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The Red Notebook: True Stories

Paul Auster

3.78 · Rating details · 4,521 ratings · 343 reviews

Paul Auster has earned international praise for the imaginative power of his many novels, including The New York Trilogy, Moon Palace, The Music of Chance, Mr. Vertigo, and Timbuktu. He has also published a number of highly original non-fiction works: The Invention of Solitude, Hand to Mouth, and The Art of Hunger. In The Red Notebook, Auster again explores events from the ...more

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Paperback, 104 pages

Published June 17th 2002 by New Directions (first published August 10th 1993)

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Aug 23, 2019 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, short-stories, writing, essay, non-fiction, united-states

The Red Notebook, Paul Auster

The Red Notebook is a story-in-a-story collection by Paul Auster. The book consists of four parts, all stories which had appeared previously: The Red Notebook (1995), Why Write? (1996), Accident Report (1999) and It Don't Mean a Thing (2000).

They are true stories gathered from Auster's life as well as the lives of his friends and acquaintances and they have all one thing in common: the paradox of coincidence. Auster narrates things he writes about in his fiction, m The Red Notebook, Paul Auster

The Red Notebook is a story-in-a-story collection by Paul Auster. The book consists of four parts, all stories which had appeared previously: The Red Notebook (1995), Why Write? (1996), Accident Report (1999) and It Don't Mean a Thing (2000).

They are true stories gathered from Auster's life as well as the lives of his friends and acquaintances and they have all one thing in common: the paradox of coincidence. Auster narrates things he writes about in his fiction, making one wonder if he's really telling the truth.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و سوم ماه آگوست سال 2012میلادی

عنوان: دفترچه ی سرخ ؛ نویسنده: پل آستر؛ مترجم: شهرزاد لولاچی؛ لیلا نبی فر؛ تهران، افق، جاپ دوم 1390؛ در 146ص؛

دفترچه‌ ی سرخ سری گفتگوهایی است موشکافانه با «پل استر»، که ژرفای اندیشه‌ های این نویسنده‌ ی پست‌ مدرن را میکاود؛ ایشان در اين گفتگوها برداشت‌های همیشگی درباره‌ ی ادبیات را به سخره میگیرند، نیاز به آفرینش ادبی را موشکافی میکنند، و همینگونه فهمیدن دشواریهای ادبیات را آسان‌تر میسازند؛ در بخشی دیگر، رویدادهای واقعی، همچون رویدادهای نشر شده در روزنامه‌ ها، دستمایه ی آفرینش داستان‌هایی نامنتظره شده‌ اند؛

کتاب «دفترچه ی سرخ» شامل سه بخش است؛

بخش نخست دربرگیرنده سه گفت و شنید با «پل استر» است، که در آن گفتگوها با جنبه های دل انگیزی از شخصیت «استر»، و همچنین با روش کار و سلیقه ی ادبی ایشان بیشتر آشنا میشویم

بخش دوم کتاب، نوشته هایی است به قلم خود ایشان با عنوان «داستانهای واقعی» که رخدادها و رویداهایی که دستمایه ی ایشان برای آفرینش آثارش شده اند. «استر» خود درباره این داستانها، در جایی از همین کتاب نوشته:«همه داستان ها حقیقی هستند، کاملا حقیقی.»؛

بخش آخر نیز شامل دو نگاره ی پایانی است که نخستینش مصاحبه منتشر نشده ای است، که دانشجویی برای تهیه پایان نامه اش درباره ی کتاب «سه گانه نیویورک» با «پل استر» انجام داده، و دومی یادداشتی است بر آثار «استر»، با عنوان «روایت پست مدرنِ استر»؛

