The Red Notebook: True Stories

by Paul Auster

The Red Notebook brings together in one volume all of Paul Auster's short, true-life stories—a remarkable collection of tales that documents the curious, miraculous, and sometimes catastrophic turns of everyday reality.

Paul Auster has earned international praise for the imaginative power of his many novels, including The New York Trilogy, Moon Palace, The Music of Chance, Mr. Vertigo, and Timbuktu. He has also published a number of highly original non-fiction works: The Invention of Solitude, Hand to Mouth, and The Art of Hunger. In The Red Notebook, Auster again explores events from the real world large and small, tragic and comic—that reveal the unpredictable, shifting nature of human experience. A burnt onion pie, a wrong number, a young boy struck by lightning, a man falling off a roof, a scrap of paper discovered in a Paris hotel room—all these form the context for a singular kind of ars poetica, a literary manifesto without theory, cast in the irreducible forms of pure story telling.

Genres: Nonfiction, Short Stories, Essays, Literature, The United States Of America, Memoir, American

71 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 10, 1993

About the author

Paul Auster was the bestselling author of 4 3 2 1, Bloodbath Nation, Baumgartner, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature. Among his other honors are the Prix Médicis Étranger for Leviathan, the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke, and the Premio Napoli for Sunset Park. In 2012, he was the first recipient of the NYC Literary Honors in the category of fiction. He was also a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions), the PEN/Faulkner Award (The Music of Chance), the Edgar Award (City of Glass), and the Man Booker Prize (4 3 2 1). Auster was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He died at age seventy-seven in 2024.

Reviews

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

STRANE STORIE



Sono tredici storie, tredici istantanee, tredici coincidenze, accidenti, momenti, episodi, apparenti banalità, casi fortuiti, aneddoti, tredici brevi capitoli che Auster ci dice gli sono in qualche modo accaduti realmente.
Hanno tutti un denominatore comune: il caso, o, se vogliamo, il destino.
E, sono accaduti a lui, sono parte della sua vita.

Sono piccole cose spesso banali che possono succedere nella vita di tutti i giorni, ma la cambiano per sempre. Cose spesso banali delle quali troppo spesso molti di noi nemmeno si accorgono.
Auster invece nota, osserva, e annota: spesso finendo con l’utilizzare questi casi fortuiti per punti di partenza, o anche solo brevi intervalli, per i suoi romanzi.
Per esempio, una strana telefonata nel mezzo della notte è servita da spunto per un romanzo, uno dei tre capitoli della celebre trilogia di New York.
Per esempio, nell’infinito gioco di rimandi e incastri del mondo austeriano, Quinn di Città di vetro annota le sue osservazioni proprio su un taccuino rosso, che una volta usa come cuscino, un’altra invece ne strappa una pagina per adoperarla da carta igienica.



Per Paul Auster ciò che sembra straordinario non è tanto che siano accaduti questi episodi piuttosto che altri, ma il fatto stesso che sia accaduto qualcosa piuttosto che niente:
Leggere Auster equivale a prendere l’abitudine di far coincidere ciò che sarebbe potuto accadere e ciò che effettivamente è accaduto. D’altronde è proprio per questa ragione che nei suoi libri si ha sempre l’impressione che le cose sarebbero potute andare diversamente! Qualsiasi cosa poteva accadere; prova ne è che una cosa qualsiasi è davvero accaduta.



Il mio amore per Paul Auster è nato per caso una trentina d’anni fa. Dire per caso ha doppio senso, e senso doppio: il caso è centrale nella narrativa di questo scrittore americano, e per caso il suo primo titolo che ho letto si intitolava La musica del caso. Per qualche anno gli sono stato fedele lettore, arrivando all’ansia nell’attesa della riedizione della all’epoca introvabile Trilogia di New York.
Poi, il rapporto s’è incrinato. Paul non lo sa, ho fatto tutto da solo: credo d’aver cominciato a trovare ripetitiva come un tam tam la sua scrittura, mono tono, e credo d’aver voluto prendere le distanze dal personaggio pubblico, che a un certo punto m’è parso diventare troppo ciarliero e presenzialista (un po’ ovunque, televisione, interviste e quant’altro, basta che ci fosse un obiettivo e un microfono).
Ma forse è colpa di un documentario che lo mostrava al lavoro in un caffè di Brooklyn dove in quell’epoca lui andava anche a scrivere, portandosi dietro il computer, quando in casa c’era la donna delle pulizie: nel doc era prodigo di parole, della sua routine quotidiana et similia. Un quadretto così maledettamente bourgeois che ha finito con l’irritarmi. Ora, per carità, lungi da me l’idea che gli scrittori debbano obbligatoriamente essere tutti “maledetti” come Baudelaire, o inquieti come Rimbaud, o bohémien come quell’altro: ma se uno ci tiene così tanto a mostrarmi le sue pantofole, a descrivermele a tutto tondo quasi spingendomi a indossarle, ecco, insomma, io…
Il risultato è che mi si è spento l’interesse e ho smesso di leggerlo.
Questo Taccuino rosso appartiene a quegli anni che l’ho seguito. Sono solo sessantatré paginette che ho divorato il giorno stesso dell’acquisto con intenso piacere.

