The Red Notebook: True Stories

by Paul Auster

The Red Notebook brings together in one volume all of Paul Auster's short, true-life stories―a remarkable collection of tales that documents the curious, miraculous, and sometimes catastrophic turns of everyday reality. 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: The Invention of Solitude, Hand to Mouth, and The Art of Hunger. In The Red Notebook, Auster again explores events from the real world large and small, tragic and comic―that reveal the unpredictable, shifting nature of human experience. A burnt onion pie, a wrong number, a young boy struck by lightning, a man falling off a roof, a scrap of paper discovered in a Paris hotel room―all these form the context for a singular kind of ars poetica, a literary manifesto without theory, cast in the irreducible forms of pure story telling.

Genres: Nonfiction, Short Stories, Essays, The United States Of America, Memoir, Literature, American

104 pages, Paperback

First published August 10, 1993

About the author

Paul Auster was the bestselling author of 4 3 2 1, Bloodbath Nation, Baumgartner, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature. Among his other honors are the Prix Médicis Étranger for Leviathan, the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke, and the Premio Napoli for Sunset Park. In 2012, he was the first recipient of the NYC Literary Honors in the category of fiction. He was also a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions), the PEN/Faulkner Award (The Music of Chance), the Edgar Award (City of Glass), and the Man Booker Prize (4 3 2 1). Auster was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He died at age seventy-seven in 2024.

Reviews

[Tobias Cramer]

Skønlitteraturen handler stort set altid om det exceptionelle. Om det der sker sjældent. Om dagene med skilsmisse og krise. Ikke om hverdagen, rugbrødet og tørretiderne. Det fører jævnligt til at litteraturen bliver anklaget for at være virkelighedsfjern.

Det exceptionelle er dog i høj grad også virkeligt. Det er i hvert fald Austers svært vellykkede argument i denne lille essaysamling. Han opremser en lang række virkelige usandsynligheder og sammentræf, der langt hen ad vejen alle er romanværdige.

Han kommenterer ikke historierne, men argumentet er alligevel tydeligt. Bare fordi alle dage ikke er mindeværdige, er nogen det. Tilfældet kan skabe mirakler. Det usandsynlige vil før eller siden ske. Den skønne litteratur er ikke verdensfjern, men det er bare ikke hver dag, der bliver skudt en ulv i Ulfsborg.

[Mette Pilgaard Christoffersen]

Små historier om selvoplevede, meningsfulde tilfældigheder primært fra New York-området. Tankevækkende refleksioner og som altid en sproglig fornøjelse. Den perfekte værtindegave til bogelskere.