در گفت و شنیدهای بخش نخست، تمرکز بر روی آثار «استر» است، و روش کارش در نوشتن و خواندن از نویسندگان مورد علاقه ی خویش و مفاهیمی که در نوشته هایش وجود دارد، نکته ای که گاه با غلو «استر» از دنیای داستانی اش همراه است، خوانشگر از بینابین این گفت و شنیدها درمییابد که «استر» نویسنده ای با دیداری درونی است، و بسیار شخصی مینویسند؛ «استر» در یكی از گفت و شندیدهایش میگویند: «هرچه بیشتر به نوشته هایم میاندیشم، مسائل نظری برایم کم اهمیتتر میشوند؛ وقتی به کتابهایی فكر کنی که تحت تاثیرت قرار داده اند، متوجه میشوی که آنها هم به همان دلیل نوشته شده اند؛ چیزی آدم را صدا میکند، به سمت خود میکشد و باعث میشود به روایت گوش دهی؛ در نتیجه، این موضوع ارتباط چندانی با ادبیات ندارد»؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 17/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی ...more

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Apr 17, 2020 Matthew Ted rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, lit-american, on-writing, read-2020, non-fiction

60th book of 2020.

I have a story to tell: In my first year of University, I believe in a Poetry module, we were given a passage (of prose, bizarrely) by a writer about his friend (J.) and the end of their friendship. The reason? The writer has had only four flat tyres in his life and all four of which happened with J. in the car. The writer admits it was not the only reason, surely, but that fourth tyre must have been symbolic of something, and they both knew it. Now, for some reason, that stor 60th book of 2020.

I have a story to tell: In my first year of University, I believe in a Poetry module, we were given a passage (of prose, bizarrely) by a writer about his friend (J.) and the end of their friendship. The reason? The writer has had only four flat tyres in his life and all four of which happened with J. in the car. The writer admits it was not the only reason, surely, but that fourth tyre must have been symbolic of something, and they both knew it. Now, for some reason, that story has remained with me for a long time, but for the life of me I could not remember the writer. Considering how small the passage is and how seemingly unimportant it is – simply four flat tyres and a failed friendship – I am surprised it has stayed with me so long.

At the end of my second year I took a flight out to Paris to visit a friend, E. Though the Two Friends and Four Tyres (the name I mentally gave it as I didn’t know the title) remained in my mind, I had forgotten the writer already, or maybe I never knew it in the first place. Anyway, E. was several years older than me and had been living out there for around nine months by that point, in a small Parisian apartment, which wasn’t his. There was a cat he had to feed, but other than that, it was essentially his own. The real owner was elsewhere in the world for an undisclosed amount of time, I don’t remember where. E. wrote poetry, good poetry. At the time I arrived in the summer he was finishing up on a collection he had been working on, and was very proud of. However, my flight was on the Friday and he was at work (in a restaurant) so I had the day to mooch around Paris alone.

I won’t go into every minute detail, I’ll bring it to the boiling point. In a café in some random side street in Paris, there was a girl I once knew. We didn’t know each other particularly well but we had spoken to one another infrequently in college. She immediately recognised me and we had coffee together. I had already spent several hours wandering around alone so I felt oddly relieved to be talking to someone. She was working out here too, she told me, as a journalist. I meekly told her I was at University, slightly bitter that she had skipped it, moved to Paris and was already working as a journalist. As well as the coincidence of her being there in the first place, I noticed The New York Trilogy poking out of her handbag, which I was reading at the time. We laughed about that, and I pondered if the universe was telling me to love this girl, to move to Paris with her, to own an apartment and walk along the Seine hand-in-hand. She asked what I was doing, which broke my fantasy. I told her about E. (she was immediately interested, and wanted to read his poetry) and that I was only visiting for an extended weekend. I had assignments to do, I added on the end, but regretted it, as it made me sound childish. She paid for the coffees, which also hurt my twenty-year-old masculinity, and we wandered around the streets for a short time before she told me she had to get home. I also realised it was later than I had expected and E. would be wondering where I had got to. She gave me her number (in a formal, professional way, I couldn’t help but notice) and said she would love to meet up with me again, and meet E. I said I would be happy to.

The rest of my trip was uneventful. In the end, I didn’t see her again. Though I rang her the following day, it had already become a vague promise of meeting again; she was busy, E. was busy, and I didn’t want to appear desperate. I finished The New York Trilogy on the flight home, pondering the two bizarre coincidences: not only meeting her, but both reading the same Auster book. I couldn’t help but wonder if it symbolised something like that fourth flat tyre. Coincidences were so rare that it was hard not to seek symbolism in them. Back in England I finished University, forgot about Auster and the girl, forgot mostly about E. (I haven’t seen him since, but not due to any flat tyres) and mostly forgot about the coincidences I had experienced. Though, I’ll admit, sometimes I wonder if I should have moved to Paris, and fallen in love there.

