Transcript
Off the Page: Paul Auster
With Paul Auster
Novelist
Tuesday, December 16, 2003; 1:00 PM
The inventiveness of Paul Auster is obvious from his characters alone: a dog
who is the protagonist in Timbuktu, the boy who can walk on air in Mr.
Vertigo. His work is whimsical, comic, and a bit dark as well.
His new novel, his twelfth, called Oracle Night, tells the story of a
novelist, recovering from a near-fatal illness, who discovers a notebook. As
he writes in the blank book, odd events begin to take place.
Paul Auster was online Tuesday, Dec. 16 to talk about his work. The
transcript follows.
Host Carole Burns, a news producer at washingtonpost.com, is also a fiction
writer with short stories published or upcoming in Washingtonian Magazine
and several literary journals. Twice a fellow at The MacDowell Colony, she's
at work on a novel.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over
Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests
and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
________________________________________________
Carole Burns: Hello booklovers, Welcome to "Off the Page" and welcome to
Paul Auster, whose latest novel, Oracle Night, was just released (and is
slated to be reviewed by Michael Dirda in Book World this Sunday.) We have a
geographical diverse group of questioners today, and let's get to them.
_______________________
Harrisburg, Pa.: It is great to see writing with skillful comedic touches.
That is a difficult type of writing to do well. How do you approach adding
humor to your work? Do you have a conscious plan in developing humor in your
writing, or do you, say, simply write what you yourself find funny?
Paul Auster: Life is both funny and not funny. It has its tragic moments and
its hilarious moments. I try in my work to embrace all aspects of what it
means to be alive, and humor is an important part of that. So even in some
of my grimmest works, there have been comic touches. There have to be,
because that's the way we're built as human beings, and often when we're in
dark circumstances we survive them by cracking jokes.

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Kassel, Germany: First I'd like to thank you for making me more aware of
life by writing unforgettable novels like City of Glass and Oracle Night.
Strange things keep happening to me while reading your novels. Last summer,
for example, I was standing under the Eiffel Tower in Paris when a huge
screw fell down just some feet away from me. It could have killed me, just
like the gargoyle almost did to Nick in Oracle Night. Well, I didn't start a
new life after that, but it kind of changed my life.
So, do you think it could be that books have an equally mysterious influence
on people like the blue notebook?
Paul Auster: I think it can happen. I tend not to be a mystic. I tend not to
believe in magic. But it's undeniable that weird things happen in the world
all the time, and one has the feeling that books can sometimes provoke these
events. The story that is told by Trause to Sidney toward the end of the
novel, Oracle Night, is a true story. I didn't put in the name of the
writer, but the facts as I know them are very, very close to what's in the
novel. A man wrote a narrative poem about a drowning child, and not long
after the book was published, his own child drowns. Now of course, as Sidney
responds initially, it's just a terrible, terrible coincidence. At the same
time, in a state of grief and wretchedness, it's perfectly understandable
that the writer would make a connection between the book and the death of
his child.
_______________________
Carole Burns: It struck me when reading Oracle Night that it might not be
the notebook that disrupts Sidney Orr's life, but the act of writing in it.
Is writing a dangerous activity?
Paul Auster: It can be. It can be very bad for one's mental health. It looks
innocent enough from the outside, but when a man or a woman is living every
day in an imaginary world, it's often difficult to separate your own reality
from the imaginary reality you're writing about. But no, I don't really
believe that the book has any magic property. It's simply that Sidney at
times believes that it does. But of course, everything that's happening in
the book is very subjective. Sidney is telling the story of his life and
also his inner life. And that life is in turmoil during the days that he's
writing about in 1982.
_______________________
Helsingborg, Sweden: Dear Mr. Auster,
I'm an American living in Sweden and I work as a teacher, writer, and
translator. Do you have any suggestions for how to maintain the writer's
voice when translating, especially if the writer has a significantly
different writing style than you do? Also, do you think a translator of
literary works must also be a creative writer himself?
Thank you very much for your time and consideration. And thank you, also,
for your wonderful contributions to literature.
Paul Auster: Thank you for saying such nice things.

Having translated myself for many years, I felt that your primary job is to
give yourself up to the writer you're translating. You have to try to become
that person, in a way. To think like that person. To write like that person.
It's a creative act, almost like embodying a role in a play. So your
particular style as a writer has nothing to do with what your style will be
as a translator, because you're serving the text written by the other
person.

You don't have to be a creative writer to be a translator, because
translation itself is a creative act. The very fact that you're doing it
makes you a creative writer--you are by definition a creative writer, even
though the work is not originally yours. Bringing it into another language
requires all the skill, all the poetic gifts, that any novelist or poet
needs to write his work. In fact, some of the very best translators only
translate.
_______________________
Sacramento, CA: In a recent chat Martin Amis said that the humor novel would
be dead in twenty years because there is a butt to every joke and the
culture just won't stand for that much longer. On the other hand,
Aristophanes has been packing them in for several years. Do you foresee
today's comedy becoming as dated as, say, Tex Avery cartoons are now?
Carole Burns: The Martin Amis discussion: Martin Amis Online
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