The illusionist of words: Paul Auster and his creative universe

Authors

  • Esther Álvarez López Universidad de Oviedo

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2010.741n1009

Keywords:

Actor, Auster, author, bidimensional, Chinese boxes, external references, film, images, internal relations, intertextuality, myse-en-abyme, scripts, silent film, tridimensional, photograph, self-referential, storytellers, visual writing, writers

Abstract


Paul Auster is one of the greatest writers of our time. Since 1994, to his work as novelist, poet and essayist he has added scriptwriting and film directing. Both literature and cinema appear closely linked in his creative production, so that one feeds the other and vice versa, by means of themes, common characters as well as self-referential and metafictional allusions. In novels, short stories and films, Auster reveals himself, in essence, as a great storyteller. They are stories that overlap at different narrative levels following the technique of the Chinese boxes. His work is also part of a large net of internal and external references in dialogue with each other, posing and pondering on questions that have to do with identity, writing or the intersections between fiction and reality, which appear recurrently both in its literary as in its filmic form.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Auster, Paul (1996): “Why Write?”, en Why Write?, Providence, Burning Deck, 11-25.

Auster, Paul (1993): Leviatán, trad. Maribel de Juan, Barcelona, Anagrama.

Auster, Paul (1994): La invención de la soledad, trad. M.ª Eugenia Ciocchini, Barcelona, Anagrama (col. Compactos).

Auster, Paul (1995): Smoke & Blue in the Face, trad. Maribel de Juan, 3.ª ed., 2006, Barcelona, Anagrama.

Auster, Paul (1996): La trilogía de Nueva York, trad. Maribel de Juan, Barcelona, Anagrama.

Auster, Paul(1997): The Art of Hunger. Essays, Prefaces, Interviews and The Red Notebook. Expanded Edition, Harmmondsword, Middlesex, Penguin.

Auster, Paul (1998): Lulu on the Bridge, trad. Javier Calzada, Barcelona, Anagrama.

Auster, Paul (2003): El libro de las ilusiones, Barcelona, Anagrama.

Auster, Paul (2006): Travels in the Scriptorium, Londres, faber and faber.

Auster, Paul (2007): The Inner Life of Martin Frost. A Film by Paul Auster, Nueva York, Henry Holt (Picador).

Auster, Paul (2008): Man in the Dark, Nueva York, Henry Holt.

Barone, Dennis, ed. (1995): Beyond the Red Notebook. Essays on Paul Auster, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press.

Brown, Mark (2007): Paul Auster. Contemporary American and Canadian Novelists, Manchester, Manchester University Press.

Cortanze, Gérard de (1999): Dossier Paul Auster. Prólogo de Rafael Conte, Barcelona, Anagrama.

Foucault, Michel (1969): “¿Qué es un autor?” http://www.henciclopedia.org.uy/autores/Foucault/Autor.html. Consultada el 25 de junio de 2008.

Downloads

Published

2010-02-28

How to Cite

Álvarez López, E. (2010). The illusionist of words: Paul Auster and his creative universe. Arbor, 186(741), 89–97. https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2010.741n1009

Issue

Section

Articles