Paul auster the red notebook download

The Red Notebook brings together in one volume all of Paul Auster's short, true-life stories—a remarkable collection of tales that documents the curious, miraculous, and sometimes catastrophic turns of everyday reality. Vertigo, and Timbuktu. In The Red Notebook, Auster again explores events from the real world large and small, tragic and comic—that reveal the unpredictable, shifting nature of human experience.

A burnt onion pie, a wrong number, a young boy struck by lightning, a man falling off a roof, a scrap of paper discovered in a Paris hotel room—all these form the context for a singular kind of ars poetica, a literary manifesto without theory, cast in the irreducible forms of pure story telling. Now including The Red Notebook--a collection of autobiographical sketches on coincidence--The Art Of Hunger undermines our accepted notions about literature. Auster's meditations on writing and artists leads us to a better understanding of the toll of writing.

How can you mend a broken heart? Do you write a letter to the woman who left you — and post it to an imaginary address?

Buy a new watch, to reset your life? Or get rid of the jacket you wore every time you argued, because it was in some way … responsible? Combining the wry musings of a rejected lover with playful drawings in just three colours — red, black and white — bestselling author of The Red Notebook, Antoine Laurain, and renowned street artist Le Sonneur have created a striking addition to the literature of unrequited love. Sharp, yet warm, whimsical and deeply Parisian, this is a must for all Antoine Laurain fans.

What if someone disappeared from your life without giving any explanations? What if you were barely eight when this happened? And what if the person who vanished was your mother? Anastasia moved to England and got married to Peter far away from her native country, Russia, escaping a life of abuse and poverty.

One day, she finds an old recipes notebook which belonged to her mother: the discovery takes her back with vivid clarity to the day her mother disappeared when Anastasia was not even eight yet. Buy a new watch, to reset your life? Or get rid of the jacket you wore every time you argued, because it was in some way … responsible? Combining the wry musings of a rejected lover with playful drawings in just three colours — red, black and white — bestselling author of The Red Notebook, Antoine Laurain, and renowned street artist Le Sonneur have created a striking addition to the literature of unrequited love.

Sharp, yet warm, whimsical and deeply Parisian, this is a must for all Antoine Laurain fans. What if someone disappeared from your life without giving any explanations? What if you were barely eight when this happened? And what if the person who vanished was your mother?

Anastasia moved to England and got married to Peter far away from her native country, Russia, escaping a life of abuse and poverty. One day, she finds an old recipes notebook which belonged to her mother: the discovery takes her back with vivid clarity to the day her mother disappeared when Anastasia was not even eight yet. How can she move on with her life without knowing what happened almost twenty years earlier?

The red notebook holds the key to the mystery which shaped her life and she has to face up to the past to find out what happened to her mother. She has to go back to Russia, her country, where she had to fend for herself most of her young life. Her quest is far from straightforward and not without its dangers, and will take her to the limits of her strength and determination.

What she will find will change her forever. What does not kill you makes you stronger. View 1 comment. This slim book has three parts: short descriptions of coincidental happenings in Auster's life; his short essays on some writers, artists and French poetry and interviews with himself. The snippets of unbelievable coincidences were nice to read but not too thrilling if you've read his work before. The French poetry analysis I skipped cos I have no deep interest in that subject.

But the interviews. Those were really insightful and they make me understand his work so much better now. For example: " This slim book has three parts: short descriptions of coincidental happenings in Auster's life; his short essays on some writers, artists and French poetry and interviews with himself. For example: "When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All the elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing - if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.

It's all in the voice. You're telling a story, after all, and your job is to make people want to go on listening to your tale. The slightest distraction or wandering leads to boredom. It is the lack of atmosphere.

Those minute details, gestures, colours of the wallpaper - whatever descriptions are what create the fictional world where the characters operate.

He also mentions that he often imagines the same places when he reads - whenever a house is his childhood house etc. I am frankly shocked of such limited imagination especially considering that his stories are often highly imaginative and a collision of unbelievable coincidences. He also talks about how his biggest influence has been fairy tales.

How oral storytelling tradition is pure and how novels are going further and further from telling the story because they are so crammed with descriptive information. I myself very much enjoy rich language in novels, long descriptions, of nature, people's appearances etc. Of course, a novel that is laconic in style does not have to be devoid of emotion think James Salter.

It is about the right words. There is more talk about how all his work is related to his own experiences and some badmouthing of critics who have not been kind on his work. Unfortunately, this makes him come across as quite an egocentric person.

Overall, I do recommend the interviews in the book if you want to make more sense of his work and see where it comes from also some of the little story snippets were quite fun. The rest is just okay. Sep 29, Jonathan rated it it was ok Shelves: non-fiction. Uh oh. This is actually my first exposure to Auster and admittedly probably not the best starting point for him, as I hope to go into The New York trilogy soon , and I really didn't care for it.

I think what I found to be problematic is that each of the coincidences found within the novel which the book is essentially entirely about, minus a few chapters has no actual meaning to them. That's not to say that it has to ever, but I was hoping to actually get something out of it. Instead, all tha Uh oh. Instead, all that Auster seems to tell me is that I should always keep a pencil with me, that long lost coins will find a way into my life, and perhaps that there is some binding that keeps every single aspect of humanity together, that karma is real?

