Let’s start with one of Auster’s quotations. I would love you to respond to it. So … activate your brains and unlock your imagination. Let’s see if as a starter, this can tickle your appetite for one of America’s leading contemporary writers. "Whenever I complete a book, I’m filled with a feeling of immense disgust and disappointment. It’s almost a physical collapse. I’m so disappointed by my feeble efforts that I can’t believe I’ve actually spent so much time and accomplished so little. It takes years before I’m able to accept what I’ve done – to realize that this was the best I could do. But I never like to look at the things I’ve written. The past is the past, and there’s nothing I can do about it any more. The only thing that counts is the project I’m working on now. Beckett once said in one of his stories, ‘No sooner is the ink dry that it revolts me’". (from "The Red Notebook")
Perhaps,Paul Auster and I have something in common. So many times, mostly when I work for school, when I finish a class test I always ask myself if my work is enough right, reflects what i wanted to explain and if it is the best I can do! Some times I feel just like Paul Auster, disappointed by my work, even if i’ve studied hard and forced myself to do my best. Im not a famous writer and maybe my tears and insecurities are legitimates; but how it is possible that a writer like Paul Auster, with a long carrier behind is back, known all over the world, is still thinking that what he writes is disgusting?! I can’t belive it at all, but I have some opinions about. Maybe he’s worried about his readers feedbacks and critics,or he doesn’t want to disappoint them; perhaps he is not so much selfconfident and even his long experience doesn’t help his temper. But in my opinion this is the only way he can follow to continue to write bestsellers. I’m going to explain myself: I think that paul Auster knows pefectly his own abilities but considering what he has just written disappointing and disgusting he’s forced to continue and to improve his work. It is a sourt of psycological trick that makes paul Auster not to be content with his work, permitting him to go on writing things better and better. I would like to “read the author mind” to understand the real reason that makes him always disappointed with his work, because it makes me feel curious and I’m still asking myself possible reason for such a strange way of thinking in a such famous writer.
Going on thinking……..Martina Nadal
As I read Paul Auster’s quotation, the first thing I realized was that I feel his same feelings when I finish a writing piece. This happens to me particularly during class tests. When, in the end, I reread my work I feel completely disappointed and I am tempted to tear up the paper in 1000 pieces and throw them away. But I think that this reaction is quite normal, because a lot of people have inside the instinct to reach perfection and to give the best of himself/herself. Paul Auster also says that he accepts what he has done after years. Perhaps this happens because his attitude to that particular work has changed in the meantime, or because he knows that the past is the past and he can do anything about it any more. However, perfection is a very very abstract concept, and what is perfect in my opinion, couldn’t be in yours. As Riccardo says, Paul Auster is perhaps afraid of the audience’s reaction to his work. I imagine him thinking: ‘Oh, they liked my book…they are right, in the end I’m not such a bad writer!’…It seems to me that he needs the approval of his readers. That’s the motive power that makes him go on with his writing.
Jana Stefani
This words rapresent the condition of frustation of Paul Auster that he isn’t able to satisfy the will of the reader.This brings Paul Auster to a sense of loss and of literary incapacity.
Finally the experience of so many years of writing will bring him to understand his capacity and to accept his fantastic literary dowries.Paul Auster looks to the present and to the future, but he escapes from fears of the past.
GIULIA MARZIO
Dear Giulia,
I don’t quite understand what you mean by “Auster escapes from the fears of the past”. Could you explain that to me?Thanks.
By the way, I read some really nice comments.
Cheers
One day I read a mathematician’s quation: Math solve problems, licterature make them biggest.
I think Paul Auster when writes a book is taken by the will to solve the problem he is writing for. But when he finish realizes that he have only denounced the problem and hasn’t given a defintive and incontrovertible solution that he maybe would give and this makes he frustrated and unsatisfated.
MrLory1990
I do not quite agree with Lorenzo’s maths quote. Maths can’t solve all problems, if it could then we would live in a perfect world. Mathematics is investigation, trial, solution and so is literature. One does not negate the other. Both are fed by a need to understand the world, to make sense of it, to create order and to do that they must know “disorder”!
What do you think folks?
Ok ok maths can’t solve all problems and there is the chaos theory. But maths try to solve problems and if they cannot do this they’ve tried!
