Newark Wilder

The Guardian profiles Paul Auster.

“Poet Ann Lauterbach, who has known Auster since the late 1970s, takes a different view: ‘Part of the secret of Paul’s success is that his books have a neat kind of intellectual flattery, complimenting the reader with their quasi-philosophical games.’ Her criticism echoes an article printed in Atlantic Monthly last year which, with impressive thoroughness, attacked the reputations of American writers including Don DeLillo, E Annie Proulx and David Guterson. Particular violence was reserved for Auster: ‘Auster knows the prime rule of pseudo-intellectual writing,’ wrote BR Myers. ‘The harder it is to be pinned down on any idea, the easier it is to conceal that one has no ideas at all.‘”