A Life In Words

PAUL AUSTER is one of the very few giants of English-language literature who has successfully made the leap from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. A poet and translator before he crossed over to mainstream relevance as a memoirist and novelist, Auster continues to challenge and dazzle his readers in America and around the world. But though there are many books and countless PhDs on Auster, we as a society are far from having decided what he means to us, and haven't yet begun to let him chance and provoke us as thoroughly as he must-as James Joyce or Beckett has, for example. Auster lives in Brooklyn. His most recent novel is 4 3 2 1. I. B. SIEGUMFELDT in an associate professor of English Germanic, and Romance Studies at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the driving force behind the Paul Auster Center that is housed there.