Step back David Foster Wallace, I think this guy knows more than you and I combined, byatch. Seriously, the man attacks literature voraciously and relays its pathos and stories in seamless essays and interviews. He even actually gives poetry more than a sidelong glance.

on and on it goes

Finished in the late evening. In the Paul Auster style, I picked up an indistinct proof from a second hand bookstore yesterday, titled 'The Red Notebook'. I don't know if this book that I have logged on Goodreads is the same as the book that I picked up (for example, it has an extremely different amount of pages), but it was the closest I could find. I don't know if the form that I read is the same as the one this one is.

For some reason, I challenged myself to read the whole of this thing today, despite having work and plans after work. I was successful. I read it during breakfast, waiting for the tram, I read it waiting for a coffee, and for thirty minutes in the court library at lunch. Then, waiting for the tram, or late in the evening. I am glad to have read it so quickly, in all of these cracks.

My version contains no blurb or description and so I went into it completely blind.

The book starts off with a series of fragments/ short chapters, constituting the eponymous ‘The Red Notebook’. I first presumed the fragments fictional, but on the ninth or tenth fragment, realised they were events (purportedly) from Paul Auster’s real life.

Then follow three prefaces to books that Auster has presumably taken a part: an anthology of French poems; a compilation of entries by the French writer Mallarme, of his son, Titus; a memoir by a high wire acrobat. The latter two translated by Auster into English. The former collated by him. The preface to the anthology was especially dense, I felt as if I were peering at the lid of a bottomless well (not even the opening of the well. The lid.) The Mallarme section I was moved and charmed by (although it references a Rembrandt painting that I cannot find anywhere online).

Then follow a series of interviews of Auster where he talks about his novels and his writing process.

Then, a brief finale – an ode to (or a prayer for) Salman Rushdie.

And so forms this Austerian puzzle.

Because I am an eternal Auster fan, the strangeness and unpredictability of this funny little book was all very pleasing to me. Some of the interviews tread the same ground, there is one anecdote that is repeated perhaps three or four times across the span of the book. There are references in the interviews to Mallarme, to the French acrobat. I felt as if I were on a fact-finding mission to uncover Auster’s person, of the events and the art that shaped his life. There was a scrapbook sense about it. Unsurprisingly there is no better way to understand Paul Auster than from a series of oblique and bewildering angles.

For future reference: In philosophical terms, I’m talking about the powers of contingency. Our lives don’t really belong to us, you see – they belong to the world, and in spite of our efforts to make sense of it, the world is a place beyond our understanding.

Auster’s non-fiction is just as brilliant and compelling as his fiction. The interviews here dig deep and are pretty enlightening, and shed some interesting light on his process. The essays on Kafka and Resnikoff were great.

very good

I read the "Red Notebook" and "Why Write" while sitting in the therapist's waiting room and it was well worth the co-pay I forked over. Oddly enough, I hadn't read Paul Auster's novels or other work, or the eassay upon which the collection is based. But having glimpsed these bits behind his pen, I suspect I will set out to do so now.

A young folk struggling in Paris dreaming to live on his writing. For some reasons I remembered the title as "hand to mouth" where this book title could have been confused with the Kafka story "the hunger artist". Nonetheless, a fun and meaningful read as my memory told me.

"Se potessi scrivere il libro che porto dentro di me, sarebbe l’ultimo. Ma è impossibile. Se scrivo, è perché c’è sempre un libro da rifare." (Provvidenza. Conversazione con Edmond Jabès, p. 146)

A pretty enchanting book about what writing really is. It opened up new avenues to me as a writer, and I’m very glad I picked it up!
I only rated it 4 stars because it’s a bit obscure in places, and there are some lengthy sections that didn’t resonate for me, but it’s still very good!

I think about The Red Notebook at least twice a week.

An absolutely brilliant book and one that I am entirely grateful toward for having lead me to certain other stars most notably Le Schizo et les Langues by Louis Wolfson.

A very inspiring collection of essays (literary critiques), personal reflections, and interview excerpts from this erudite author.