Description

Due to rights issues, the audio of this interview is not available online. Please contact San Diego State University, Special Collections and Archives if you wish to be granted access to the original audio. Larry McCaffery and Sinda Gregory interview Paul Auster over the phone to supplement a previous interview (not preserved in audio) to be combined for forthcoming publication. After a brief discussion over a recent article on Auster’s work and a forthcoming article (which never appeared) and a brief mention of the manuscript of Auster’s then forthcoming novel The Music of Chance and a longer discussion over where the interview will see print, the interview begins. Auster explains how the feeling of coincidence in life is underscored in his novels even though it leads to negative criticism. Auster discusses his financial situation before he received an inheritance when his father died and how that has influenced his fiction. Auster explains the genesis and process of writing The Music of Chance. Auster discusses his varying use of first or third person narration in his works. Auster discusses specific details in both The Music of Chance and his 1989 novel Moon Palace. Auster explains his view on why he writes novels. There is a discussion of non-literary influences such as art and music on Auster’s work. Auster concludes the interview by discussing the concept of chance and reading an excerpt from Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Separate edited versions of this (and the previous) interview appeared in Mississippi Review, Vol. 20, No. 1/2, (1991), pp. 49-62 and Contemporary Literature, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 1-23.