The Invention of Solitude

"Paul Auster became a writer because his father, upon dying, left him a small inheritance that saved him from poverty. The father's death not only freed his writing, it literally saved the son's life. He would never stop paying his debt and repaying the deceased's terrifying gift with good prose."
There lies – as Pascal Bruckner immediately notes in his analysis – the keystone of Auster's system. The Invention of Solitude is the young writer's first book, it is also the foundational book of his work, his ars poetica. In its two parts – Portrait of an Invisible Man (the father) and The Book of Memory – Paul Auster explores family memory and establishes a universe that would reappear in each of his novels.