Paul Auster was born in New Jersey (USA) in 1947. After graduating from Columbia in 1970, he went to France where he worked as a translator. He also started writing fiction, some of which was published in American journals. He moved back to the US in 1974 and since then has written novels, poems and essays. He first won acclaim for a series of detective stories published together as The New York Trilogy (1987) : the first volume is City of Glass, the second one Ghosts and the third one The Locked Room. In an interview, Auster explained that "learning to live with ambiguity […] is the essence of The New York Trilogy. He adds :" I don’t even know if I think The New York Trilogy is very good." The series is described by a critic as "very much the quintessential postmodern work of fiction". Auster himself once declared that he is interested in "inventing new ways to tell stories."
Moon Palace came out in 1989, The Music of Chance in 1990, Leviathan in 1992, etc. More recently, the novel 4 3 2 1, was published in 2017. The book tells the story of Archie Ferguson, who lives four different lives. Time Magazine summed it up perfectly well : "The concept behind the 866-page tome boils down to one life, lived four ways." A review of the novel in the Guardian explains that the character's "four selves go their separate ways, each with his own experience of childhood, adolescence, friendship, love, sport and school". The journalist then compares the novel to Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken. Indeed, who has never wondered "what if I had done things differently ? How would my life have turned out ?"
Paul Auster has also written several screenplays, notably Smoke (1995), Lulu on the Bridge (1998), which he also directed, and The Inner Life of Martin Frost (2007).
VOCABULARY
to graduate from : obtenir un diplôme de
to win acclaim : avoir du succès
quintessential : par excellence, le type même de
to sum up : résumer
to boil down to : se résumer à
indeed : certes
to wonder : se demander
to turn out : devenir