"Entrevista a Paul Auster: Al Compás de un Ritmo Pendular" por Santiago del Rey.

Quimera 109,
May 1992, pp.22-27

Translated by Carl-Carsten Springer and Ira Plaschke

First there was The New York Trilogy, which has just been republished in one volume by Júcar [Publ.].
Next came In the Country of Last Things and The Invention of Solitude, both published by Edhasa, and
finally, by Anagram, Moon Palace and The Music of Chance. Auster who is more widely admired,
commented upon, and read than his better-promoted compatriots, gives an overview of his narrative
works and his unusual development.

- One question, before we start. Have you ever felt the temptation to go into seclusion and refuse to give
any more interviews? Like, for example, Salinger and Pynchon. Or like the protagonist of The Locked
Room.

1. To tell the truth, I'm constantly thinking about it. Very often I feel as though I don't have much to say.
My work - I hope - can speak for itself. Very often, it is true, interviews can be a frustrating experience. I
know that they are important for my publishers and I do everything in my power to adapt to their wishes
and please them, but I am not certain whether this is of any help.

- Now that we are talking about publishers and promotion: I have heard that you are much better known
in Europe than in the USA.

2. I wouldn't say this... Things are quite O.K. here. But it is clear that the USA is a vast country with a lot
of writers. I think I've been able to get some readers in the USA, although it is certain, to my great
surprise, that in some of the European countries my things are going extraordinarily well.

- Still, your books don't have much to do with literary fashions, like minimalism or "dirty realism."

3. That's true. I've got my own style and I feel separated, somehow, from what is happening in the USA at
the moment. I'm not saying that I'm not interested in any other writers and their tendencies, but I wouldn't
say that they've had a great impact on me. I have to add that I feel great respect for some American
writers such as Don DeLillo, who, moreover, is a good friend; Robert Coover, another great writer,
William Gaddis... These are writers whom I admire greatly, although my work is quite different from
theirs.

- You once remarked that ninety percent of contemporary American writers write "sociological novels."

4. Yes. I think what motivates the majority of contemporary American novels is a simple wish to show
life in the USA. To write something like a study of social behavior and the details of daily life. This can
be of interest up to a certain point and I'm not saying anything against it. I want to create something
different though.

- Judging from your biography, you seem to have received an intellectual formation which was more
French than American.

5. Well, I'm not so sure, although it appears to be strange. It's true that I've read French literature a lot, but
I don't see any trace of it in my books. If I consider which writers most deeply impressed me, those which
are most significant for me, I'd almost say that none of them are French. To tell the truth, not one example
comes to my mind.

- And in poetry? You have translated some French poetry (Mallarmé, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Dupin,
André du Bouchet). In addition, in 1982, you edited an anthology of contemporary French poetry for
Random House. And at the same time, so much is certain, you were writing poetry yourself.
6. Today I don't write poetry anymore. It's been years. There was a time when I wrote both prose and
poetry. After that I abandoned both. Then I abandoned prose because it didn't give me any satisfaction,
and I devoted myself entirely to writing poetry. But this suddenly stopped. I took up narration again and it
was as if poetry had vanished. I don't even understand why.

- Let's talk about your novels now, starting from the beginning. Which should be, I think, the mystery
novel. You seem to be a great fan of that genre.

7. Not exactly. That is to say, I used to be, especially at the time when I dedicated myself entirely to
poetry. At that time, and for several years, I read lots of detective stories. But then I stopped reading them
when I returned to the novel, and I haven't read a detective story for at least ten years. Of course, I've
always admired authors such as Chandler and Hammett, two writers with an enormous feeling for
economy and an extraordinary skill in the handling of language.

- So it could be said that you stopped reading mystery novels to start writing them. And you started out
with a novel that was doubly mysterious because you wrote it under a pseudonym and which, as far as I
know, is hidden and forgotten until today.

8. Well, that was a juvenile sin. I was flat broke, desperate, and I told myself, "Let's see whether I can
make some money with it." Still, it also was my first novel, and if it helped me in any way it was to prove
to myself that I was able to write books.

- Moreover, the game of pseudonyms and changes of identity, which later became a characteristic of your
books, started here.

9. Yes. I've always been fascinated by the imbalance between the physical author of a book, the
individual who puts his name onto the cover, and the authentic author who I am not certain is the same
person. Take War and Peace, for example. On the cover it says, "Leo Tolstoy." You open the book on the
first page, and somebody starts speaking to you. Is this Tolstoy real? No, it is the one that can be
perceived as the narrative voice of Tolstoy. One that is very different from the man called Tolstoy. The
stories, it seems to me, are written by a certain place in our interior which is unknown and inaccessible to
us. This is the reason why the biography of the writer and his work are never in accordance. A
biographical study will never tell you where exactly the work came from. And this is what changed
names and pseudonyms reflect.

- You once explained that the first novel of the Trilogy started because of a wrong number, a call for
somebody else, the Pinkerton agency. From this, City of Glass developed. How did the others originate?
And why did you decide to write a trilogy of mystery novels?

