AUSTER: I HAVE BEEN TALKING TO GHOSTS BY NOW.

Parma (Italy).

"Italy is the worst country as concerns books and culture. Germany, France, Spain�all the others are much better. It�s harder here". Is it even for a person like him, Paul Auster, the beloved American writer who�s been conquering Italian readers with his novels, from New York Trilogy till The Book of Illusions? Which is not the last one, because a new novel is going to be out in the U.S.A. next week and he�s already working at another one in his solitary Brooklyn flat, where he says to be very happy. "Sure, it�s hard for me too. But how do you react to the Italian cultural decadence? Do you get very angry about it?".

He kindly talks about politics, the American author who�s flown with his wife Siri to Parma, where the Cultural Fundation Edison and Teatro delle Briciole organized an event dedicated to him. He�s going to meet his readers at Teatro al Parco tonight, where Marco Baliani is doing some reading and his only movie as director, Lulu on the Bridge, is going to be screened. Supporters can watch Smoke and Blue in the Face, written by Paul Auster and produced by Wayne Wang, at Cinema Edison d�Essai on Monday. They�re cult movies for many people "but down with cinema, it�s too tiring".

He talks about Bush, elected " with a golpe by the Supreme Court"; about his support to Dean in the next Presidentials, " it could be anybody, I like Dean, but what matters is to win"; about lies on the Irak war; about the economic crisis in the U.S.A. " We must get them out with our vote only, we live in a democratic country: I think there are possibilities, the system is breaking down, I don�t even want to imagine what, if the Democrats would lose�".

Paul Auster is passionate when he says " A writer can�t help writing. I wouldn�t do any good either to myself or to the world if I tried and be a political commentator".

You can find out signs of his early shyness, the same of his youth when he could " hardly speak a word", the same that convinced him not to attend the Film School he dreamt about. You can find out his usual inclination to doubt, self-irony, silence and solitude " If it was for me, I wouldn�t talk about nothing with no one", he smiles.

It could be the grey sky or the thin rain, but Auster�s well-known black and shy eyes look warmly autumnal.

"I don�t think there are any advantages of getting older. But what other choice do we have? I get older every day, for instance�".

This guy from Newark, New Jersey, is 56. He�s been living in New York for thirty years now and he says to love it every moment deeper. He�s 56, smokes thin cigars, drinks white wine, loves food (and laughs when his brand new red shirt get stained).

He talks in his bass-voice, with eyes sparkling, even when he says " I�m living that age in life when most people you loved are dead, and you take their ghosts with you. I�ve been talking to phantoms as much as I do to people alive".

What did he mean, then, when he said " Writing is no longer an act of free will for me, it�s a matter of survival."?

"I talked about the writer�s work, I don�t feel to be myself, when I don�t write almost every day. It�s always been like that. No one can decide to be a writer. You don�t chose, you�re chosen. It happened to me when I was 15 and read "Crime and Punishment". A flash."

He said all his ideas came to his mind when he was about 20: what about now that he�s 56?

"I referred to my philosophy. My world-view took shape at that age and never changed. But I still have ideas to write novels."

It is a fragment of a mysterious germinating life sometimes: a walk with your dog in the night, something brilliant on the ground, the man leaning down to pick it up, will it be a precious stone? No, it�s a spit. An odd feeling that was to become the fake blue stone in The Book of Illusions some years later.

And blue sounds like an obsession for our author, there�s a lot in the new novel too. It�s called Oracle Night, a kind of " camera opera, few characters, intimate atmosphere. A 30-years-old writer living in the 1980s Manhattan purchases a blue notebook and falls under its magic�"

Will Paul Auster enchant his readers with his new novel when he tours and promot it?

" I�ll do it the least. Writers are the less-qualified to talk about their own books. I never really understand what I do, for instance".

