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Moon Palace - Paul Auster Correspondence

After struggling with e-mails to a few editors, our teacher Mrs Bowley got a reply from Jen Dougherty who is Assistant to Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt (Pau lAuster's wife). So we are now writing to Paul Auster on her behalf.

"Dear Paul Auster,

My students will start studying Moon Palace in January as part of their syllabus for their final exam. They are delighted to be able to communicate with you on this novel. They have prepared a few general questions on Moon Palace that I am sending to you:

 1- How difficult/easy was it to write Moon Palace?

2- What inspired you to write this novel? Is it a little autobiographical?

3- Which passage/chapter is your favourite one? Why?

4- Which passage/chapter was the hardest to write? Why? "


Here are his answers : 

"1- This is a long story. Back in 1969 (when I was 22), I started working on a novel about a character similar to Fogg, but I gave up after 150 pages or so, understanding that I didn’t know quite what I was doing. His name at that point was Quinn, which became the name of the protagonist of my first published novel, City of Glass.  That was followed by the two other books of the New York Trilogy and In the Country of Last Things, and when I finally started writing Moon Palace in 1985, the novel had been transformed into what it is today. I finished it in 1987, which means that it took me 18 years to write it from beginning to end. But, of course, there was a long silence in between the first and final versions. Difficult, easy? Writing is always difficult for me, a daily struggle. But without the struggle, why bother to do it?

 2- I know the book sounds autobiographical, but other than the fact that Fogg attends Columbia University (as I did), not one passage in the book is based on my own experience.

 3 and 4 - I have no favorite passage and every page is equally difficult to write. The book as a whole is what counts—how each part contributes to the overall effect of the story. Every piece is tied to all the other pieces.


Please thank your students for having the patience to bear with my book and please wish them luck from me as they march forward with their lives."















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