From Paul Auster, author of the forthcoming 4 3 2 1: A Novel – his very first book, a moving and personal meditation on fatherhood
This debut work by New York Times-bestselling author Paul Auster (The New York Trilogy), a memoir, established Auster’s reputation as a major new voice in American writing. His moving and personal meditation on fatherhood is split into two stylistically separate sections. In the first, Auster reflects on the memories of his father who was a distant, undemonstrative, and cold man who died an untimely death. As he sifts through his Father’s things, Auster uncovers a sixty-year-old murder mystery that sheds light on his father’s elusive character. In the second section, the perspective shifts and Auster begins to reflect on his own identity as a father by adopting the voice of a narrator, “A.” Through a mosaic of images, coincidences, and associations “A,” contemplates his separation from his son, his dying grandfather, turning the story into a self-conscious reflection on the process of writing.
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New York Newsday
...Integrates heart and intellect, sensation and speculation.
W. S. Merwin
The clearest and most telling passages...seem to have emerged more or less as they are out of the guiding impulse....Mr. Auster...turns from his subject to an examination of the attempt to write about it, self-consciously tracing a self-consciousness that occasionally affects the style and form of his account without benefiting them....The mode....is often obtrusive in this book, but it suggests that much of the story has yet to be told.
The New York Times
W S. Merwin
The clearest and most telling passages...seem to have emerged more or less as they are out of the guiding impulse....Mr. Auster...turns from his subject to an examination of the attempt to write about it, self-consciously tracing a self-consciousness that occasionally affects the style and form of his account without benefiting them....The mode....is often obtrusive in this book, but it suggests that much of the story has yet to be told.
The New York Times
From the Publisher
Praise for The Invention of Solitude“Moving, delicately perceived portraits of lives and relationship.”
– The New York Times Book Review
“Integrates heart and intellect, sensation and speculation. . .as it relentlessly tries to make sense of the shocks of living.”
– Newsday
“Eloquent. . .Paul Auster’s memoir combines the subjects of time, language, and family into a beautifully moving and intelligent mosaic.”
– Charles Baxter