Paul Auster: On Writing About Failure

This past year I have been developing a taste for author memoirs. I’ve slowly but surely been walking my way through countless authors, from Joan Didion to Annie Ernaux, from Stephen King to Isabelle Allende…

Point is, somewhere along the line, I landed in Paul Auster’s Hand to Mouth. It is not a secret. It is not confidential. It is right there; spelled out blatantly on the title: “A Chronicle on Early Failure.”

Paul Auster wrote Hand to Mouth in 1997. Till that moment he had written and translated scores of books. Since then, he has published a great deal more. He has written poetry, novels, plays, and movies. His most recent book, Baumgartner, was released in October of this year. But that wasn’t always the case. Failure was too close a counselor.

Failure makes the writer just as much as ink and paper do. In Hand to Mouth, Auster paints a vivid picture of what it means to struggle to make a living and a name for oneself as a writer. It is not a pretty picture. The reader sees him struggling to make ends meet, picking up whatever jobs he can to provide for his family, but at the same time split because he is unable to do little else if not write.

I feel the same way. I am unable to do little else but write. The thought alone is inconceivable.

But then there is the thought of failure, the fear of it; its long arms pulling me back. It whispers in my ears that I could never be good enough, that my name is not destined for the dustjacket.

I believe it must be the same way for every budding writer out there. But the truth is sometimes you just got to look at the face of the demon and tell it to go straight to hell, where he belongs.

That’s exactly what Auster tells us. You have to read between the lines, see past what is on the page, to understand that. Failure does not hold you back. Or, a least, not in vain. Failure pulls you back only to let go of you and shoot you straight like an arrow.