[Jennifer nyc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful!

Do you have a collection of coincidences in your life that still light you up when you tell them? Is the glee infectious?

This is what Auster compiled here in a very slim and portable 5” x 7” work that you can slip into almost any pocket or bag. Pick it up on a commute and take a swig before moving on with your day: most of these stories are just a few pages long.

The coincidences get harder to believe as you go, but they’re all true. And it will be the memory of your own list of stories that forces you into belief, because you’ve been there, too. Maybe after reading this, you’ll carve out time to write your own…?

[Matthew Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

60th book of 2020.

I have a story to tell: In my first year of University, I believe in a Poetry module, we were given a passage (of prose, bizarrely) by a writer about his friend (J.) and the end of their friendship. The reason? The writer has had only four flat tyres in his life and all four of which happened with J. in the car. The writer admits it was not the only reason, surely, but that fourth tyre must have been symbolic of something, and they both knew it. Now, for some reason, that story has remained with me for a long time, but for the life of me I could not remember the writer. Considering how small the passage is and how seemingly unimportant it is – simply four flat tyres and a failed friendship – I am surprised it has stayed with me so long.

At the end of my second year I took a flight out to Paris to visit a friend, E. Though the Two Friends and Four Tyres (the name I mentally gave it as I didn’t know the title) remained in my mind, I had forgotten the writer already, or maybe I never knew it in the first place. Anyway, E. was several years older than me and had been living out there for around nine months by that point, in a small Parisian apartment, which wasn’t his. There was a cat he had to feed, but other than that, it was essentially his own. The real owner was elsewhere in the world for an undisclosed amount of time, I don’t remember where. E. wrote poetry, good poetry. At the time I arrived in the summer he was finishing up on a collection he had been working on, and was very proud of. However, my flight was on the Friday and he was at work (in a restaurant) so I had the day to mooch around Paris alone.

I won’t go into every minute detail, I’ll bring it to the boiling point. In a café in some random side street in Paris, there was a girl I once knew. We didn’t know each other particularly well but we had spoken to one another infrequently in college. She immediately recognised me and we had coffee together. I had already spent several hours wandering around alone so I felt oddly relieved to be talking to someone. She was working out here too, she told me, as a journalist. I meekly told her I was at University, slightly bitter that she had skipped it, moved to Paris and was already working as a journalist. As well as the coincidence of her being there in the first place, I noticed The New York Trilogy poking out of her handbag, which I was reading at the time. We laughed about that, and I pondered if the universe was telling me to love this girl, to move to Paris with her, to own an apartment and walk along the Seine hand-in-hand. She asked what I was doing, which broke my fantasy. I told her about E. (she was immediately interested, and wanted to read his poetry) and that I was only visiting for an extended weekend. I had assignments to do, I added on the end, but regretted it, as it made me sound childish. She paid for the coffees, which also hurt my twenty-year-old masculinity, and we wandered around the streets for a short time before she told me she had to get home. I also realised it was later than I had expected and E. would be wondering where I had got to. She gave me her number (in a formal, professional way, I couldn’t help but notice) and said she would love to meet up with me again, and meet E. I said I would be happy to.

The rest of my trip was uneventful. In the end, I didn’t see her again. Though I rang her the following day, it had already become a vague promise of meeting again; she was busy, E. was busy, and I didn’t want to appear desperate. I finished The New York Trilogy on the flight home, pondering the two bizarre coincidences: not only meeting her, but both reading the same Auster book. I couldn’t help but wonder if it symbolised something like that fourth flat tyre. Coincidences were so rare that it was hard not to seek symbolism in them. Back in England I finished University, forgot about Auster and the girl, forgot mostly about E. (I haven’t seen him since, but not due to any flat tyres) and mostly forgot about the coincidences I had experienced. Though, I’ll admit, sometimes I wonder if I should have moved to Paris, and fallen in love there.

