May 1, 2024

"He eschewed computers, often writing by fountain pen in his beloved notebooks."

"'Keyboards have always intimidated me,' he told The Paris Review in 2003. 'A pen is a much more primitive instrument,' he said. 'You feel that the words are coming out of your body, and then you dig the words into the page. Writing has always had that tactile quality for me. It’s a physical experience.' He would then turn to his vintage Olympia typewriter to type his handwritten manuscripts. He immortalized the trusty machine in his 2002 book 'The Story of My Typewriter'.... Such antiquarian methods did nothing to slow Mr. Auster’s breathless output. Writing six hours a day, often seven days a week, he pumped out a new book nearly annually for years...."

From "Paul Auster, the Patron Saint of Literary Brooklyn, Dies at 77/With critically lauded works like 'The New York Trilogy,' the charismatic author drew inspiration from his adopted borough and won worldwide acclaim" (NYT).

You can see by the headline that the obituary stresses the place — Brooklyn (even though Auster was born in New Jersey).  It quotes the author and poet Meghan O’Rourke:
“Paul Auster was the Brooklyn novelist back in the ’80s and ’90s, when I was growing up there, at a time when very few famous writers lived in the borough.... His books were on all my parents’ friends’ shelves. As teenagers, my friends and I read Auster’s work avidly for both its strangeness — that touch of European surrealism — and its closeness. Long before ‘Brooklyn’ became a place where every novelist seemed to live, from Colson Whitehead to Jhumpa Lahiri.....”

20 comments:

rhhardin said...

Whoever she is, she's featured in Oberlin Alumni Magazine Spring 2014
link

Leland said...

If you aren’t using hammer, chisel, rock then you aren’t really writing.

Ambrose said...

It’s fine that he chose to stick with a fountain pen, but it doesn’t make him superior. A fountain pen just happened to be the technological state of the art when he first learned to write. Why not adapt a quill and ink bottle to be even more authentic? But may he rest in peace of course.

Dave Begley said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
lonejustice said...

When I was a trial lawyer and assigned a new case, I would go through the entire file and make handwritten summaries, notes, and thoughts as I was pouring through all the materials, maybe ending up with 10 to 50 pages of single spaced writing, based on the size of the file. Writing things down with pen and paper really helped me to sort through everything and clarify my understanding of the facts and arguments. When I tried doing this on the computer, it never worked as well. I think the slower act of writing things out by hand, as opposed to punching them on a keyboard, slowed down my thinking and clarified my understanding of the case.

Dave Begley said...

Glad Althouse didn’t eschew computers.

Kay said...

I write in a lot of notebooks, and there is definitely a different energy to it. For me, part of it has to do with permanency. I write in pen, so it can’t be removed. The word choices feel more immediate, yes, more spontaneous. Your mind will go places it wouldn’t on a computer.

John henry said...

I can write on a computer. I can't edit on a computer

First draft on computer, written rapidly with a goal of getting words and ideas on screen.

Print out triple spaced and edit the bejabbers out of it with a red extra fine pilot pen. Usually rewrite 50% of what I typed and move stuff around.

Retype and repeat. Third draft is usually publishable.

My newest book Secrets of Liquid Filling just hit Amazon Monday.

Buy it at Ann's portal. Please, the baby needs new shoes.

John Henry

Howard said...

What happened to his granddaughter and son is horrible. One wonders the cost of his wild success. He is with them now.

Temujin said...

Well...RIP Paul Auster.

I got a chuckle from Ambrose's comment about a quill and ink. A couple of years ago, noting my writing had come to a halt, my wife brought me home a set of quills and ink bottles to 'inspire' me. I remember looking at them quizzically, then thanking her. They sit, quietly untouched on the table behind my desk. I did hold the quill when she first gave them to me and wondered....how could anyone write with such a thing?.

Anyway, I admire Mr. Auster for his prolific output. I cannot get my head around authors who can put out quality content regularly.

RCOCEAN II said...

The sad truth is that being a "acclaimed novelist" isn't worth much today. You'll notice that almost all the well-known "aclaimed" novelists are either over 60 or are well-known because of the movies that were based on their books.

