Paul Auster's Early Works and The Fallacy of Critical Reception

This book is an homage to Paul Auster, my hero, one of those artists whose oeuvre defies labeling. Decades ago, when I set out to write a monograph on his early work in Hungarian, The Invention of Solitude was my major source of inspiration. After last year, when I got the chance to translate it, I decided to publish everything I unearthed about the distinctive poetics conceived by an unsuccessful ‘bookish boy,’ who is now both revered as an acclaimed filmmaker and a prize-winning author with a profound literary legacy. My scholarly aspiration was simply to invite a wider readership to negotiate the critical controversies surrounding the literary achievements of a young, struggling artist.

With the help of his Hungarian publisher, I managed to reach out to Auster through his assistant and ask for a portrait for the cover that would resonate with the time period surveyed in this monograph. His kind generosity was just as touching as the picture he sent me is moving. The photograph on the cover captures a twenty-three-year-old Paul Auster—eyes glowing with ‘friendship and comraderie’—a poet, translator, essayist, playwright, who winks at the failing author and the future literary lion both. His radiant smile will surely stay with those who are connected by the uncanny and sublime experience of roaming the boundless realms he created—the Austerean space of writing.