...Where were the "Flower" and "Stone" nom de guerres? I didn't see them...
A friend from college first put me onto Auster, and I read a good number of his works in short order, including inevitably the New York Trilogy. All supremely well written but the feel of Auster's novels bleeds together (maybe just at the pace I had) and some tropes -- shout out to the Mets, e.g. -- can wear thin. But Music of Change and Timbuktu are among the works I can instantly, viscerally, recall at a moments notice: a rare twofer and in different genres from one artist.
Thank you so much! My two favorite Austers are MOC and the NYT. I read Baumgartner, his last one, after I wrote the post. It isn’t that good. The voice is there, but he let his politics influence his writing too frequently as he got older and it became off-putting, at least to me. But the amount of pleasure I get from the early ones makes up for it.
Thank you for reminding me I need to read Auster. I will.
Thanks so much for this. I moved to Park Slope in Brooklyn in 1982, picked up Leviathan in paper back and was hooked. Some years later I moved about a mile away and was delighted when Smoke was filmed on my block . I heard of his illness while reading Baumgartner, a meditation on grief and mortality and his final work. He knew grief well and was --I understood then --confronting his own mortality. I heard about his illness from Gary Cohen, Mets play-by-play announcer, as much an Auster fan apparently as Auster was a Mets fan.
Your story touched my heart. RIP Paul Auster.
These exchanges with Auster you had are magnificent. Thanks for sharing.
As a once serious poker player I loved Music of Chance. Irrespective of the pre-existing familiarity a reader might have with the game, of all the artistic works involving poker I think MoC most poetically captures the psyche of a large, or at least the most interesting, cohort of players. Post-Chris Moneymaker WSOP triumph c. 2003 everyone online chose handle variants from Rounders. TeddyKGB1975 yeah I get it but...Where were the "Flower" and "Stone" nom de guerres? I didn't see them...
A friend from college first put me onto Auster, and I read a good number of his works in short order, including inevitably the New York Trilogy. All supremely well written but the feel of Auster's novels bleeds together (maybe just at the pace I had) and some tropes -- shout out to the Mets, e.g. -- can wear thin. But Music of Change and Timbuktu are among the works I can instantly, viscerally, recall at a moments notice: a rare twofer and in different genres from one artist.
Thank you so much! My two favorite Austers are MOC and the NYT. I read Baumgartner, his last one, after I wrote the post. It isn’t that good. The voice is there, but he let his politics influence his writing too frequently as he got older and it became off-putting, at least to me. But the amount of pleasure I get from the early ones makes up for it.