Auster was born in Newark in 1947 to Jewish immigrants and dreamed of becoming a writer from an early age. He studied literature in New York and France and initially supported himself through teaching assignments and translation work.
After his first marriage failed, he made his breakthrough in the mid-1980s with the “New York Trilogy” – three loosely connected detective stories entitled “City of Glass”, “Slaughter Shadow” and “Behind Closed Doors”. . He later established himself as an acclaimed best-selling author with works such as “Moon Over Manhattan”, “Mr. Vertigo” and “The Book of Illusions”.
Auster’s characters, often influenced by his own life story, are eccentric, broken characters. You lose yourself in dark abysses and obscure corners in search of yourself. The unpredictability, random events and fantastic twists shape their existence and give rise to philosophical reflections on art and culture, identity, life and death.
His books were translated into dozens of languages, and he was even more popular in Europe than in his own country. He was “obsessed” with writing, Auster once said. “For me, writing is not an act of free will, it is a matter of survival.” At the same time, writing was also a constant struggle for him. “It’s the hardest thing I can imagine.”
For around 50 years, Auster lived and worked in the New York borough of Brooklyn, where many of his stories are set. His wife Siri Hustvedt is hardly less popular as a writer than her husband, and their daughter Sophie, born in 1987, is successful as a singer and actress.
More recently, Auster has published several extensive works, including the 2017 novel “4 3 2 1”, which runs to more than 1,000 pages, and the approximately 800-page biography of the US author Stephen Crane (1871-1900) entitled “In Flames” (original title: “Burning Boy”). The relatively short novel “Baumgartner” (around 200 pages) was published in the USA last November.
In memory of Paul Auster, Ö1 will repeat the feature “America of Dreams. Encounters with the author Paul Auster” from 2022 on Tuesday (May 7th) in the “Soundtracks” (4:05 p.m.). Thomas David visited the writer in Brooklyn and talked to him about his work and the social climate in the USA under President Joe Biden.