Collected Prose: Autobiographical Writings, True Stories, Critical Essays, Prefaces, Collaborations With Artists, and Interviews (80 page)
Authors: Paul Auster
The murderous attacks on the World Trade Center last September were rightly construed as an assault against the United States. New Yorkers felt that way, too, but it was our city that was bombed, and even as we wrestled to understand the hateful fanaticism that could lead to the deaths of 3000 innocent people, we experienced that day as a family tragedy. Most of us went into a state of intense mourning, and we dragged ourselves around in the days and months that followed engulfed by a sense of communal grief. It was that close to all of us, and I doubt there is a single New Yorker who doesn’t know someone who didn’t lose at least one friend or relative in the attack. Compute the numbers, and the results are staggering. Three thousand people in addition to their immediate families, their extended families, their friends, their neighbors, and their co-workers, and suddenly you’re in the millions.
Last September 11 was one of the worst days in American history, but the dreadful cataclysm that occurred that morning was also an occasion for deep reflection, a time for all of us to stop and examine who we were and what we believed in. As it happened, I spent a good deal of time on the road last fall, co-hosting events with Jacki Lyden of NPR in connection with the release of the
National Story Project
anthology,
I Thought My Father Was God
. We traveled from Boston to San Francisco and points in between, and in each city contributors to the book read their stories in public to large and attentive audiences. I talked to scores of people on those trips, perhaps hundreds of people, and nearly every one of them told me the same thing. In the aftermath of September 11, they were reassessing the values of our country, trying to figure out what separated us from the people who had attacked us. Almost without exception, the single word they used was “democracy.” That is the bedrock creed of American life: a belief in the dignity of the individual, a tolerant embrace of our cultural and religious differences. No matter how often we fail to live up to those ideals, that is America at its best—the very principles that are a constant, daily reality in New York.
It has been a year now. When the Bush administration launched its War on Terrorism by invading Afghanistan, we in New York were still busy counting our dead. We watched in horror as the smoking ruins of the towers were gradually cleared; we attended funerals with empty coffins; we wept. Even now, as the international situation turns ever more perilous, we are largely preoccupied with the debate over how to build a fitting memorial to the victims of the attack, trying to solve the problem of how to reconstruct that devastated area of our city. No one is sorry that the Taliban regime has been ousted from power, but when I talk to my fellow New Yorkers these days, I hear little but disappointment in what our government has been up to. Only a small minority of New Yorkers voted for George W. Bush, and most of us tend to look at his policies with suspicion. He simply isn’t democratic enough for us. He and his cabinet have not encouraged open debate of the issues facing the country. With talk of an imminent invasion of Iraq now circulating in the press, increasing numbers of New Yorkers are becoming apprehensive. From the vantage point of Ground Zero, it looks like a global catastrophe in the making.
Not long ago, I received a poetry magazine in the mail with a cover that read:
USA OUT OF NYC
. Not everyone would want to go that far, but in the past several weeks I’ve heard a number of my friends talk with great earnestness and enthusiasm about the possibility of New York seceding from the Union and establishing itself as an independent city-state. That will never happen, of course, but I do have one practical suggestion. Since President Bush has repeatedly told us how much he dislikes Washington, why doesn’t he come live in New York? We know that he has no great love for this place, but by moving to our city, he might learn something about the country he is trying to govern. He might learn, in spite of his reservations, that we are the true heartland.
July 31, 2002
References
THE INVENTION OF SOLITUDE. New York, Sun Books; 1982. Reprinted by Penguin USA; 1988. First British publication by Faber & Faber; 1988.
HAND TO MOUTH. New York, Henry Holt; 1997. First British publication by Faber & Faber; 1997.
TRUE STORIES. ‘The Red Notebook’ (
Granta
, 1993); ‘Why Write?’ (
The New Yorker
, 1995); ‘Accident Report’ (
Conjunctions
, 2000); ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing’ (
Granta
, 2000). All four pieces were later collected in
The Red Notebook
. New York, New Directions; 2002.
GOTHAM HANDBOOK. In
Double Game
, by Sophie Calle. London, Violette; 1999.
THE STORY OF MY TYPEWRITER. New York, D.A.P.; 2002.
NORTHERN LIGHTS. ‘Pages for Kafka’ (
European Judaism
, 1974); ‘New York Babel’ (
The New York Review of Books
, 1975); ‘The Death of Sir Walter Raleigh’ (
Parenthèse,
1975); ‘Northern Lights’ (Catalogue preface for Jean-Paul Riopelle exhibition, Galerie Maeght, Paris, 1976;
Derrière le miroir
, no. 218).
