The Invention of Solitude is the debut work of Paul Auster, a memoir published in 1982. The book is divided into two parts, Portrait of an Invisible Man, which concerns the sudden death of Auster's father, and The Book of Memory, in which Auster delivers his personal opinions concerning subjects such as coincidence, fate, and solitude, subjects that have become trademarks of Auster's works.
This first part is a meditation on the nature of absence...
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The Invention of Solitude is the debut work of Paul Auster, a memoir published in 1982. The book is divided into two parts, Portrait of an Invisible Man, which concerns the sudden death of Auster's father, and The Book of Memory, in which Auster delivers his personal opinions concerning subjects such as coincidence, fate, and solitude, subjects that have become trademarks of Auster's works.
This first part is a meditation on the nature of absence in relation to Auster's recently deceased father, Samuel Auster. "Even before his death he had been absent, and long ago the people closest to him had learned to accept this absence". Auster reconstructs his father's life from artifacts he has left behind, using his judgement of the dead man's failings as a father to justify his own life and relationship with his own son.
The second part of the book comes across as more of a critical essay concerning many of the themes found in Auster's works: the order of events, absurdism, chance as well as...
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