Maybe less of the latter things, though. Either way, it rests at a one and a half rounded to two. Maybe I'll come back to this after reading other work by him and enjoy it a bit more. Who knows, though. I actually got mad reading this. Jan 09, Pixelina rated it it was amazing Shelves: short-stories , zread. A slim red little notebook, just a few stories thrown in, all about this rather remarkable thing we call coincidences, or Chance. It's like a little amuse bouche of Paul Auster and the rest of his work.

This is what it tastes like, only a crumble to wet the appetite. Apr 05, Tom O'Brien rated it really liked it Shelves: short-stories. Very enjoyable little collection of true stories. Most are based around coincidence, all are short, some told to him, some happened to him. Many are remarkable in their content, all are told remarkably well.

Loved it as his amazing literate works.. Apr 03, Larissa rated it liked it Shelves: english-usa , short-stories , unreliable-narrators , not-my-style. When you're a man as good-looking, beloved by the French, and utterly meta as Paul Auster, things happen to you. Exciting things. Surprising things. Coicidental and virtually impossible things. And if things aren't happening to you, then by golly, they are happening to someone you know.

And so what are you to do, Paul Auster, but to write a book detailing the minute ways in which life specifically yours truly means something. Because, Dear Reader, everything is connected. Auster believes in a When you're a man as good-looking, beloved by the French, and utterly meta as Paul Auster, things happen to you. Auster believes in a type of fate, it seems, a universal undercurrent that prompts and pushes almost every moment of our lives.

Luckily, this predilection never seems too fanatical, never truly takes on the spectre of religious predestination that seems to be playing on the sidelines. Because when you get down to it, the fact that Paul Auster thinks that one day he lost a dime in Brooklyn and then later that day found "the very same dime" in front of Yankee Stadium is pretty endearing.

The problem is that after awhile, these 'amazing' events seem remarkably mundane. I mean, what's so remarkable about coincidences that happen all the time? This is only exaggerated by his writing style--quick, to the point, and bereft of detail. Everything happens for a reason, I guess, but perhaps the reason isn't as moving and complex as one might hope.

And anyway, Paul, it probably wasn't the same dime. Thought I would finish it before the in-flight dinner was served, but found the first few pages so exquisite that I had to draw out the consumption as long as possible. Just finished it in my Beijing hotel room four days after the New York purchase. This is honest, direct, precise writing, at once unadorned and deeply complex.

Regular practice at this way of writing would greatly enhance any writer' Bought The Red Notebook in a New York book store before heading to the airport to fly to Beijing. Regular practice at this way of writing would greatly enhance any writer's "real" work. An absolute gem that I will go back to regularly from this day forward, which makes it one of those rare books I will joyously refuse ever to finish.

Aug 20, Samantha Grabelle rated it it was amazing. Auster is my new favorite author. He loves coincidences as much as I do. He writes plainly and without a lot of clutter. I have fantasies of showing him my memoir stories In , I was offered a job as caretaker of a farmhouse in the south of France It turned out to be a curious year The place was beautiful: a large, eighteenth-century stone house bordered by vineyards on one side and a national forest on the other.

The nearest village was two kilometers away, but it was inhabited by no more than forty people It was an ideal spot for two young writers to spend a year On the other hand, we lived on the brink of permanent catastrophe L.

Mar 05, Maryam rated it liked it. I am not sure if I can count this as one of my read books, as I listened to a book-reading session by Auster himself. Anyhow, I liked the book, which is a collection are true stories according to the author. However, his unique style in retelling those true events makes them sound fictional. Who would believe that all those strange coincidences have actually happened in the real world, and we are not reading a story by Auster?

Sep 11, Lauren ReVeal rated it it was amazing. Thinking I need to do a bit of re-reading and perhaps buy my own copy. Mar 06, Em added it. Came across this by accident and it's pretty short so I was like, why not? I like the self-reflexivity.

Could be a good text to teach next year I'll begin from the bottom line: in my opinion, you can't really go wrong with an Auster book - he's truly a master of writing, which is something that can be attributed to a very few novelists these days among them you can also find Stephen King. Of course, some may not like their prose but one can not argue with their tremendous success and part of it must be attributed to their outstanding style. Having said that, as mentioned in this review's opening - it's Auster which means it's always written well and no matter how familiar the story is, he still manages to shed a light on an unfamiliar aspect of it.

Besides "Why write? It's the kind of stories you can imagine Auster telling around the dinner table sitting among friends, the kind of stories that will draw the attention of any circle of people. These real life stories also demonstrate the core of Auster's literature - in a way, they complete the fiction, which in itself is embedded in some sort of a limbo between truth and false, real and what may seem almost too far-fetched.

But since we're talking here about Auster and the reader is already well familiar with his idiosyncratic themes the name Auster is synonymous to coincidence like Kafka is synonymous to arbitrariness , it seems to me that this very short book, besides being an enjoyable one sit read, helps to stretch out even more of the already very stretched boarders of the possible and what seems to us sometimes unlikable and even impossible plots in Auster's fiction.

In this sense he reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez - but that's for another time or review. Collected here are short essays, reflections and extracts from interviews where Auster talks about incidents from his past that have coloured both his life and work, from his early poetry and translation work onward. Jun 28, Arturo rated it it was amazing Shelves: I read in other reviews of Auster's books that he writes stories that anyone could write, and I now understand why people seem to think that.

Auster writes in a contemporary style, about contemporary places, and typical relations, yet, it is precisely these set of characteristics that makes him apparently simple, but at the same time unique. It takes great intelligence to notice the small details necessary to turn any contemporary situation into a story led by "coincidences" as Auster does.