It is now, of course, 2020 and I am reading The Red Notebook. I get to chapter 10 of the first part, and find that I am reading Two Friends and Four Tyres, which I will continue to call it as it is given no name in the book other than 10. I can’t help but ponder, like the ridiculous chance of our own existence, the probability of reading this again. Of all the books and all the writers in the universe, past and present, it is here, in front of me, in an Auster book. And no less, The Red Notebook, filled with coincidences from Paul Auster’s life. So a coincidence in my life within a coincidence in his life. It also throws me back in time to my weekend in Paris with E., on meeting the girl and us both reading Auster. Too much to fathom, I think. The last line of The Red Notebook reads: This really happened. Like everything else I have set down in this red notebook, it is a true story. I don’t think I believe him, not entirely; maybe it is true, we will never know. In the same sense, you must not entirely believe what I have said here, either.

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

And here is the little red notebook the author tells us in the New York Trilogy. First, Paul Auster records special events that happened to him. Then, he explains how he came up with the idea of "The City of Glass".

[Paula Mota · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5*

Isto aconteceu realmente. Tal como tudo quanto tenho apontado neste caderno vermelho é uma história verdadeira.

A obra de Paul Auster está repleta de coincidências e acasos bizarros e neste “Caderno Vermelho”, datado de 1992, o autor anotou vários episódios caricatos, alguns dos quais raiam a inverosimilhança. Agora que já conheço melhor o estilo de Auster do que na altura da primeira leitura deste caderninho, consigo dar mais valor a estas histórias, sendo a mais relevante a que serviu de ponto de partida ao seu primeiro romance, “Cidade de Vidro”.

O que me intriga sobre o meu próprio comportamento é que não deitei fora a carta, embora me arrepie cada vez que olho para ela. Um homem sensato tê-la-ia deitado no lixo. (...) Talvez eu a guarde ali como um monumento à minha própria loucura. Talvez seja um meio de me lembrar que não sei nada, que o mundo onde vivo continuará sempre a escapar-me.

[merixien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bu kitap yakın zamana dair okuma planlarımda yer almıyordu aslında. Ama yanlış zamanda okuduğum ve bu yüzden çok yorulduğum Mısır’dan Çıkış’ın ardından Paul Auster’ın dünyasına geri dönmek istedim ve en hızlı seçeneğim de Kırmızı Defter’di.

Kitap; kısa ve - yazarın beyanını esas aldığımızda- gerçek, kendisinin tecrübe ettiği ya da çok yakın dostlarının kendisine aktardığı on beş öyküden oluşuyor. Açıkcası ben çok fazla Paul Auster kitabı okumadığım için bu konuda genel bir çıkarım yapmam mantıksız. Fakat bu kitapla birlikte, şimdiye kadar okuduğum New York Üçlemesi ve 4321 kitaplarındaki tesadüf, şans ve kader kavramılarının - takıntı demek istemiyorum- kaynağına ya da temeline iniliyor sanki. Zira Kırmızı Kitap sayesinde New York Üçlemesi’nin ilk kitabı Cam Kent’in bir fikir olarak oluşmasını, Paul Auster’ın evine gelen bir yanlış numara aramasından almasını ya da Paul Auster’ın sonunda bir yazar olmasına sebep olan, cebinde düzenli kalem taşıma alışkanlığının sekiz yaşındayken Willie Mays’tan imza şansını kaçırma talihsizliğine dayandığı gibi kadar hayatını şekillendiren pek çok fazla tesadüfü okuyorsunuz. Tabii bütün hikayeler bu kadar gerçekçi değil -yani en azından benim için- hatta biraz fantastik de kalıyor. Ancak en başta dediğim gibi yazarın beyanını esas alarak bu konuyu daha fazla uzatmayacağım. Açıkcası benim için, özellikle de 4321 ve New York Üçlemesi’nden sonra okumak çok iyi geldi, 4321’deki hayat döngülerinin içinde kendi hayatından bıraktığı izleri fark etmek keyifliydi. Eğer kısa öyküler okumayı seviyorsanız hele ki Paul Auster’ın kaleminden şans, rastlantı ve anıların kişiselliği konularını- ben bu konulara bakışına hayran oldum zira- okumaktan keyif alıyorsanız bu kitap da tavsiyedir.

“Cebinde bir kalem varsa, büyük olasılıkla bir gün onu kullanmaya başlamak gelecektir.

Çocuklarıma hep söylediğim gibi, işte ben böyle yazar oldum.”