It is now, of course, 2020 and I am reading The Red Notebook. I get to chapter 10 of the first part, and find that I am reading Two Friends and Four Tyres, which I will continue to call it as it is given no name in the book other than 10. I can’t help but ponder, like the ridiculous chance of our own existence, the probability of reading this again. Of all the books and all the writers in the universe, past and present, it is here, in front of me, in an Auster book. And no less, The Red Notebook, filled with coincidences from Paul Auster’s life. So a coincidence in my life within a coincidence in his life. It also throws me back in time to my weekend in Paris with E., on meeting the girl and us both reading Auster. Too much to fathom, I think. The last line of The Red Notebook reads: This really happened. Like everything else I have set down in this red notebook, it is a true story. I don’t think I believe him, not entirely; maybe it is true, we will never know. In the same sense, you must not entirely believe what I have said here, either. ...more

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Jun 19, 2022 Luís rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: united-states, g-biography, 2022-readings, e-3

And here is the little red notebook the author tells us in the New York Trilogy. First, Paul Auster records special events that happened or had said to him. Then, he explains how he came up with the idea of "The City of Glass". ...more

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Aug 27, 2012 Moira added it

Shelves: 2012-50-new-books-challenge

Vintage Auster: the man in miniature. Occasionally mawkish, occasionally so precise it takes your breath away, a kind of balancing act where every action is at once banal and loaded with meaning, like a sort of weird combination of Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant: O Henry stories without the trick endings, or as if the story was all trick. The back cover calls this "a singular kind of ars poetica, a literary manifesto without theory," which is true enough. Because the pieces in this book are so sh Vintage Auster: the man in miniature. Occasionally mawkish, occasionally so precise it takes your breath away, a kind of balancing act where every action is at once banal and loaded with meaning, like a sort of weird combination of Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant: O Henry stories without the trick endings, or as if the story was all trick. The back cover calls this "a singular kind of ars poetica, a literary manifesto without theory," which is true enough. Because the pieces in this book are so short -- the book itself is about the size of a mass-market paperback, but much thinner, and most of the stories vary in length from three or four pages to just one -- the dreamlike quality which in Auster's longer works can seem twee or forced works here to great effect. Dreams are the result of the mind struggling to make connections between seemingly random memories, images, perceptual chunks, wishes, God knows what thrown off by the brain as we lie physically paralyzed, beyond touch and sound, reduced to visions and the attempts to connect those visions (this is why dreams seem so choppy and surreal -- most of them are apparently three or four "mini-dreams" stitched together). Auster's thesis here is apparently that just as our minds try to do this in dream-time, so they do it with random, unconnected elements of life, at once as banal and loaded with meaning as a dream where you see a childhood friend and they offer you a candy bar you can't eat (because in a dream, you are cut off from taste; in your mind, you are cut off from the sweetness of childhood, the easy emotional connections of a child, you wake up with the memory of untasted, untastable chocolate in your mind and are moody until coffee).

In these stories, prison guards turn into father-in-laws, brothers into husbands, a dead child into a kind of sacrificial double. One man grows up with his mother, hearing her version of his childhood and his father; by utmost chance, he finds his father again, and hears the predictable reverse of his mother's story: in his father's narrative, she was the monster. Auster writes: "C.'s life had now become two lives. There was Version A and Version B, and both of them were his story. He had lived them both in equal measure, two truths that canceled each other out, and all along, without even knowing it, he had been stranded in the middle." As a child, Auster had rescued a friend of his sister's from being crushed under the wheels of his father's car: "For years afterward, I walked around feeling that this had been my finest moment. I had actually saved someone's life, and in retrospect I was always astonished by how quickly I had acted, by how sure my movements had been at the critical juncture. I saw the rescue in my mind again and again...." Inevitably, when he meets her again fifteen years later, "....it was clear that she remembered nothing....She hadn't even known that she was in danger. The whole incident had taken place in a flash: ten seconds of her life, an interval of no account, and none of it had left the slightest mark on her. For me, on the other hand, those seconds had been a defining experience, a singular event in my internal history."

