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Tag: Paul Auster

  • Prolific Author Paul Auster Dead at 77

    Prolific Author Paul Auster Dead at 77

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    Photo: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images

    Paul Auster, known for The New York Trilogy — originally published as three separate novels: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room — died on Tuesday, April 30 from lung cancer complications. He was 77. The news was confirmed by his friend and fellow author Jacki Lyden to the New York Times. Born and raised in New Jersey, Auster eventually became a prominent figure in the Brooklyn literary scene (though he was also quite popular in France). Auster graduated from Columbia University with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in comparative literature. He later lived in Paris, translating French literature for several years before returning to the United States. His decades-long career included a stream of novels, memoirs, story collections, plays, essays, and poems. He also wrote several screenplays, winning the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay for Wayne Wang’s 1995 film Smoke. His 2017 novel 4321 was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Auster’s work has been noted to include instances of chance and coincidence, which could be explained by his real-life experiences. When he was a teenager at a summer camp, he stood next to a boy who was killed by a bolt of lightning. Per NPR, he once reflected, “I think maybe that informs my work more than any book I have ever read.”

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  • Paul Auster Dies: Author Of ‘The New York Trilogy,’ Screenwriter & Director Was 77

    Paul Auster Dies: Author Of ‘The New York Trilogy,’ Screenwriter & Director Was 77

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    Paul Auster, the celebrated author of nearly three-dozen books — including Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Invisible, The Book of Illusions and The New York Trilogy — screenwriter on Wayne Wang’s Smoke and director of Lulu on the Bridge, has died. His friend, Jacki Lyden, confirmed the news to the New York Times. Auster was 77.

    Auster’s debut work, a memoir titled The Invention of Solitude, won critical praise.

    His stature as one of America’s most prominent authors was cemented with with a series of three loosely connected stories published collectively as The New York Trilogy. They are City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986). The books in the Trilogy play on tropes of the detective novel to address existential questions.

    Critic Michael Dirda wrote of Auster’s work, “Ever since City of Glass, the first volume of his New York Trilogy, Auster has perfected a limpid, confessional style, then used it to set disoriented heroes in a seemingly familiar world gradually suffused with mounting uneasiness, vague menace and possible hallucination.”

    Several of Auster’s 18 novels were made into movies, including The Music of Chance.

    He later wrote films himself, beginning with the screenplay for Smoke (1995) starring Harvey Keitel, William Hurt and Giancarlo Esposito. Auster’s work on the film won him the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.

    His collaboration with Wang continued as the duo co-directed a sequel, Blue in the Face, again starring Keitel and Esposito along with Lou Reed, Mira Sorvino and Madonna. Auster is also credited on the screenplay for Wang’s The Center of the World.

    In 1998, Auster wrote and directed Lulu on the Bridge, with Keitel, Sorvino and Richard Edson. He did double duty again on 2007’s The Inner Life of Martin Frost, starring David Thewlis, Iréne Jacob and Michael Imperioli.

    Auster’s 2017 novel, 4321 was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

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