[Moira]

Vintage Auster: the man in miniature. Occasionally mawkish, occasionally so precise it takes your breath away, a kind of balancing act where every action is at once banal and loaded with meaning, like a sort of weird combination of Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant: O Henry stories without the trick endings, or as if the story was all trick. The back cover calls this "a singular kind of ars poetica, a literary manifesto without theory," which is true enough. Because the pieces in this book are so short -- the book itself is about the size of a mass-market paperback, but much thinner, and most of the stories vary in length from three or four pages to just one -- the dreamlike quality which in Auster's longer works can seem twee or forced works here to great effect. Dreams are the result of the mind struggling to make connections between seemingly random memories, images, perceptual chunks, wishes, God knows what thrown off by the brain as we lie physically paralyzed, beyond touch and sound, reduced to visions and the attempts to connect those visions (this is why dreams seem so choppy and surreal -- most of them are apparently three or four "mini-dreams" stitched together). Auster's thesis here is apparently that just as our minds try to do this in dream-time, so they do it with random, unconnected elements of life, at once as banal and loaded with meaning as a dream where you see a childhood friend and they offer you a candy bar you can't eat (because in a dream, you are cut off from taste; in your mind, you are cut off from the sweetness of childhood, the easy emotional connections of a child, you wake up with the memory of untasted, untastable chocolate in your mind and are moody until coffee).

In these stories, prison guards turn into father-in-laws, brothers into husbands, a dead child into a kind of sacrificial double. One man grows up with his mother, hearing her version of his childhood and his father; by utmost chance, he finds his father again, and hears the predictable reverse of his mother's story: in his father's narrative, she was the monster. Auster writes: "C.'s life had now become two lives. There was Version A and Version B, and both of them were his story. He had lived them both in equal measure, two truths that canceled each other out, and all along, without even knowing it, he had been stranded in the middle." As a child, Auster had rescued a friend of his sister's from being crushed under the wheels of his father's car: "For years afterward, I walked around feeling that this had been my finest moment. I had actually saved someone's life, and in retrospect I was always astonished by how quickly I had acted, by how sure my movements had been at the critical juncture. I saw the rescue in my mind again and again...." Inevitably, when he meets her again fifteen years later, "....it was clear that she remembered nothing....She hadn't even known that she was in danger. The whole incident had taken place in a flash: ten seconds of her life, an interval of no account, and none of it had left the slightest mark on her. For me, on the other hand, those seconds had been a defining experience, a singular event in my internal history."

But the final trick of that story, concealed from the audience by the misdirection of separate but equal perspectives, is its last paragraph, which has the same impact as realizing both that the childhood friend in your dream is eternally now, here with you in your mind, and that you will never see him again; that even the child who appears in the dream is not the child you knew, just as you could not taste the offered chocolate. "Most of all," Auster writes, "it stuns me to acknowledge that I am talking about something that happened in 1956 or 1957 -- and that the little girl of that night is now over forty years old." Time is the fifth dimension in which we live, and dream, and lose, against which we shore fragments of meaning to shield ourselves from the ceaseless rain of atoms: Then, the phone rang and it was her. They had grown up in the same building without knowing it. One second later, it would have been me.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Auster es un gran hijo de puta. Escribe historias que tu o yo podriamos haber escrito. Pero que no. Son historias sorprendentes, de coincidencias extraordinarias. Pero Auster las hace perfectamente creibles. Y ahi esta parte de su genio. Con un lenguaje breve, sin pompa, nos lleva directo a las historias. El titulo viene, probablemente, del hecho de que Auster entiende que tal vez las historias puedan parecer falsas, pero no lo son (claro, queda la duda de cual es el caso). Como quien cuenta hechos curiosos de su vida (la de Auster), nos lleva de la mano a historias que se hacen verdaderas. Punto adicional del libro: su brevedad. Aunque algunas de las historias tienen algo de relacion, se pueden leer independientemente las unas de las otras.

[Yas · Rating 4 out of 5]

موافقم:
"این خصوصیت کتابهایتان است که میپسندم این موضوع که پیوسته مسائل را زیر سؤال میبرید و بعد درباره ی سؤالها هم سؤال میکنید. کتاب هایتان به پاسخ یا راه حلی اشاره نمیکنند. در اغلب کتابهای تان راه حلی وجود ندارد. در آخر فقط رفته رفته متوجه میشوید که سؤال چیست."