But the final trick of that story, concealed from the audience by the misdirection of separate but equal perspectives, is its last paragraph, which has the same impact as realizing both that the childhood friend in your dream is eternally now, here with you in your mind, and that you will never see him again; that even the child who appears in the dream is not the child you knew, just as you could not taste the offered chocolate. "Most of all," Auster writes, "it stuns me to acknowledge that I am talking about something that happened in 1956 or 1957 -- and that the little girl of that night is now over forty years old." Time is the fifth dimension in which we live, and dream, and lose, against which we shore fragments of meaning to shield ourselves from the ceaseless rain of atoms: Then, the phone rang and it was her. They had grown up in the same building without knowing it. One second later, it would have been me. ...more

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Feb 05, 2022 Aydan Aliyeva rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book inspired me to write (one day,but not today) my own experiences which are full of "coincidence" )))) ...more

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Feb 19, 2016 Amirah Jiwa rated it it was amazing

Gold. Not two days ago, I was complaining to a friend about having to read genre fiction instead of beautiful writing during my morning commute because it was more suited to the constant interruptions and stop-and-go of the tube. And then, this book fell into my hand.

Auster's bite-size true stories are intense and powerful, capturing lovely moments of chance and possibility in just a few pages each. "Perhaps it is a way to remind myself that I know nothing, that the world I live in will go on es ...more

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Aug 01, 2022 Valentina Vekovishcheva rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

"If there's a pencil in your pocket, there's a good chance that one day you'll feel tempted to start using it." ...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Hannah rated it really liked it

Oh, Paul Auster! I love this man so much. The simplicity his writing is just beautiful, and the stories themselves- all of which are about extraordinary moments or coincidences- kind of restored my faith in humanity, in fate, in life. It's so wonderful to know that moments like this exist, and that someone has taken the time to recall them. It's rare that I stumble upon a coincidence as profound as some of the ones in this book (Nazi prison guard's daughter falls in love with prisoner's son, a g ...more

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Mar 02, 2014 Justin Evans rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: essays

In 1947, a friend of mine, P., was born. He went on to live much of his life in New York or Europe. He was particularly attached to France, spending much of his time there even when there was no real reason for him to do so, and that might have contributed to his fame in that country. P. became a writer of banally meta stories, another reason that the French love him so much, and I thought that he would go there and never return. Perhaps that's why I never read his work.

He published many novels ...more

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Mar 31, 2008 Laila rated it it was amazing

This incredible little book is a collection of almost unbelievable, true "happenstances" that one of my favorite authors compiled. Each vignette, only a few pages, is a story with amazing outcomes, neatly tied up into feel-good endings. I still question the veracity of the whole thing but it is a quick read, wholly satisfying and full of humanity that makes me happy and makes me close my eyes with a smile at each ending. ...more

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Apr 23, 2020 Liina Haabu rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020

This slim book has three parts: short descriptions of coincidental happenings in Auster's life; his short essays on some writers, artists and French poetry and interviews with himself. The snippets of unbelievable coincidences were nice to read but not too thrilling if you've read his work before. The French poetry analysis I skipped cos I have no deep interest in that subject. But the interviews. Those were really insightful and they make me understand his work so much better now. For example:

" This slim book has three parts: short descriptions of coincidental happenings in Auster's life; his short essays on some writers, artists and French poetry and interviews with himself. The snippets of unbelievable coincidences were nice to read but not too thrilling if you've read his work before. The French poetry analysis I skipped cos I have no deep interest in that subject. But the interviews. Those were really insightful and they make me understand his work so much better now. For example:

"When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All the elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing - if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go. It's all in the voice. You're telling a story, after all, and your job is to make people want to go on listening to your tale. The slightest distraction or wandering leads to boredom. "

This is why despite his books being very good stories I still feel hollow after reading them. It is the lack of atmosphere. Those minute details, gestures, colours of the wallpaper - whatever descriptions are what create the fictional world where the characters operate. He also mentions that he often imagines the same places when he reads - whenever a house is his childhood house etc. I am frankly shocked of such limited imagination especially considering that his stories are often highly imaginative and a collision of unbelievable coincidences.

