A Review of Paul Auster’s “Talking to Strangers”
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Anyone who knows me knows that Paul Auster is one of my favourite writers. The thing with Auster, though, is that he runs either hot or cold. Either he publishes doggerel such as Timbuktu, a story that was narrated from a dog’s perspective, or he’s completely on fire, which is happily the case with most of his books. (One of my faves, and the book that really got me into him, is The Book of Illusions.) The thing with Auster is that he can pack dense material into the shortest of spaces — City of Glass may be a 100 page or so novella, but it feels like a book that runs triple that length. That approach has endeared me to this author. So, it was with great happiness that Picador sent me a galley copy of his new work, Talking to Strangers, without even me asking for it first. (Their publicists must know me too well.) And I’m glad they did for it is a breathtaking, stellar read of non-fiction.
The book is really a hodgepodge, a potpourri of literary criticism, prefaces to books, newspaper op-ed pieces, speeches and other bits that Auster has published in the last 50 years. There are more than 40 essays in total here. The book is largely chronological (at least by section), so you really get a sense how Auster’s writing has evolved during the time period the book covers. It’s neat to read his literary criticism from the 1970s and think of it as a bit on the pretentious side, and see just how much more of an accessible writer he became — largely from the ’80s onward. Talking to Strangers, then, really serves two purposes: it works as an extension of his most recent work, the autobiographical novel 4 3 2 1, which ends in the late 1960s, and as a primer for the sorts of things that Auster likes and champions.
To be honest, even though I consider myself well read, I didn’t know many of the authors that Auster pens about in his ’70s criticisms and his later book prefaces. Most of these writers are pretty obscure by mainstream standards. So, what you get is one of your most beloved authors talking about his influences, and gives you choice reading material to go and seek out on your own just to see how they match up with this master of American letters. Talking to Strangers is really a jumping-off point, a place of new discovery. Granted, some of this material can be a little on the dry side if you have no locus or compass to some of the names that Auster brings to the table. However, and this may seem like a massive paradox, the material is also dead fascinating, for the most part. You really get a sense, perhaps more so from any of the author’s other works, into how the author ticks.
Aside from talking about his favourite writers, there are pieces in the book that, for instance, tell you about how Auster used a manual typewriter for all of his writing up into the early 2000s. (Whether or not Auster uses a computer now is not dealt with, sadly). You’ll also learn about one of his favourite baseball players, and his admiration for a French high-wire artist. Talking to Strangers, if it has a fault, is really all over the map. It is such a loose collection of writings that one has to wonder if the sole reason behind its publication has to do with the fact that Auster is writing another long novel and needed a stop-gap collection just to pay his mortgage. (Details of his housing situation is also included in this book.) It also may just be that, as Auster is now in his 70s, he’s thinking about his legacy and wanted to clear his palate of past writings to help cement his legacy.
Regardless of the reason, I devoured this book. I read it in the course of a couple of sittings, and was saddened when it was done. That’s also because Auster saves his best writing for last — newspaper clippings about the plight of Salman Rushdie, the plight of the homeless in New York City and the plight of those five boroughs in the hours of 9/11. There is some overlap. Two of the essays deal with the National Story Project, the National Public Radio series he was involved with at the turn of the century, and offer, in some respects, the same information. There is no sense of editing here — it is as though Auster (or one of his handlers) took a bunch of his obscure or unpublished writing and placed it in a plastic bag and shook it up.
In conclusion, I was very happy to see this side of Auster — intelligent, serious but with a bit of the playful. You really get a sense of the author’s passions and projects that he admires. There’s a smile-inducing bit on how to, yes, talk to strangers and make headway with them. However, this is really a book that Auster has unleashed on his fanbase (his strangers) to talk about himself and what really drives him. The end result is utterly fascinating. This might not be the best starting point for the Auster neophyte (I’d probably direct them to The New York Trilogy or one of his better novels first), but for the dedicated reader of Auster’s work, this book is a bit of a marvel. It’ll tell you everything you need to know about Auster without telling too much that may be distinctly personal. It is not a straight autobiography, per se. (For that, may I direct you to either Winter Journal or Report from the Interior, or even Hand to Mouth, a chronicle of his years in poverty?) However, this is an astounding work that deserves to be read to understand more about the life of the amazing Paul Auster, so pull up a chair by the fire and let the author tell you a few things that he’d like you to know about.
Paul Auster’s Talking to Strangers: Selected Essays, Prefaces, and Other Wrings, 1967–2017 will be published by Picador on May 21, 2019.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