Authors don’t try! they write only the hypothesis and the thesis! The demostration is something absurd for them!
Well, Once again, I don’t quite agree with you. Some writers have disclosed some truths to their readers that somehow changed their existence. Some novels, some poems, any form of art, may “save” a person’s life. Yet, I do understand what you mean.
What I like about literature is the subjective part. There are different ways of looking at the same aspect of life, and all the different ways can be plausible.
Once again, I do not think we can possibly apply the parameters of a subject (maths) upon another (literature).
Cheers 🙂
I think Auster is the typical character/writer who is obsessed by the desire of stepping up. From one side he wants to improve himself in a good way, writing every day, book after book, about issues that deeply impress him and which he believes could interest people of his cultural level. But from the other side, when he returns to his written books, he doesn’t like his imaginary creations , he falls in the dark swirl of his mind and he feels frightened of not keeping up with his expectations, also for the future. At this point a question rises up spontaneously in me : if Auster doesn’t really believe in his books when he finished them, because he doesn’t like the way he wrote them, how can he speak and persuade people to buy them?
Carolina Braghin
I think that, sometimes, all of us are tempted to write: especially when we feel driven by very strong emotions, a piece of paper can give vent to a great joy or otherwise a disappointment, or a regret.
Whatever the result is, the objective of stopping time at that precise moment has been obtained, knowing that the passing of the days will change our way of being and feeling things. In fact, after reading what we wrote at that time, we hardly recognize us or we are surprised that we have felt certain emotions. I think it is the same mechanism mentioned by the author, when he reads -or even when he doesn’t want to reread- his books.
But discovering that many people can share some experiences or moods mentioned in his books, gives to his work a positive value, that someway satisfies him.
The success of public gives him the certainty of having done a good job, even if he has the strong belief that his next work will be better than the one he has just finished.
This uncertainty that the author has, expresses -according to my personal opinion- great humanity that makes him even more appreciated by the reader.
Raggiotto Francesco
perhaps I’m completely wrong, but this words don’t seem to be too sincere. It could be that he feels a little bit disappointed, every writer would like to create “the Book”, but why does he publish it, if he’s not satisfied about it? Is it compulsory to write a book every two years? I mean, an artist should not be given a deadline, art flows when it wants; it is even worse, if you are nervous because inspiration doesn’t come.
My knowledge of Auster’s books is very narrow, but from the review I’ve read so far, it seems that he tries to improve the subjects of his previous novels («After, say, 10 books, maybe novelists should be retested, like accident-prone senior citizens renewing their driver’s licenses. Veterans of literary wars would anonymously submit a new manuscript to agents. Of “Man in the Dark,” I think they’d say, “third-rate imitation of Paul Auster »_new york times), and it contradicts Auster’s quotation, where he says that past is past and he doesn’t like looking back. He should not set his heart on an old idea, which he didn’t managed to express properly, but explore new thoughts, surprising the reader and, why not, this harsh reviewer.
On the other hand he could just be humble (I doubt) or a man who asks too much from himself: “with any luck, time will tell us all.”
Federica Zille
It’s nice to see i’m not the only one who thinks that what have done is wrong and superficial. Always at the end of an oral or a class text i think that i could have done perhaps better than what i have just done. But when a writer writes a book or a journalist a review, in my opinion, they should have a sort of ispiration or should be ”made” for doing that. I would never embark in writing a book because i perfectly know that i would not succeded into. So this thoughts of P.Auster make me think in two different ways. The first one he may act like this because he wants to achieve more audience and readers by complaying on what he had just done. But on the other hand i can really understand his feeling of dissatisfaction because everybody, i believe, are carried away by disappointment at the end of a written, oral or manual production because we are worried by the judgement of people around us. Because of Media, literature has lost lots of its charm and special, they have caused a society’s change, it has become a ”mass society”, where everything loses its taste, writers and film producers make their job with the only aim of satisfaying the elementary pleasure of this society. That is why writers are always afraid if what they have just written would be appreciated by readers and it is not only a ”hole in the water” because it has not approached near people’s pleasure.
I’m coming up with the idea that Auster is a really strange person…
I’ve found this quotation not very unusual:maybe because I am too always dissatisfied with what I do…
but differently from him, I continue to think “I could do it better”….