He also talks about how his biggest influence has been fairy tales. How oral storytelling tradition is pure and how novels are going further and further from telling the story because they are so crammed with descriptive information. I myself very much enjoy rich language in novels, long descriptions, of nature, people's appearances etc. Of course, a novel that is laconic in style does not have to be devoid of emotion (think James Salter). It is about the right words.

There is more talk about how all his work is related to his own experiences and some badmouthing of critics who have not been kind on his work. Unfortunately, this makes him come across as quite an egocentric person. Overall, I do recommend the interviews in the book if you want to make more sense of his work and see where it comes from also some of the little story snippets were quite fun. The rest is just okay. ...more

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Jan 09, 2013 Pixelina rated it it was amazing

Shelves: short-stories, z2013-read

A slim red little notebook, just a few stories thrown in, all about this rather remarkable thing we call coincidences, or Chance. It's like a little amuse bouche of Paul Auster and the rest of his work. This is what it tastes like, only a crumble to wet the appetite. ...more

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Apr 05, 2015 Tom O'Brien rated it really liked it

Shelves: short-stories

Very enjoyable little collection of true stories. Most are based around coincidence, all are short, some told to him, some happened to him. Many are remarkable in their content, all are told remarkably well.

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Feb 29, 2020 Shaimaa Ali rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Nothing more beautiful than Paul Auster’s works as his autobiography .. very passionately illustrated essays about his personal memoir , selections of books he translated & why and finally a selection of short passages on (why write?) ..

Loved it as his amazing literate works ..

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Apr 03, 2007 Larissa rated it liked it

Shelves: short-stories, english-usa, unreliable-narrators, not-my-style

When you're a man as good-looking, beloved by the French, and utterly meta as Paul Auster, things happen to you. Exciting things. Surprising things. Coicidental and virtually impossible things. And if things aren't happening to you, then by golly, they are happening to someone you know. And so what are you to do, Paul Auster, but to write a book detailing the minute ways in which life (specifically yours) truly means something.

Because, Dear Reader, everything is connected.

Auster believes in a ...more

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Oct 15, 2015 Bruce rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Bought The Red Notebook in a New York book store before heading to the airport to fly to Beijing. Thought I would finish it before the in-flight dinner was served, but found the first few pages so exquisite that I had to draw out the consumption as long as possible. Just finished it in my Beijing hotel room four days after the New York purchase. This is honest, direct, precise writing, at once unadorned and deeply complex. Regular practice at this way of writing would greatly enhance any writer' ...more

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Aug 20, 2017 Samantha Grabelle rated it it was amazing

Auster is my new favorite author. He loves coincidences as much as I do. He writes plainly and without a lot of clutter. I have fantasies of showing him my memoir stories...

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Oct 23, 2019 Farhan Khalid rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: america

In 1973, I was offered a job as caretaker of a farmhouse in the south of France

It turned out to be a curious year

The place was beautiful: a large, eighteenth-century stone house bordered by vineyards on one side and a national forest on the other. The nearest village was two kilometers away, but it was inhabited by no more than forty people

It was an ideal spot for two young writers to spend a year

On the other hand, we lived on the brink of permanent catastrophe

L. and I were married in 1974

Ou ...more

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Mar 05, 2021 Maryam rated it liked it

I am not sure if I can count this as one of my read books, as I listened to a book-reading session by Auster himself. (https://www.openculture.com/2012/10/h...)

Anyhow, I liked the book, which is a collection are true stories according to the author. However, his unique style in retelling those true events makes them sound fictional. Who would believe that all those strange coincidences have actually happened in the real world, and we are not reading a story by Auster? ...more

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Sep 11, 2017 Lauren ReVeal rated it it was amazing

Thinking I need to do a bit of re-reading and perhaps buy my own copy.

