Excerpts from an Interview with Paul Auster in Lire.fr
translated by Jesscia Reed
(Please, excuse my awful traduction, I'm NOT fluent in english...If Auster or the Lire journalists would read it they would surely faint, or die, or sue me! :-) Jessica)
- It's been a long time since you published a long novel. It's an important thing, the come back of the genius-child after the 'cinema years'....
- Oh, no, it's only been 3 years since Tumbuktu was pusblished, a novel that asked me 5 years of work, while this one only asked me 3. But, true, if it took me so long to write Tumbuktu, it's because at the same time i was working on 3 movies, Smoke, Blue in the Face and Lulu on the bridge, and my essay about money, Hand to mouth.
- So for a few years then, you walked around the neighbourhood, with your camera.
- It's been one of the most beautiful adventure of my life. The idea that, at a certain age, a man can starting something entirely new really helped me. Just, going out, work with other people, talk. It was good for me. Inspiring, too...just to tell stories in a whole different way. But at the same time, the cinema requires a total investement, always, all the time. You have to build the production, find the money, take care of every single detail. I loved making Lulu on the Bridge, but i wasn't ready to give up writing.
- Does it mean you won't make movies anymore?
- Young people have to do it, I don't have time anymore. I suddenly discovered that i was 55 years old, and this could be the end at every minute. It deeply moved me when i realised it, when i realised the fact that my time is now limited. I have books to write...this is something i have to do now, and this is more important than making movies. A choice had to be made, and i chose. (...)
- The way you describe and analyse Hector Mann's movies (in your new book) is absolutely mind blowing...
- To catch images with words takes considerable efforts. Harvey Keitel, whom i worked with and who's now a personal friend, even if we didn't see each other since his wedding two months ago, read my new book and said: "You just invented a new form of cinema...the Written Movie". Maybe it's even better than a real movie. The reader can see, imagine. It's conceiving the perfect movie, in a way. (...)
- So Hector, this dear Hector, is a film maker. But most omportantly, he's guilty. But why?
- While he participated, indirectly, in a crime, Hector doesn't act. His silence is his crime. Also, another character, Alma, can't stand what she did. And she does what Hector couldn't do: she ruins herself directly, and it's awful... (...)
- What's your feelings toward your parent's religion?
- I'm not practising, nor a beliver, but still i truly care about my Jewish roots, it's a philosophical, historical attachment.
- An attachment that's not really visible in your work...
- You're wrong. I mention it in 'The invention of solitude' and 'In the country of last things' and in lots of my essays. I'm not even talking about the Jewish poets I've traduced, Admond Jabès to name one.(...)
- Do you progress, from one book to antoher, in that desire of understanding, approach the other?
- No, even if my position's always changing, that i make efforts and that i'm in a evolution process, the goal's always far away. The experience of writing is useless. It's a way of life, mine, and i don't think it offers answers to the great life questions. But, even if it's not followed by consequences, the act of asking questions fulfills me with energy. I reassure myself, proving i am alive, and that my mind's not lazy, useless. Try to understand me, i'm not trying to find myself excuses for what i'm doing. It's very difficult to explain why we spend a lifetime in front of a table, trying to put feelings into words.
- Pablo Picasso used to say that what matters is not to find, but to search...
- Yes, it's the effort which matters. Even at the end of a bad day, where I'd tore down everything i'd have written, I can say I did my best, that I pushed my soul and spitir as far as it could go.
- Do you often feel like you're failing ? - Sometimes i destroy everything i write for weeks. (...)
- Your book is called 'The book of the Illusions'. It could have been named 'the book of the accidents'. There's a lot of non-natural deaths in here, and a lot of action...
- It's funny in a way...I wrote under the title of 'accidents report' anothe text that isn't being traduced in french yet, which is about accidents, some true, some invented.
- Every victim in your book is a woman that loved too much. So love doesn't protect people?
- I don't know...