However I think that feeling dissatisfied with what we have done, spure us on to accept
more difficult challenges and do that better than ever…So…now I expect that Auster’s next works will be progressively better if he thought at them as a challenge and if he tries to get finally satisfected with them.
erica turbian
Well, it is incredible that Paul Auster has my same feelings when he finish a work. I mean, I am not a writer and I know that I don’t write well, so when I finish a work (for example an Italian essay) I am not really satisfied, I often think that I haven’t done a good job.
Before reading this quotation I thought that writers are always satisfied of their job; I couldn’t imagine that one of the most important writer feel “disgust and disappointment” whenever he complete a book. Probably he wants to reach the perfection, the best way of writing, so he is never satisfied. Maybe he has the idea of his work in his mind but he can’t always find the best way of writing what he is thinking, so he couldn’t be satisfied. But there is something that I don’t understand: if he doesn’t like what he has written, how can publish it and convince people to buy? I mean, our life it is full of doubts; we have few certainty, but if I wrote a book and I didn’t like my work, if I felt “disgust and disappointment” I wouldn’t publish it.
So, actually I have some doubts that he really feel disgust and disappointment. But, as I am a human being, I know that my reasoning could be wrong, so I am open to read other interpretations.
Anyway, if it is true it is interesting that one of the most important writer has my (and maybe our) same fears, a common mortal.
Federica Battistin
What a person has done can’t be useless, but it has permitted the creation of present.
A work, that has taken time to the artist, apart from it is a good work or not, it has improve artist’s capacity. The next work will be better and closer to what the artist real thinks. The life of a man and his message can be summarized in a “final” work. The other works are milestones of the way of creation or repetition of this final works. The artist mustn’t consider his works fluff or unworthy, on the contrary, he must feel a sentiment of love as a father feel love for his son.
Nicola Truant
On one hand i can believe in what Paul Auster said because even i always feel the same feeling of dassatisfaction.I always think that what i have done,is wrong…I’m never sure of what i’m saying,not because i haven’t that idea,but only because i always have an insicurity!!!!but on the other hand Paul Auster is completly conscious of his abilities and of his excellence…i think that he said that phrase only to demonstrate that he isn’t a person that wants to be superior.
Finally i think that Paul Auster wants to give us a massage:even if we aren’t satisfied with our work,it doesn’t mean that the others doesn’t like it…
Denise
My dearest CAROLINA,
I read you were somehow puzzled and you posed a question I feel urged to answer. First of all I need to acknowledge one important element: you are all reading things in English and even if you are all good at it, sometimes you lack the confidence and knowledge to intrepret certain things (expressed in English) in the proper way. There are some misunderstandings, misreadings, and this is proof of you learning the language. Now I’ll try to answer your question. When a writer writes he investigates the world, he tries to clarify things, he tries to put the different pieces of a puzzle together (to use a metaphor for the complexity of life). A book needs to come to an end, it is not an everending process, as some writers may wish. As soon as it has been published for Auster it seems to be obsolete, it seems not to have clarified all the aspects that he wanted to. This because his book stopped at a certain stage of the process of investigation, whereas his mind keeps on investigating even after having published the book. The more you will read Paul Auster the more you will realize that at the end of his novels you do not put down them and stop thinking about them. After months you will find yourself adding new possible interpretations to them. They pay you company in a certain way. You feel less lonely because we all go through some of the mental stages his main characters experience.
CAROLINA, I would like to invite you to read FRANCESCO RAGGIOTTO’S post. He wrote a very interesting comment on Paul Auster’s statement.
FEDERICA, I think that a “great” artist is never happy with what s/he has achieved because s/he constantly needs to challenge his/her art. Then, this is my personal opinion, I soubt an artist may fall within the “realm” of humility. An artist tends to be self-referential, s/he wants his/her art to be visible and to be appreciated. Art is the manifestation of his/her need to be acknowledged, to be noticed, it is the reflection and manifestation of his/her ego.
FEDERICA, I do not know how you write in Italian, but I can guarantee that you write pretty well in English!
NICOLA you seem to have the gene of an artist flowing in your veins! 🙂
FOLKS, YOUR TEACHER IS VERY PROUD OF YOU ALL. KEEP WRITING, KEEP THINKING, KEEP BEING.
