True Tales of American Life - Softcover

Auster, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571210708 ISBN 13: 9780571210701

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2002

Synopsis

Chosen by Paul Auster out of the four thousand stories submitted to his radio programme on National Public Radio, these 180 stories provide a wonderful portrait of America in the twentieth century. The requirement for selection was that each of the stories should be true, and each of the writers should not have been previously published. The collection that has emerged provides a richly varied and authentic voice for the American people, whose lives, loves, griefs, regrets, joys and sense of humour are vividly and honestly recounted throughout, and adeptly organised by Auster into themed sections. The section composed of war stories stretches as far back as the Civil War, still the defining moment in American history; while the sequence of 'Meditations' conclude the volume with a true and abiding sense of transcendence.

The resultant anthology is both an enduring hymn to the strange everyday of contemporary American life and a masterclass in the art of storytelling.

About this title

Review:

True Tales of American Life is a collection derived from a project launched by Paul Auster on US National Public Radio. Auster credits his wife with the idea of having listeners send in their own short pieces of true-life writing, from which Auster would choose half a dozen to be read on air each week. But, for all the success of the radio programme, as Auster writes, "you can't hold the words in your hands". Here, then, is the fully "holdable" book. Auster has selected 179 pieces from the 4,000 plus he had received by October 2000. Split fairly evenly between male and female authors, with an age range of 20 to "pushing 90", the collection revels in its multifariousness: the contributors include "a postman, a merchant seaman, a trolley-bus driver, a gas-and-electric-meter reader, a restorer of player pianos, a crime-scene cleaner", and so on. The biographical detail is relevant because inevitably most of these true stories draw on the rawest of raw materials, the writers' own experience.

Auster wanted "true stories that sounded like fiction". In an age where talk shows (think Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake) demand that we tell our life stories as fiction--and encourage us to live our lives as fiction--it's a particularly timely and potent meeting place of reality and art, or in Auster's words, "an archive of facts, a museum of American reality" in fictional form. Unlike Auster, who regularly has to wade through 60 of these tales in a day to meet his weekly radio deadlines, the regular reader can dip in and out. And at a rate of, say, one story per day, this book will keep you fascinated with (and occasionally horrified at) American's true life tales for just about six months. --Alan Stewart

Review:

Fantastic stuff. -- The Face, December 2001

It is difficult to think of another book published this year ... that is ... so excellent in intention and so elegant in its execution. -- Guardian, December 2001

Paul Auster’s astonishing anthology ... Where truth and beauty conflict or compete, Auster has opted for elegance of form, or measure of performability. -- Sunday Herald, December 2001

This is writing at its very finest - done by a bunch of amateurs. -- Independent, December 2001

Unforgettable. The 179 stories are beautifully written and intensely emotional. -- Dazed and Confused, December 2001

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0571210708
• ISBN 13: 9780571210701
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512
• Editor: Auster Paul