بخش مصاحبه‌هاش رو دوست داشتم. حرف‌های استر ساده و خودمونی بودن، گاهی جوری بود که انگار داشتم افکار خودمو میخوندم. افکار و نظریات و تجربیاتش درباره نوشتن و کتاب‌هاش.
ماجراهایی که تعریف می‌کرد گاها الهام بودن براش یا به طور شانسی بعدها اتفاق میافتن و با نکاتی از کتابهاش ارتباط داشتن، خیلی جالب بود این بخشش.
اگر از فن‌های استر هستین کتاب جالب و دانستنی هست براتون.

|تکه کتاب|

▪︎نقل قولی از ویتگنشتاین" و این هم قابل بحث است: زندگی در متن یک کتاب"

▪︎در فرایند نوشتن یا تفکر درباره ی خویش آدم در واقع کسی دیگر می شود.

▪︎تنها کاری که سعی میکنم انجام بدهم این است که فضای کافی در نوشته هایم باقی میگذارم تا خواننده در آن فضا جای بگیرد. چون معتقدم در آخر این خواننده است که کتاب را مینویسد نه نویسنده. در مورد خودم به عنوان خواننده (خواننده ای که بیشتر از کتابهایی که نوشته کتاب خوانده است!) متوجه شدم که تقریباً همیشه صحنه و موقعیتی را از کتابی گرفته ام و با تجربه ی خود وفق داده ام یا برعکس. مثلاً در خواندن کتابی مثل غرور و تعصب در شرایط خاصی متوجه شدم که محل همه ی اتفاقات کتاب خانه ی دوران کودکی ام است. مهم نیست توصیف نویسنده از یک مکان چه قدر دقیق باشد انگار همیشه آن را به چیزی که با آن آشنا هستم تبدیل میکنم. از چند نفر از دوستانم هم پرسیدم که آیا درباره ی آنها هم همین طور است. برای بعضی این طور بود، برای بعضی نه فکر کنم. این موضوع به رابطه ی فرد با زبان خیلی مربوط می شود، این که چه عکس العملی نسبت به کلمات چاپ شده روی کاغذ دارد.

▪︎فکر میکنم آنچه من جست و جو میکنم نوشتن داستانی است که به اندازه ی دنیایی که در آن زندگی میکنیم عجیب باشد.

▪︎زندگی ما واقعا مال ما نیست، متعلق به جهان است.

▪︎به عنوان رمان نویس حس میکنم از نظر اخلاقی متعهد هستم که این وقایع را در کتاب هایم بیاورم و درباره ی دنیا همان طور که آن را تجربه کرده ام بنویسم نه این که کس دیگری به من بگوید که هویت دنیا چیست. هر دقیقه با ناشناخته ها بمباران میشویم به نظر من وظیفه ی من پذیرفتن این تصادفات است این که متوجه همه ی این راز و رمزهای زندگی باشم.

▪︎همه‌ی نویسنده ها، کم و بیش در نوشتن از زندگی خود الهام میگیرند. هر رمانی حالت زندگی نامه‌ی شخصی را دارد. ولی جالب این جاست که چگونه تخیل با واقعیت درهم می‌آمیزد.

[Aydan Aliyeva · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book inspired me to write (one day,but not today) my own experiences which are full of "coincidence" ))))

[Amirah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gold. Not two days ago, I was complaining to a friend about having to read genre fiction instead of beautiful writing during my morning commute because it was more suited to the constant interruptions and stop-and-go of the tube. And then, this book fell into my hand.

Auster's bite-size true stories are intense and powerful, capturing lovely moments of chance and possibility in just a few pages each. "Perhaps it is a way to remind myself that I know nothing, that the world I live in will go on escaping me forever."

[Valentina Vekovishcheva · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If there's a pencil in your pocket, there's a good chance that one day you'll feel tempted to start using it."

[Kingofmusic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Von Zufällen und anderen Unwahrscheinlichkeiten; ohne Schnörkel vorgetragen. Weiß aufgrund seiner Schlichtheit zu überzeugen.

[Elif Kurumahmut · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5
Paul Auster ile tanışmak için iyi bir kitap bence. İçindeki hikayeleri sevdim. Zaten kısacık bir kitaptı. Amaa sonu böyle ne bileyim garip bir şekilde havada kaldı. Son hikaye daha güzel olabilirdi bencee.

