Paul Auster

Biography

Paul Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1947 to middle class parents. After attending Columbia University he lived in France for four years. Since returning to America in 1974, he has published poems, essays, novels and translations.

Books and Stories

• Auggie Wrens Christmas Story (and the FilmSmoke based on this story)

External Links

• The official homepage: http://www.paulauster.co.uk/
• Paul Auster on educETH: http://www.educeth.ch/english/readinglist/austerp/index.html
• ...

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The author: Paul Auster Paul Auster was born to middle class parents in Newark, New Jersey, in 1947. After attending Columbia University, he lived in France for four years. There he began translating the works of French writers. Since returning to America in 1974, he has published poems, essays, novels and translations in American journals. The following titles are some of his most popular novels: - The New York Trilogy (1987) - City of glass (1985) - Ghosts (1986) - The locked room (1986)

Auster’s Biography

Paul Auster, the author of “Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story” and lots of famous novels like “Timbuktu” and co-producer of the movies “Smoke” and “Blue in the Face” was born in Newark, New Jersey on 3 February 1947. He has a jewish origin. Auster grew up in a middle-class family. His father was a landlord who owned together with his brothers buildings in Jersey City. He has a sister which is three years younger than him. In 1959, he found some books which his uncle, the translator Allen Mandelbaum, left while travelling to Europe. The young Auster read the books and his interest in writing and literature began to grow. Later, as a teenager, Auster began writing poems with Mandelbaum as his teacher. After High school, he travelled to Europe. He visited italy, spain, Paris and, in homage to James Joyce, Dublin. While this journey he worked on a novel. When he returned to the USA, he began to study at Columbia University in New York. In 1967, Auster left the USA again to study one year in Paris. But he quit college very soon and lived for a few months in a small hotel on the rue Clément. When he returned to New York, he continued his studies at Columbia University. For having money, he took a job in the census bureau. During this time, he also began to work on his novels “In the Country of Last Things” and “Moon Palace”, which he completed many years later. On 6 October 1974, Paul Auster married Lydia Davis but this marriage should later fail. Auster worked with his wife on book translations. He also wrote two more poetic sequences and reviews and essays for different magazines. In 1979, his father died. On 23 February 1981 Auster had a poetry reading in New York. There he met Siri Hustvedt, a tall woman of Norwegian ancestry, born in Minnesota in 1955. They fell in love and married very soon. From 1986 to 1990 Auster worked as a lecturer at Princeton University. By this time, Auster and Hustvedt lived in an apartment in the Park Slope Neighbourhood of Brooklyn. The couple now had a daughter, Sophie. Auster finished his novel about men building a wall, “The Music of Chance” , on 9 November 1989- the same day the Berlin Wall fell. In June 1995, the film “Smoke” was released.

Sources: paulauster.co.uk ; The Guardian