Re: introduction and queries

oconnort@nyu.edu
Thu, 10 Jul 1997 10:58:00 -0400 (EDT) 

 
>   On a completely different note - I've noticed a lot of reading
> recommendations being thrown around (in a good way, by all means), and
> thought I'd throw in one of my own:  _Moon Palace_ by Paul Auster.  (As I
> said before, I'm no Lit student, so I don't know what Auster's reputation
> in the literary world is.  But hey, I don't mind throwing my intellectual
> reputation to the dogs, even on first impressions...)  When I read this
> book (7 or 8 years ago, in early college), it felt distinctly like a cross
> between CITR and _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ - a very
> interesting combination!  If anyone else has read it, I'd love to know
> what you think.

I really like Paul Auster's work.  I think Moon Palace is one of the
most haunting of his books.  There was something I could easily relate
to in the constant fear of poverty (the brilliance of that man sleeping 
on his collection of books, and selling them off piecemeal to live!), 
the search for something lost in the past, the drifting and the alienation
... these all made the book touch me in a strange way.

I read last night that he has a new book forthcoming, in September, that
is a kind of memoir of how he overcame various obstacles to become the 
writer he is today.  A little bit from his "Red Notebook" and "Art of
Hunger," I think, but no matter how much scavenging of his old pieces,
I'm really eager for it.

Bizarre side note: The restaurant was there, with the neon sign that's 
on the hardcover jacket, for a long time.  I went out on a dismal blind 
date and sat in an outdoor cafe up Broadway a bit, and the more dismal 
the experience at my table, the more I looked up at the sign as a kind 
of oasis.  A few years later, when I moved to a place a few blocks from
there, I thought I'd go in and have a kind of homage-to-Paul-Auster
meal.  But the restaurant was gone.  It had become a place that sells
housewares.  The great old neon sign had been torn down, and you had to
look very hard to find the places where it had been anchored to the
building.

That itself was an Auster moment.

But ... I leave without including an obligatory Salinger note, unless
one might consider how Auster lets the fame and attention and silliness
just slide away from him without either becoming a media freak or a
recluse.  

--tim o'connor