[Aslıhan Çelik Tufan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Auster ile tanışmam tee fakülte zamanlarım ve sonrasında avukatlık staj zamanımda olmayan maaşımdan arttırır, İstiklaldeki Can yayınlarının mağazasından ucu ucab
ucuna para ile almamladır. Çok kıymetli çok hatıra doludur. Yeniden okumaya karar verdim, hayatın bi nebze içinde yer aldıktan sonra toy halimle sevdiğimi yine sever miyim diye. Kelimenin tam anlamıyla vuruldum yeniden.
Auster ile tanışmadıysanız lütfen daha fazla geç kalmayın.
Keyifli okumalar.

[Leopoldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hace mucho que no leía un libro entero de Paul Auster. De vez en cuando me gusta hojear "Brooklyn Follies", ver los párrafos que marqué hace ya un buen tiempo, para recordar. Hay algo reconfortante, tremendamente satisfactorio en su prosa sencilla y directa, en sus párrafos musicales y tranquilos.

En este libro, como en el anterior mencionado, Auster se convierte en un cazador de coincidencias mundanas, o más bien, su presa. El título alterno a este conjunto de textos (junto con otros más) que le puso anagrama fue "Experimentos con la verdad", y es completamente justificado, pues Auster juega con las expectativas del lector literario: al contar historias tan descabelladas que sólo podrían suceder en la vida real, nos hace cuestionarnos los límites de la verosimilitud.

Además, el tono personal que pone Auster en cada una de sus páginas lo hace siempre entrañable, nos da una sensación cálida al regresar a cualquiera de sus libros.

¡Qué buena forma de volver!

[Jeff Cavadrio · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Cuando menos, los años me han enseñado esto: si llevas un lápiz en el bolsillo, hay bastantes posibilidades de que algún día te sientas tentado a utilizarlo. Como me gusta decirle a mis hijos, así es como me hice escritor"
"
Un conjunto de anécdotas regidas por el azar, que, al final, es el motor principal de la literatura de Auster. Sin duda muy interesantes algunas divertidas, otras melancólicas. Me ha motivado a leer mucho más del autor que refleja en este libro su sencillez y profunda sinceridad.

[Onur Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Geçen yıllar en azından bana şunu öğretti: Cebinde bir kalem varsa, büyük olasılıkla bir gün onu kullanmaya başlamak gelecektir içinden.
Çocuklarıma hep söylediğim gibi, işte ben böyle yazar oldum.”

Paul Auster, bana postmodernizmi sevdiren yazar. Her kitabın aşırı akıcı geliyor bana. Seni seviyorum.

[Roberta Frontini (Blogue FLAMES) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adorei este livro. Li-o por acaso e gostei imenso. O autor conta-nos uma série de coincidências que lhe ocorreram ao longo doa anos. Excelente!

[Esma T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paul Auster'ın yaşadığı ilgi çekici ve farklı olayları bir arada toplamış ve akıcı bir üslupla kağıda dökmüş. Okuması kolay bir kitap, öykülerin her biri ayrı bir yaşanmışlığın ürünü ve bir çoğu da yazarın hayatındaki önemli tesadüfleri içeriyor. Tesadüfler ilginç olsa da yazar bazılarına fazla anlam yüklemiş gibi geldi bana.
Auster'ın nasıl yazar olduğunu anlatan bölüm kitabın en çok hoşuma giden bölümü oldu.
Auster'ı tanımak için iyi bir başlangıç kitabı, hem hafif hem akıcı ancak Görünmeyen'i referans alarak konuşacak olursam yazarın romanda kullandığı üslup bambaşka ve daha etkileyici ancak bu kitap oldukça sade ve sıradan üslup yönünden.

[Suellen Rubira · Rating 5 out of 5]

One-sit reading da melhor qualidade.

Nesse livro, Auster estabelece contar apenas a verdade e nos oferece uma sequência de coincidências.

Precioso demais.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, Paul Auster! I love this man so much. The simplicity his writing is just beautiful, and the stories themselves- all of which are about extraordinary moments or coincidences- kind of restored my faith in humanity, in fate, in life. It's so wonderful to know that moments like this exist, and that someone has taken the time to recall them. It's rare that I stumble upon a coincidence as profound as some of the ones in this book (Nazi prison guard's daughter falls in love with prisoner's son, a generation later in a completely different country, for example), but I feel inspired to start keeping track of the little ones from now on.

[Shira · Rating 3 out of 5]

ספרון אנקדוטות קצרצר העוסק בעיקר בצירופי מקרים משעשעים, מופרכים ולעיתים מדהימים שקרו באמת בחייהם של פול אוסטר, משפחתו וחבריו.
כתיבה מצוינת. אהבתי.