CRITICAL ESSAYS. ‘The Art of Hunger’ (
American Letters and Commentary
, 1988); ‘Dada Bones’ (
Mulch
, 1975); ‘Truth, Beauty, Silence’ (
The New York Review of Books
, 1975); ‘From Cakes to Stones’ (
Commentary
, 1975); ‘The Poetry of Exile’ (
Commentary
, 1976); ‘Innocence and Memory’ (
The New York Review of Books
, 1976); ‘Book of the Dead’ (
The New York Review of Books
, 1976); ‘Reznikoff × 2’ (
Parnassus
, 1979; in
Charles Reznikoff: Man and Poet
. Orano, Maine, National Poetry Foundation; 1984); ‘The Bartlebooth Follies’ (
The New York Times Book Review
, 1987).
PREFACES. ‘Jacques Dupin’ (
Fits and Starts: Selected Poems of Jacques Dupin
. New York, Living Hand; 1974); ‘André du Bouchet’ (
The Uninhabited: Selected Poems of André du Bouchet
. New York, Living Hand; 1976); ‘Black on White’ (Leaflet distributed at Susan Cauldwell Gallery, New York, for David Reed exhibition, 1975); ‘Twentieth-Century French Poetry’ (
The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry
. New York, Random House; 1982); ‘Mallarmé’s Son’ (
A Tomb for Anatole
, by Stéphane Mallarmé. San Francisco, North Point Press; 1983); ‘On the High Wire’ (
Traité du funambulisme
, by Philippe Petit. Arles [France], Actes Sud; 1997); ‘Translator’s Note’ (
Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians
, by Pierre Clastres. New York, Zone Books; 1998. First British publication by Faber & Faber; 1998); ‘The National Story Project’ (
I Thought My Father Was God and Other True Tales from NPR’s National Story Project
. New York, Henry Holt; 2001. First British publication by Faber & Faber under the title
True Tales of American Life
; 2001); ‘A Little Anthology of Surrealist Poems’ (
A Little Anthology of Surrealist Poems
. Minneapolis, Rain Taxi; 2002. New preface for collection originally published in 1972); ‘The Art of Worry’ (Catalogue preface for Art Spiegelman exhibition, Nuage Gallery, Brescia [Italy], 2003); ‘Invisible Joubert’ (for reprint of
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert
. New York, New York Review Books; forthcoming 2004. Book originally published by North Point Press, San Francisco; 1983); ‘Hawthorne at Home’ (
Nathaniel Hawthorne: Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny, by Papa
. New York, New York Review Books; 2003).
OCCASIONS. ‘A Prayer for Salman Rushdie’ (Op-ed piece:
The New York Times
; June 18, 1993); ‘Appeal to the Governor of Pennsylvania’ (Delivered at a press conference at the PEN American Center, New York, on July 28, 1995. Other participants included Dennis Brutus, Thulani Davis, Cornelius Eady, and William Styron); ‘The Best Substitute for War’ (
The New York Times Magazine
; April 1999. In response to the question: What is the best game of the millennium?); ‘Reflections on a Cardboard Box’ (Written at the request of the New York Coalition for the Homeless—for a brochure that was never published); ‘Random Notes—September 11, 2001—4:00 PM’ (Commissioned by
Die Zeit
; published September 13, 2001); ‘Underground’ (
The New York Times Magazine
; October 2001. In response to the question: Describe something about New York you love); ‘NYC = USA’ (Op-ed piece:
The New York Times
; September 9, 2002).
About the Author
Paul Auster is the best-selling author of
Invisible
,
Man in the Dark, The Brooklyn Follies, The Book of Illusions, The New York Trilogy
, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Among his other honours are the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke and the Prix Medicis Etranger for Leviathan. He has also been short-listed for both the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (
The Book of Illusions
) and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (
The Music of Chance
). His work has been translated into more than thirty languages.
He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Copyright
This ebook edition published in 2011
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
Typewriter paintings
© Sam Messer
Kiss and Make Up
© Art Spiegalman, 1993
For further copyright information see page 511
All rights reserved
© Paul Auster, 2003
The right of Paul Auster to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–26502–2
This book could not have been done without the remarkable assistance of Angus Cargill.
Table of Contents