Like Paul Auster, lots of contemporaney writers tend to have a love-hate relationship with the book they have just given birth to. I always ask myself if they are telling the truth, if they are just pretending, or if they are just telling a big lie, knowing that they feel just the opposite. But what makes me wonder even more is WHY they are saying that, what’s their aim by saying that they feel disgusted whenever they complite a book. There has to be a purpose.
I found this quotation of Paul Auster that has somehow casted new light on my reflections: “Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy. I have spent my life in conversation with people I have never seen, with poeple I will never know and I hope to continue till the day I stop breathing. It’s the only job I’ve ever wanted.”
So maybe he is disgusted because he thinks he hasn’t totally suceeded in creating that kind of “dimension” where he and the reader can “meet in absolute intimacy”, he thinks he has not fully given the reader all the means, informations,details,etc. that he wanted to, as his mind keeps on thinking and investigating. Maybe he is disappointed by that and this is why,I think, he frankly admits he is disgusted by the book he has just completed.
(I tried to give a diffrent interpretation)
Chiara Pinardi
this quotation is quite strange to me,I always thought an artist was proud of all his creations and considered them as children that have to be regarded with extreme pride since it came to light.Anyway,there are many reasons that can explain this feeling:first of all he may be worried by all the possible negative judgments of the readers,or maybe he fears that the reader can’t utterly understand what he wants to express,maybe he thinks he cuold be more clear precise or more explicit(since his works are a bit obscure and can be interpret in different ways) maybe he is afraid of being misunderstood or,as Chiara wrote,he is filled with this feeling of disgust because he thinks he hasn’t succeded in creating that kind of intimate relationship between him and the reader tha becomes the confident of his inner feelings.I think this last possibility is the most plausible,I think the most important thing for a writer is creating a connection between his mind and the readers and when he doesn’t achieve this task,he becomes frustrated.
Valentina Montrasio
Paul Auster hadn’t got a good childhood caused by his father’s death,so he told us that the past is the past and that he never like to look at the things he has written.Things that he writes in his books maybe let him thinking to his painful youth!
I think that he would escape from the fears of the past because he isn’t able to look to his previous masterpiece.
Giulia Marzio
Through this quotation we come to know about Paul Auster’s feelings after he has settled a book. He says that he is filled with a feeling of immense disgust and disappointment and personally i think that it is normal to think to our composition as something plain and unattractive.
I think that nobody is so conceited to consider him/herself the best in all what he/she does.
Everybody look at their works with a critical eye and only when you are praise for your book you become aware of the importance of your masterpiece.
I think that lots of writers, like Paul Auster, when they complete a work they have to face this kind of feelings and all the possible doubts on what they have done.
Marson Chiara
On one hand I agree with Paul Auster when says “the past is past, and there’s nothing I can do about it any more” but on the other hand I find him extremely exaggerated, I think it’s impossible to feel disgusted or almost as having a physical collapse after completing a book. A book is somehow a piece of you, you often jot words down just to feel better, you need it. Yes, it could happen that after a certain period of time you might find those words funny, but you’ll NEVER feel disgusted.. Perhaps I’m wrong, but this is how I feel when it happens to me and I find it even more impossible if I think about Auster: writing is a job for him and without readers, a writer can’t have a job. If you have readers, perhaps what you write is not that bad.. and after a long period you become aware of it.
Chiara, I appreciated the fact that you tried to give a different reading to the post. I like your quotation and I think it fits the post perfectly, for this reason I want to past it in my reply so that everybody can read it. Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy. I have spent my life in conversation with people I have never seen, with poeple I will never know and I hope to continue till the day I stop breathing. It’s the only job I’ve ever wanted.”
Giulia M., I do not think that the fact that Paul Auster lost his father (he was an adult when that happened) can cast light on the quotation I posted. He refers to the process and outcome of the act of writing.
Obviously whenever you will finish a book, you will think that you did enough but not your best. However, to achieve such a big importance in the modern literary world, means that what you have done has astonished a lot of people. According to what Paul Auster wrote, I think that an author have not to look back to his past works. “The past is the past”, everyone seeked to improve himself and is life, too. And it is better to write what you think than not. if you notice you did an error, you at least will know that is better to have remorses than regrets.