[Boy Blue · Rating 4 out of 5]

When K. graduated from university I bought her a ring. It was a lifetime issue denarius of Alexander the Great set in a delicate silver circle that was fully reversable and mounted on a small silver ring. I wrote something about how it was her time to conquer the world (something she's out there doing right now).

Many years later K. started attending this event called No Lights No Lycra. You may be familiar with it, but if you're not, it's an event when you turn up to a community hall or similar space and file in with a bunch of strangers, they then turn the lights off and play a DJ set for an hour. Technically you're not supposed to wear lycra but everyone turns up in active wear so they definitely got that part of the name wrong. It's wholesome fun and every week my partner would go with her friends to dance in the dark. These NLNL events took Sydney by storm and they popped up all over the city (I believe they popped up around the world too). One of these NLNL nights she went to was in a church in Newtown. It was a particularly big night, might have been Beyonce night or something. Like every other week, she danced herself to a standstill and then farewelled her friends and caught the bus home to our place. It was only when she was coming to bed and she went to take her rings off that she noticed Alexander was no longer mounted in the delicate setting on her finger. Needless to say we were both distraught with his leave of absence. He had travelled 2300 years to be with her and now he'd left.

At first light the next morning my darling K. got up and charged off to the church to find Alex on her way to work. An hour or so later I got a call from her saying she was standing outside the church but unable to get in, and there was no one around to help. I told her to go to work and I'd figure it out.

A few years earlier I had read Tim Winton's Cloudstreet and Sam Pickles's, Shifty Shadow, the Hairy Hand of God had always stuck with me.

"I only believe in one thing, Les, Sam solemnly uttered. Hairy Hand of God, otherwise known as Lady Luck. Our Lady, if she’s shinin' that lamp on ya, she’ll give you what you want. There’s two other things people say are worth believin in—the Labor Party and God, but they’re a bit on the iffy side for my money. The ALP and the Big Fella, well they always got what I call a tendency to try an give ya what they think ya need. And what a bloke needs most is to get what he wants most. Ya with me?"

Australia is a nation of gamblers (the highest per capita in the world), as a Kiwi it's always been strange to me how much Aussies love the punt. I'm not a gambling man but I'm also not dumb enough to disbelieve in luck. When Alexander went missing I had also just finished a book which I cannot for the life of me remember the title of but it had a part about how with the most delicate of touch you could slightly tilt the wheel of fate in your direction.

For some reason I felt the Hairy Hand on me that morning. There was this immense luck coursing through me as I left the house. I felt like of all days, today was the day I could tilt the wheel of fate my way, just for one fraction of a revolution.

So I caught the bus to Newtown and walked to the church, the one K. had assured me was bolted shut. I put my hand on the little brass handle of the vestibule door and sure enough it turned easily in my hand. The door opened on an empty church hall, with the pews all stored out the back. All that was left was that vaulted ceiling, those honey coloured floorboards, and at the front of the room the DJ's table. Shafts of light beamed in from the western windows, dancing on the dust motes floating in the silent hall. I thought about methodically tracking my way across the floor inch by inch but I could still feel the Hairy Hand on me and so instead I walked slightly to the left but straight up the middle of the hall and when I was about halfway across there was Alexander just sitting there.

That was at least 7 years ago and yet I remember the feeling of the Hairy Hand on me as if it's there right now. Unfortunately, I've never experienced a moment like that since and I'm not sure I ever will again.

Paul Auster's stories bring that feeling back, he's a man who intrinsically understands what Sam Pickles is saying. He's a man who has made a career out of the movements of the Hairy Hand.

[Büşra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Geçen yıllar en azından bana şunu öğretti: Cebinde bir kalem varsa büyük olasılıkla bir gün onu kullanmaya başlamak gelecektir içinden.

[Murat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Genel olarak tesadüfler üzerine, hafif ve zevkli kısa kısa hikayelemeler.

Yolda yolakta -toplu taşımada- okumak için oldukça ideal.

[Justin Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

In 1947, a friend of mine, P., was born. He went on to live much of his life in New York or Europe. He was particularly attached to France, spending much of his time there even when there was no real reason for him to do so, and that might have contributed to his fame in that country. P. became a writer of banally meta stories, another reason that the French love him so much, and I thought that he would go there and never return. Perhaps that's why I never read his work.

He published many novels and stories, gradually becoming more and more well known, until finally people were willing to publish anything he wrote.

Anyway, as I was saying, I had not met P. since his birth. Then I was sent a book in the mail by a reputable press. It was beautifully designed, and I was excited to discover what all the fuss was about. Sadly, I was greatly disappointed. His style could best be likened to soporific national public radio, in which the content is of little importance compared to the fact of your listening to national public radio and the soft, gentle voices of the presenters. P. and I will not be speaking for many years to come.

