a book is a mysterious object, and once it floats out into the world, anything can happen

since i brought Paul Auster up anyway, i was quite pleased to discover this Guardian article annpuncing his new book, "The Brooklyn Follies".

"Only a person who really felt compelled to do it would shut himself up in a room every day," Auster says. "When I think about the alternatives - how beautiful life can be, how interesting - I think it's a crazy way to live your life."

Beckett was a writer Auster felt he had to break free from. "You have the sense, when you read Beckett for the first time, that he reinvented the novel, and at the same time made it impossible for anyone to write a novel again. And I was in a sense crushed by him. It took me a while to get out from under the burden of Beckett. And not only him, but of other writers as well. When you're young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound. So I had my Henry Miller period, my Thomas Pynchon period. It kept changing. What am I saying? Who am I?"