Paul Auster has died | Hacker News Reader

Paul Auster has died

nytimes.com

120 pointskoevet48 comments

http://web.archive.org/web/20240501171727/https://www.nytime...

His books were half of what I read between age 12-25 (edit: more like 12-20, and I meant only novels, but it doesn't matter here)

Sad to see him go.

Picking up his books again as an adult only took away the magic in some of his weaker works.

Mostly, the magic remained.

The guys learning to play Bach and building a wall, the delirant anon in NYC chasing paper trails, the adolescent boy learning to levitate... the evil man offering glasses in a post-apocalyptic city:

so many memories remain, I don't know much about Paul Auster but I can say he was an influence on my life. Because of randomness (a relative picking Mr Vertigo as a present for me, probably because of book-store recommendations)

Paul Auster's characters always appear as somewhat mythical, living through a personal transformation.

Many of his characters have an aura of NYC artist/cultural authority stick around then, but it does not bother me at all.

Like many of my favorite authors, he injects much of his own personality into the main characters, even with multiple books using a novelist/writer as the main character.

Can you recommend a first book?

The New York trilogy was wonderful

"Music of chance" I'd say, it's a good ride, easy to read, also showcases a lot of his qualities and has a place in my mind forever.

Edit: "Moon palace" is similar in a way. I think those two left the biggest impression in me. They both are probably not the critique's favorites, but perfect as an intro I think.

"Mr Vertigo" was my intro and I think it was a good one as well.

"In the Country of Last Things" is also great, but a bit short for the story arc iirc.

I read the New York trilogy relatively late but these are arguably his most well-received books and I enjoyed them a lot as well.

The other books I mentioned he wrote later, if I'm not misremembering.

I haven't read all of his books, but my personal favorite was "Invisible". I really loved the style and that the book is told from the perspective of three different narrators with sometimes wildly different interpretations of the same events.

My favourite is "the invention of solitude", but it is not a novel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Solitude

His entire genre of writing revolved around chance and coincidence and how big of a hand it played in one's life.

I was captivated after reading Leviathan and could not stop till I read his entire pantheon.

RIP Paul Auster.

Just listened to a segment about him on NPR, apparently his writing themes were greatly influenced by an experience he had as a child where he was standing next to someone who was killed by a lightning strike.

Which happens in one of his novels

I can thank him for having taught me his language, the intricacies of baseball, for having shown me corners in the state of New York unheard of outside the States. For having explained what love and passion are and aren't, for having instilled dreams and hopes. And most importantly, that life can be lived to its fullest at any age.

A life worth living. Rest in peace, he will continue living while he's read.

The movie Smoke, which he wrote, is one of my favorites. I've enjoyed several of his novels, but none of those are among my personal canon, for what that's worth.

Related (but we merged the thread hither):

Paul Auster: How I Became a Writer (2014) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40221327

In college, I read all of the New York Trilogy at a coffee shop in one sitting, and it left me bent for the rest of the day. Good times. RIP.

A wonderful example of postmodernism! And not in that disparaging sense that I can never quite understand.

Sad news. '4 3 2 1' is one of my favourite novels with its variations on a theme of a single person's life. The same character's showing up in each thread but in totally different contexts worked particularly well.

I'm actually in the middle of reading it.. I'm still struggling to follow it all, know in which variation I am at a point and see where it is going. But it is sure entertaining

I absolutely hated that book. I think it's the first one I didn't finish in several years.

I have no idea how it made the booker shortlist in 2017 :|

He was for a moment quite popular and his books were definitely above the average overhyped populer american writer.

Mr Vertigo was a nice little book that punched above its weight and would def recommend reading it

Seconded, Mr Vertigo was a charming story and a little dreamlike.

The Music of Chance is one of my favorite books and is such an underappreciated book. Pick it up if you get a chance.

Anyway it's sad to see him go. Rest in peace.

I'm guessing Paul Auster fans will comment here. 20 years ago I read a book that I cannot remember the name and I vaguely remember it was from Auster, but I'm not sure and I have been looking for ages. It was a compilation of short stories with the Noah's Ark somehow in each of them, but the stories were very different besides that part. Does this ring a bell?

GPT:

The book you're thinking of is likely "In the Country of Last Things" by Paul Auster. While not a collection of short stories, this novel often gets mentioned in relation to discussions about Auster's work involving themes of dystopia and allegorical narratives. The reference to Noah's Ark might be metaphorical, reflecting the themes of catastrophe and survival that are common in Auster's work. If you specifically remember a collection of short stories involving Noah's Ark, it could be another author or a less known work of Auster, as his major works don't typically revolve around this theme directly in the form of short stories.

I’m not confident this is correct!

I have tried to use chatgpt to identify novels and songs from descriptions and it is poor at it. This is despite, I assume , ingesting reviews and descriptions of popular novels and even ingesting the novels themselves. Perhaps the training itself isn't enough for the model to be able to identify what work it is being trained on?

Possibly History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes? One of my favourites. Noah's Ark isn't in all of the short stories/essays, but does recur.

Yes, this is the one, thanks! One of your favourites from Barnes or in general? I really enjoyed, so I want to know which are your other favourites.

Sounds a little like Julian Barnes "A History of the World in 10 and 1/2 chapters", there are several recurring themes (woodworm, boats) but the Ark recurs in several of the stories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_World_in_10%C...

Oh, great, thanks for this.

My sister was an Auster buff, she read nearly all of his books when she was around 19, I unfortunately didn't read a single one. But I did read True Tales of American Life, a compilation organized by Auster from NPR-compiled stories (the "National Story Project") of true Americana. That book is a gem I can recommend!

RIP.

I enjoyed City of Glass, but Ghost and The Locked Room I found dull. Leviathan was good, it made me curious if he was the Unabomber.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Auster

Loved his NY Trilogy. Sad to hear of his passing.

was a smoker. damn. gotta give up the habit while you can

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