A famous writer writes bullshit about coincidences that happened to him and gets it published, while hundreds of others struggle to have their own fascinating, excellent work taken seriously. What a coincidence!!!

[una filósofa viciosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Pero, hace menos de dos meses, descubrí que los libros no se terminan nunca, que es posible que las historias continúen escribiéndose a sí mismas sin autor" Un libro muy corto pero con historias entretenidas.

[Julia Yepifanova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Das Rote Notizbuch von Paul Auster, читала німецькою, бо мені її ще вчити і вчити, а англійську я вже вивчила (сарказм)
Окрім "Червоного зошита" у моїй книзі були ще чотири оповіді. Під однією назвою містяться різні короткі і водночас дуже емоційні описи дивних життєвих збігів, які сталися з автором в різні часи, фактично - це література сучасних соціальних мереж. Мені вона нагадала, як я перший раз поїхала з батьками у свої дванадцять років на оздоровлення морським повітрям. Ціль цієї подорожі була вивезти дітей на море у найдешевше місце. Тому ми зійшли з потягу, сіли в найгірший автобус, доїхали до кінцевої зупинки і ще півгодини тащилися пішки в найвіддаленішу хату, бо саме такий варіант і був найдешевшим, а дізналися ми про нього тоді, коли зійшли з потягу у Євпаторії і почали на вокзалі питати в незнайомих людей, де можна знайти доступне житло.
Господарі нашої хати здавали туристам якісь прибудови з гімна і гілок, дозволяли користуватися літньою кухнею, мали свою корову, коз, овець, качок, курей, город - свіжі продукти можна було купувати дуже дешево, до моря треба було йти через лікувальні грязі дуже далеко. Так от, ця неймовірна діра, що знаходилася за п'ятсот кілометрів від нашої квартири в Дніпрі, і яку ми шукали й знайшли, суто як найдоступнішу на чорноморському узбережжі для збіднілої у лихі 90-ті родини, належала бабусі й двом дядькам нашого Дніпровського дуже відомого тогочас боксера "Тайсона". Але і це не головне в історії, бо водночас з нами там відпочивала з батьками дівчина Яна і ми з нею дуже здружилися, хоч вона і була старша за мене років на шість. Родина її також уперше в житті вирішила поїхати з Дніпра аж до самого Чорного моря. І там, зустрівшись уперше в житті на найпершому для нас обох справжньому морському узбережжі, ми з Янкою мріяли про хлопців, в яких були закохані по самі вінця, і розкидували карти безліч разів на наші нерозділені кохання. І хоча, коли гадаєш, ніколи не можна казати, на кого саме, бо тоді підуть прахом найприємніші карточні прогнози, ми таки за кілька вечорів зрозуміли, що закохані обидві в одного й того самого хлопця Андрія, який був моїм постійним сусідом з четвертого поверху, та її колишнім однокласником. І хоч за віком мені більш підходив його молодший брат Ромчик, з яким ми й товаришували з дитинства, закохана я була в Андрія дуже давно, мабуть років з восьми. А Янка з дванадцяти. Так що виходило, що вона таки закохалася першою і ми разом з картами вирішили, що Андрій має дістатися їй. А мені потрібно шукати собі іншого чирвового короля.
От і у Пола Остера є цілий червоний зошит незвичайних історій, які не мають справжнього кінця (або мають, є й такі) та які ідеально підходять для вивчення іноземних мов.
Прочитано з величезним задоволенням у трьох потягах і одному літаку. Поїду назад, буду перечитувати його "Нью-йорську трилогію"

[Michael Bohli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schreibt das Leben die besseren Geschichten als die Fantasie? Bei Paul Auster vermag man dies fast nicht zu glauben, aber trotzdem belehrt er uns mit seiner Kurztextensammlung "Das rote Notizbuch" immer wieder eines besseren. Denn die hier enthaltenen Anekdoten sind allesamt wahr und so passiert (sagt zumindest Herr Auster) und führen uns immer wieder vor Augen, wie unglaublich unser Dasein doch sein kann.

Zwar ist die Lektüre sehr kurz, aber dafür erhält man mit dieser Neuauflage endlich alle Teile des Buches in einem Band und kann sich immer wieder in diese herrlich ausformulierten Beschreibungen von Situationen stürzen. Und wer weiss, vielleicht wäre unser aller Leben ja geeignet für so etwas.