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Mar 06, 2021 Em added it

Came across this by accident and it's pretty short so I was like, why not? I like the self-reflexivity. Could be a good text to teach next year... ...more

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Sep 11, 2015 Netalie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I'll begin from the bottom line: in my opinion, you can't really go wrong with an Auster book - he's truly a master of writing, which is something that can be attributed to a very few novelists these days (among them you can also find Stephen King). Of course, some may not like their prose but one can not argue with their tremendous success and part of it must be attributed to their outstanding style.

"The red notebook" is actually a collection of snippets from Auster's autobiography and since h I'll begin from the bottom line: in my opinion, you can't really go wrong with an Auster book - he's truly a master of writing, which is something that can be attributed to a very few novelists these days (among them you can also find Stephen King). Of course, some may not like their prose but one can not argue with their tremendous success and part of it must be attributed to their outstanding style.

"The red notebook" is actually a collection of snippets from Auster's autobiography and since he had written at least 3 of those in different formats ("The invention of solitude", "Hand to mouth" and "Winter journal"), not to mention his other novels that combine some biographical facts, then all in all - some of the stories like "Why write?" are known already to the reader.
Having said that, as mentioned in this review's opening - it's Auster which means it's always written well and no matter how familiar the story is, he still manages to shed a light on an unfamiliar aspect of it.
Besides "Why write?", the other stories were unfamiliar to me and all of them had the beloved "Austeric" combination of coincidence, faith, uncertainty and "undetermined truth". It's the kind of stories you can imagine Auster telling around the dinner table sitting among friends, the kind of stories that will draw the attention of any circle of people. These real life stories also demonstrate the core of Auster's literature - in a way, they complete the fiction, which in itself is embedded in some sort of a limbo between truth and false, real and what may seem almost too far-fetched. But since we're talking here about Auster and the reader is already well familiar with his idiosyncratic themes (the name Auster is synonymous to coincidence like Kafka is synonymous to arbitrariness), it seems to me that this (very) short book, besides being an enjoyable one sit read, helps to stretch out even more of the already very stretched boarders of the possible and what seems to us sometimes unlikable and even impossible plots in Auster's fiction.
More so, it makes you wonder how much of his supposedly fictional plots are actually based on true events like those in "The red notebook" - although eventually it doesn't really matter what's true and what isn't except for natural curiosity & some healthy gossip ;) Auster's prose, whether it's fictional or not, embraces it all and with that leaves you without any certainty to hold on to, which can be quit scary at first but mostly liberating (not to mention enjoyable).In this sense he reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez - but that's for another time or review. ...more

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Oct 05, 2021 Frederick rated it liked it

Shelves: memoir, auster-paul

This is the first Paul Auster book I've read. I've been aware of him for decades. Certainly, I've read a review or two he's written and I've seen him on panel discussions on TV. I have always MEANT to read him. About two weeks ago, friends gave me a copy of THE NEW YORK TRILOGY, in a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with a cover by Art Spiegelman. That is a handsome book. On my way home from work tonight I stopped at the library, as I often do, oasis that it is, and I thought that, since the book This is the first Paul Auster book I've read. I've been aware of him for decades. Certainly, I've read a review or two he's written and I've seen him on panel discussions on TV. I have always MEANT to read him. About two weeks ago, friends gave me a copy of THE NEW YORK TRILOGY, in a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with a cover by Art Spiegelman. That is a handsome book. On my way home from work tonight I stopped at the library, as I often do, oasis that it is, and I thought that, since the book I'd been given was at home, I'd spend an hour or so reading the copy I expected the library to have. As luck would have it, someone had checked it out. I didn't want to read other fiction by Auster, because THE NEW YORK TRILOGY was going to be my first exposure to his fiction. I wanted to go right to it without cheating. But it occurred to me that, surely Paul Auster has put out some nonfiction. I looked up the library's collection and found the book I'm reviewing now, which I read in the space of fifty minutes or so. It is short, to the point, and its chief merit is the grace of its uncomplicated prose. The them of the connected essays is coincidence. I do not get the sense that Paul Auster is superstitious, but the beauty of the coincidences he describes is undeniable.
It is not celebratory, but it highlights the feeling one gets when the first thing one thinks of at certain junctures is coincidence. A lucky coin which CAN'T be the same coin turns up at a lucky moment, for example.
There is one tragic event in this book. Auster neither dwells on it nor brushes it off. It feeds the larger coincidence of his life, luck playing an ambiguous hand. It helped make him what a writer needs to be: An observer. There are a few other examples of ill luck, which while awful for the people he talks about, probably were not tragic. The one tragedy in the book, described in spare, clear sentences, is the central moment of the story.
I did notice one glaring typo about three-quarters through, where a word ended in "ing" when it shouldn't have. Other than that, though, this is an attractive volume, as most New Directions books are. I believe it is designed to be read in one sitting. I didn't even have to check it out.
This bodes well for when I read my next book, the gift from my friends, THE NEW YORK TRILOGY. ...more