10. Well, firstly, I don't consider them mystery novels, but simply novels. Though they have got mystery
structures, the solutions are completely different to those which the traditions of the genre require.
Anyway, what happened was that while I was writing City of Glass, I remembered something that I had
written five or six years earlier, a dramatic piece which I hadn't been satisfied with. I noticed that lots of
the ideas in that work were similar to those in the novel and that they really touched on similar problems.
So I re-read the piece, and though I still didn't like it, I returned to it much later and changed it into a
narrative. It was the second novel, Ghosts. And while I was starting to write it, I noticed that there had to
be another one, a third novel. So this is why I had one and it suddenly became three. But simultaneously,
not in succession. I think the third one, most importantly, developed out of City of Glass, the first version
of which was much longer and touched upon questions of biography and how to write about somebody's
life... This material went into The Locked Room. Finally, I thought that they'd better be united, and I
converted them into the three panels of a triptych.

- The story of Don Quixote seems to play an important role in City of Glass. For problems of authorship
and the play with a genre...

11. Certainly. All the problems of novelistic creation are incorporated in this inexhaustible novel which,
in my opinion, has never been surpassed.
- Up to which point are literary ideas among your sources? Of the stories that Daniel Quinn, the
protagonist of the novel, writes, it is said that "What interested him about the stories he wrote was not
their relation to the world but their relation to other stories." (NYT 7) Do you identify with this phrase?

12. Absolutely. I do exactly the opposite. My stories come from the world and not from books. For
example, I arrived at Don Quixote because of the problems posed by the novel, not the other way around.
The sentence only represents Quinn's point of view, a man who writes books he doesn't believe in, with
the sole purpose of making money.

- Up to which point did you intend to experiment in the Trilogy? Some people have even remarked that
there is an influence of the nouveau roman - especially in Ghosts.

13. It doesn't appear like that to me. To tell the truth, I've never been interested in the nouveau roman.
Furthermore, when you write, you simply do what you do; that is to say, what you can and what you feel
you have to do. And that's all. I don't mean to write with preconceived notions, like saying to myself, "I'm
going to tell this subject in this or that manner using this or that formal technique..." It simply comes. The
material creates the form.

- In Ghosts, Black tells Blue that "Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense, a
writer has no life of his own." (NYT 175) What does this really refer to?

14. Well, here I refer to the part of the writer that writes the books. I always feel that I'm in the hands of
an unknown power that I don't understand, something that forces me to do all that without knowing very
well what it is. If I understood it, I wouldn't have to write.

- You were once asked whether Ghosts and The Locked Room are explicitly related to the life of
Hawthorne, who lived in seclusion for years, and also to his tale "Wakefield."

15. Yes, Hawthorne lived like that... "Wakefield," in contrast, is a strange story and much more wonderful
than that. This man who for no particular reason leaves his home and his wife to live in another house in
the same town for twenty years... Without doing anything and without her recognizing him when they
pass each other in the street. Until one cold day, when he passes the front of his old house, sees a fire in
the fireplace, thinks of the warm atmosphere and decides to enter...

- One asks oneself why Wakefield leaves his house in the first place. And why Fanshawe in The Locked
Room does so.

16. I can't speak for Wakefield, I don't know him. As for Fanshawe, it could be something like self-
hatred, a certain feeling that nothing he does is worth the effort. He starts questioning his own work as a
writer and ends up questioning his entire life. In some sense, he is a person overly severe with himself.
Somebody who constantly has to put himself into extreme situations in order to justify his existence.
Which is what leads him to behave in a terrible way.

- The biography of Fanshawe seems rather similar to yours. The work on an oil ship and then as
handyman and caretaker of a solitary country estate in the south of France.

17. I frequently employ things from my own life. Many writers do that. It is something that has to do with
plausibility and sincerity. When I write about problems I have experienced myself, I can do that with a
certain conviction, in a way that erases the borderline between fiction and reality. And this is a field I
want to cultivate. It isn't really very important whether the reader knows that I had these experiences. This
neither detracts from nor adds to the book. In regard to Fanshawe, he does seem a bit like myself; but
well, I am neither Fanshawe nor the narrator. Maybe I am both.

- In the Trilogy you seem to have premonitions of your following books. Quinn reads The Travels of
Marco Polo and Fanshawe writes In the Country of Last Things. Was it that you were already planning
Moon Palace and In the Country of Last Things?
18. All these books were really written simultaneously. I started In the Country of Last Things many
years before the Trilogy, but I hadn't finished it because I didn't wholly like it. It took me fifteen years in
total. The story and the personality of Anna Blume were, therefore, in my head while I worked on the
Trilogy. Moon Palace is earlier as well, although I finished it later. I wrote the first version in my early
twenties, and that was much longer. Part of the material, especially the references to Don Quixote and the
Tower of Babel, went into City of Glass. This is the main reason why all my books are connected to each
other.

- The story of In the Country of Last Things has been related to Brave New World by Huxley and to 1984
by Orwell. Do you agree with that?