I wonder how many college grads know who Auster was and how many people have bought his novels.

Personally, nothing he wrote engaged me. But then I'm not a fan of well-written novels about modern ordinary people doing ordinary things.

Yancey Ward said...

I grew up in the age of writing things by hand and then transcribing- first on typewriters and later on computer word processors. I do all my writing now at a keyboard, but pretty much all that writing is commentary like this one- with just the occasional longer letter for an e-mail. At some point in graduate school I made the transition from composing with pen and paper to composing on the keyboard. To each his own.

John henry said...

Neal Stephenson talked about writing Cryptonomicon with a fountain pen. I could not find it now but I did find this comment by someone else

What I like about writing with a fountain pen is that it gets me away from the computer and the temptation known as the internet

I wrote most of my Packaging Machinery Handbook in Mcdonalds a dozen years ago for that reason. They had no wifi at the time.

I'll be writing along, cranking out my 1500 words per day and think "let me just check this number" or find a picture or something.

Then I'm off down a rabbit hole for an hour and my flow is destroyed

I've kind of taught myself to avoid that but am far from perfect.

John Henry

Anthony said...

I have 20 typewriters. One (a 1962 Olympia SM-7) is next to me with half a letter written on it. Hated typewriters as a kid and took up computers as fast as I could and never looked back. Until 2018 when I got a 1954 Smith Corona portable and OMG, how nice it was to not have software and stuff getting in the way.

Caveat: I never do any real work on them (typewriters), just letters to people, who love getting them.

The writing medium does, I think, affect how you write. I quit using typewriters for a month because I thought they were bothering my wrist (result: no) and tried writing letters in Word and found it to be much more difficult. Whereas on a typewriter I just let fly, I had a devil of a time doing so on a computer. I think because I know on the computer I can go back and edit and make it perfect I feel like I have to, so I end up stopping, re-reading, etc. Which is good for the technical sort of writing I mostly do. With my typewriter, I rarely correct anything, actually rarely ever read what I've written.....I can't change it, so why bother? I liken it to playing music live (typewriter) as opposed to the recording studio (computer).

If you want to "get" typewriters.

Floris said...

The great theoretical computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra refused to use a word processor. He felt that the speed with which one wrote on a word processor led to sloppy thinking. He wrote his journal papers in longhand, which his secretary then typed.

If you emailed him, you had to include a physical address. His secretary would then print out the email, and he would mail you the answer.

He was also notable for only given one exam per semester in his classes. It was always a one-on-one oral exam held in his office.

William said...

Just because he's esteemed by French critics is no sufficient reason to avoid his books. However, the obit says he also uses deconstruction and an unreliable narrator in his novels. Case closed.....When I was in grammar school, Papermate came out with the first ball point pen. The nuns were against them. We did our school work in pencil, but the tests had to be done with a fountain pen. I can't remember why they were opposed to ball point pens. The ink smeared? Luddite rejection of a new technology? But there was a definite prejudice against ball point pens. Now I think fountain pens are only used by important people to sign important documents. Who carries around a fountain pen to sign off on their quotidian duties? Where do you go to refill your pen?....Auster, according to the obit, wrote six hours a day. Some writers bleed words and others exhale them. Eat your heart out Salinger.

Joe Smith said...

I went to write a book once but the clay tablet had already dried.

Brooklyn is an interesting place...great if you're young, loud if you're not.

But the crazy Clinton types have taken over.

It used to be a really tough place where none of the current snowflakes would last 10 minutes.

Leora said...

Does no one read "You Can't Go Home Again" by Thomas Wolfe (the one from the 30's not the 70's one) any more. And how about Selby and Betty Smith. Brooklyn was not invented in my lifetime.

Mikey NTH said...

Some workmen are more comfortable with their familiar tools.

Richard Dolan said...

Paul Auster was a delightful writer and a regular at the annual Brooklyn Book Fair. A few years ago, he was autographing his books — he had just published Burning Boy — so I hauled all of my copies of his books to get them signed. There were about 10 in all, and he kindly auto’d every one. We had a nice chat while he did it.