From hand to mouth

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From hand to mouth , completely: from hand to mouth. A chronicle of early failures is a book by Paul Auster that was published in 1998 by Rowohlt-Verlag , Reinbek , in a German translation by Werner Schmitz . The first edition was published in 1997 by Henry Holt and Company in New York City under the title Hand to Mouth. A Chronicle of Early Failure .

content

The book contains the autobiographical text Von der Hand in der Mund , written in 1996, which deals with the sometimes financially precarious situation of the author in the 1970s and with Auster's efforts and difficulties in dealing with earning money. It is also about the following works from this period, which are also printed in the book and the circumstances in which they were created:

  • in Appendix 1 three plays :
    • Laurel and Hardy go to heaven with the characters Laurel and Hardy, both wall builders
    • Blackouts , with the figures green, black and blue as well
    • Hide and seek , with the characters man and woman;
  • in appendix 2 the game description for the game Action Baseball developed by Auster as well as the playing cards for it and

The game and lyrics were not published at the time. The exception is Squeeze Play , which was released after some confusion. Auster writes how this commercially oriented story came about and what economic success he achieved with it: “After deducting 10 percent agent commission, I had made a net profit of $ 900. So much for 'writing books for money'. So much for 'selling'. "

Auster said of this book years later in A Life in Words : “The real theme of the book is money. If you don't have money, you think about money all the time. There is only one good thing about having money: It gives you the freedom not to have to think about money all the time. "

reception

In Die Zeit of June 18, 1998, the book received little positive reviews: "The best thing about this book is the truly inventive blurb that reports on a book by Paul Auster that Paul Auster never wrote." In contrast, Thomas E. Schmidt writes in the FAZ : "As a small conceptual literary work of art, the volume is appealing, although many, many pages would have been better kept hidden."

expenditure

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Turning fifty is not difficult. American writer Paul Auster has problems with his age. Unspecified in Die Zeit , June 18, 1998
  2. ↑ Thomas E. Schmidt: Baseball philosophically. It starts well: Paul Auster looks back with a striking look, FAZ.net, version of July 13, 1998