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Mar 18, 2018 Neil Randall rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The Red Notebook provides a fascinating insight into a writer’s life, inspiration and outlook. Collected here are short essays, reflections and extracts from interviews where Auster talks about incidents from his past that have coloured both his life and work, from his early poetry and translation work onward. In particular, there is an emphasis on fate and chance, how commonplace unlikely meetings and coincidences are in everyday life, far more than in fictional works, where unlikely plot twist ...more

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Jun 28, 2015 Arturo rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015

This is a great book to read on a Sunday, or any rainy day (yep, as cliché as it sounds). I read in other reviews of Auster's books that he writes stories that anyone could write, and I now understand why people seem to think that.

Auster writes in a contemporary style, about contemporary places, and typical relations, yet, it is precisely these set of characteristics that makes him apparently simple, but at the same time unique. It takes great intelligence to notice the small details necessary ...more

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Apr 27, 2019 Merry Creig rated it it was amazing

The most fascinated book which I was affected. I should say that "Thank you Paul Auster." Because he wrote such a realistic book that I couldn't help admiring of it.
He both introduced his life and mentioned the incidents which coincided with the people who has met so far.
This book was a sample of "bibliotherapy" on its own. Paul Auster not only referred to the incidents which was lived by him but also told about his touchy experiments about his life. The full density of sensitive sensations i ...more

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Oct 13, 2020 Mary Lins rated it it was amazing

Shelves: complete

I needed a short book to read between tomes and so I rescued “The Red Notebook: True Stories”, by Paul Auster, from my To Be Read stack. I picked it up years ago and hadn’t gotten around to reading it – at 103 pages it was a perfect “palate cleanser” of a book.

It’s a collection of essays/stories, in which coincidence, happenstance, “miracles”, and deus ex machina, feature. It will prompt you to ruminate on these types of stories in your own life; everyone has them!

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Jul 26, 2011 Andrew Smith rated it liked it

Shelves: memoirs-biographies, non-fiction

A collection of essays by and interviews with this most creative of all contemporary American writers. Fantastic insight into the creation of Auster's early work. In truth, one for aficionados only. ...more

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Jul 08, 2017 Joe Imwalle rated it it was amazing

A very quick read and especially pleasant. Great little stories. I found myself recounting some of them to my wife. Recommended.

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Aug 22, 2017 Megan Burns rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

a lovely and spellbinding little collection of coincidences

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About Paul Auster

Paul Auster

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Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Report from the Interior, Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Invisible, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. He has been awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature, the Prix Médicis Étranger, the Independent Spirit Award, and the Premio Napoli. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Ac ...more

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You might know comedian Colin Jost from his work as the co-anchor of Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, or perhaps you know him as Scarlett...

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“I learned that books are never finished, that it is possible for stories to go on writing themselves without an author.” — 15 likes

“Descubrir el poder del azar es descubrir que somos terriblemente frágiles y vulnerables, que dependemos de la casualidad, que una coincidencia estúpida puede destrozarnos en un segundo. Que una palabra estúpida oída por casualidad también puede fulminarnos. Recordar que las personas son terriblemente frágiles es una obligación moral: Paul Auster dice que es cazador de coincidencias por obligación moral.” — 1 likes

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