19. No. It has nothing to do with them. It is a much more lyrical book. From my point of view it has a
closer connection to poetry than to the novel. And it goes without saying that it is not about the future but
about the past. In an oblique and brilliant way, it reflects occurrences of the twentieth century. I didn't
have to invent too much.

- The Journal of Anne Frank is an explicit referent, isn't it ?

20. Yes, in part. It is a book that has great significance for me. If you have read The Invention of Solitude
you will have seen that I dedicated many pages to Anne Frank. All that occurred in Europe in that epoch
has seeped into the scenes of In the Country of Last Things.

- Which degree of importance do Jewish culture and history hold for you?

21. Well, first I must say that I don't consider myself a religious person. I'm not a practicing Jew. It
appears very difficult to me to imagine myself believing in any religion. What interests me is the history
of the Jewish people. Certain aspects of Jewish thinking fascinate me. I've read the Old Testament with a
lot of attention. Maybe not with enough attention, but it is a very important book for me.

- In one scene in In the Country of Last Things, Anna Blume finds the passport of Daniel Quinn. And
then there is another allusion to Anna Blume in Moon Palace. What happens? Did you feel tempted to
save them from the fearful end to which they are doomed?

22. What happens is that they are all connected in some imaginary universe. Furthermore, I want my
books to be interrelated, to put it this way, and this is a way of doing so. With respect to the temptation to
use characters again in other books, yes, I feel tempted sometimes. Maybe I will do that some time.

- Judging from your books - especially City of Glass and Moon Palace - I would say that you have spent
some time living as a tramp.

23. No, the truth is that I haven't, although I've been through severe periods of poverty... Characters of
this kind put themselves into extreme situations, probing the limits of their possibilities, as if they were
trying to subject themselves to a test. And there is no situation that appears more extreme to me than that
of a tramp who doesn't even have a home to go to. Neither Daniel Quinn nor Fogg have to live that way,
but they decide to do it, and this always for reasons that have to do with what they want to be and to what
they think they really are.

- Compared to its predecessors, Moon Palace appears to be an optimistic novel. In contrast to Quinn, for
example, Fogg is liberated at the end.

24. Well, the way I see it, Moon Palace is a comical novel. Not a tragedy, although it has its sad passages.
At the end, Fogg has matured, and this really is the subject of the book: how to learn to be an adult. On
the other hand, I don't consider any of my books as being pessimistic. I've been told that several times,
especially in regard to In the Country of Last Things, which I clearly perceive as a book filled with hope.
I agree that some of its situations are terrible, but this book also deals with the question of how to remain
a human being under very difficult circumstances, and this is why I consider it an optimistic book.
Considering City of Glass I think that it almost has a happy ending. Quinn moves into another dimension,
a better one. Therefore it doesn't seem to me as though anything I have written is that sinister. Strangely
enough, the coincidences in Moon Palace only seem to lead to disasters. Fogg arrives at the knowledge
who about his father is at precisely the moment he dies. It's the same with his grandfather. I don't know
whether this is optimistic pessimism... I don't think in such categories. And life contains both anyway..

- The impression one could get from your treatment of parents and children is that the family for you is
most closely related to hell on earth.

25. I wouldn't say so. It is evident that these relationships between parents and children are crucial to
everyone. We are, after all, created by them, and I don't know many cases in which the relationship was
an easy one. I don't know whether I see this point more negatively than other people. Anyhow, I wouldn't
say that family life is hell... Although it can be.

- The Invention of Solitude, which has only been available recently although it was your first book, is full
of family problems. And in a more general way one could say that it contains many of the motifs of your
other novels. As if everything else has descended from it.

26. This is the way I see it as well. It was my first book in prose, and it appears to me that it has been the
source for the rest. Personally speaking, it is the one of all my books that has the most significance for
me.

- Is all that happens in it strictly autobiographical?

27. Yes, all. There is nothing invented in that book. It isn't a novel.

- What can you tell me about your latest book, The Music of Chance?

28. It is a very simple story. For once, we are talking about a completely linear story-line. I don't think
that I've ever written anything more transparent, almost like a fable. It is also a very realistic novel, based
on everyday occurrences. And yet it is a very strange book. It takes an effort to talk about it and it was a
strain writing it. When I had finished it I felt crushed. For six months I didn't feel like doing anything.

- How did the American critics react towards the book?

29. Rather well. I've always been attacked by some people, and this time it's true that critics have
generally been more positive than in the case of any of the six previous books. It seems like finally the
older critics have acknowledged that I exist and deserve some attention.

- If I'm not mistaken, it is just the American critics who started labeling you an intellectual and
Europeanized writer.

30. Yes, this is what some say, but only the ignorant ones. The standard of literary criticism in the USA is
very low. In many cases, not only in regard to me, the articles are truly stupid. So that it's usually better
not to pay any attention to them. No matter whether the book is well received or not, it is always for the
wrong reasons.

- What are you working on at the moment?

31. I'm working on something new which is turning out to be very long and complicated, and I still don't
know what to do with it. It seems like the books that I write follow a flickering rhythm: from something
very complicated to something very simple. And right now I'm doing the complicated thing.