I found my first literary love during the holiday season in 2004. I was an undergraduate student who worked part-time at Chapters, a (now defunct) big-box bookstore in downtown Vancouver. I remember it was around Christmas because management always assigned me as a floater on the first floor of our three-story store during the holiday season. My bubbly personality and helpful chatter, my impossibly long, shiny black hair sweeping down my back, and my black skirt barely touching my dimpled knees were apparently soothing to stress-out holiday shoppers—usually men frantically looking for last-minute gifts for their girlfriends/wives, mothers, and grandmothers.
I was making my rounds in the new book section when something stopped me as if I’d been hit with a thunderbolt. I turned to look at the book display I just sauntered past and came face-to-face with the most handsome man—tall and slender with wind-swept hair, wearing a white button-up shirt with a loosely knotted tie and a v-neck sweater. His deep, intense eyes gazed at me like I was the most fascinating creature on the planet. I picked up the book—Collected Prose by Paul Auster.
Bam! I was in love.
After my shift, I went to the fiction section on the third floor and hunted down all his novels—Back then, I didn’t know what “prose” entailed. One of the perks of working at a bookstore was that we were entitled to a 30% discount, and I picked up a copy of The Book of Illusions. I put others on the hold shelf to be purchased when I receive my next pay cheque. Who said you couldn’t judge the book by its cover? I did just that and deemed the book worthy based on how hot the author was.
It’s been twenty years since I read The Book of Illusions, but I remember being intrigued by the silent comedy actor Hector Mann. I was stunned when I Googled and learned that Hector Mann was a figment of Paul Auster’s imagination. I was hooked. Throughout my twenties, I devoured Paul Auster’s novels between papers, projects, and a thesis.
Meeting my first literary love was essential in my reading journey. I didn’t grow up with TikTok or #bookstagram. Before working at the bookstore, I had no idea what to read beyond whatever my friends read, like Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, and Go Ask Alice by Anonymous (and later attributed to Beatrice Sparks). I went to the local Chapters in the suburbs where I grew up, discovered Opera’s Book Club, browsed the new book section, and read the dust jacket flaps. I found titles like She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb, The Reader by Bernard Schlink, and White Oleander by Janet Finch. I enjoyed my early discoveries, but I had a burning desire to learn more about books. It’s one of the reasons I applied for a job at a bookstore when I moved to Vancouver as a 19-year-old undergrad.
At the store, I picked up authors a young person might have in the early 2000s: Chuck Palahniuk, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jonathan Franzen. Through Roman, my professor, who was also my mentor, I discovered class science fiction: Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, and J.G. Ballard. Science Fiction dystopian literature remains one of my favourite genres to this day. I also went into the foray into drug addiction and mental illness: Elizabeth Wruzel’s Prozac Nation (as a young woman going through university and talking to therapists, I related to Wruzel), William S. Burroughs’s Junkie (which went over my head), and Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (though I never got used to reading in the Scottish accent). I sought edgy titles and authors and snubbed books I deemed too popular, like Eat Pray Love, Da Vinci Code, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. “Enough people are reading those,” I might say to a shocked shopper who learned I hadn’t read the latest Harry Potter book.
As I got older, my reading taste changed. I went on this kick in which I stopped reading “white, heterosexual male authors,” which eliminated most of what I read in my 20s. I abandoned my love for Paul Auster (though I still bought The Winter Journal when it came out. How could I not—the book cover used the same picture I had fallen in love with) and fixated on reading books by female authors, like On Beauty by Zadie Smith, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and a Tale of the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. I also read books by women who looked more like me: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan, and Real Americans by Rachel Khong. As I honed my skills as an essayist, I burned through works by David Sedaris, Joan Didion, Roxane Gay, and Alexander Chee. I fell in love with the memoir genre—The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing, Minor Feelings by Cathy Park, and In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. Some of my favourite memoirs over the last few years are Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, and Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (how can she be a writer and a rock star!?).
I love discovering new authors, especially those by trans authors who were invisible in the literary scene in my 20s, like Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby, T.J. Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, and Hazel Jane Plante’s Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian). However, as I entered my forties, I began to feel nostalgic—I found myself rereading books and authors of my youth, like The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, Patrick Suskind’sPerfume, and Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads, his newest novel. Several years ago, I learned about Richard Yate’swork through the hilarious and lovely David Sedaris. I read Revolutionary Road and The Easter Parade. Yates reignited my passion for mid-century literature—Raymond Carver, Carson McCullers, and John Cheever. I began to incorporate white, heterosexual male authors into my reading queue again.
Then, in April 2024, Paul Auster died.
His most recent nonfiction book, a biography titled Burning Boy: The Life and Works of Stephen Crane, has been in my reading queue for a while, but I’ve been distracted to read other things, like his wife Siri Hustvedt’sMemories of the Future, which is an incredible autofiction that reads like a culture criticism. Hustvedt announced her hhusband’scancer diagnosis in 2023. I acknowledged his terminal illness when I read about it, but I refused to dwell on it—my first literary love can’t die —until he did. His passing wasn’t shocking, but I spent the day in malaise like I’d lost a dear old friend.
I recently started listening to audiobooks. The first book I finished listening to was Anne Patchett’s Dutch House, narrated by Tom Hanks. It was such a pleasurable experience, listening to a book as I went out for my morning runs and bike rides to work, that I subscribed to Everand. After Paul Auster died, I was delighted to discover that he had narrated many of his works. So, I downloaded his final novel, Baumgartner.
It opens with a septuagenarian writer and professor, Sy Baumgartner— a widower who lost his beloved wife in a freak drowning accident ten years before—and his mishappen morning. His day started with him burning his hand on a pot handle as he remembered to call his sister and ended with him falling down a flight of stairs while taking an electricity meter reader to his basement. His morning has the most action in this charming book—the rest contains reminisces of his life. He first dwelled on his wife, Anna— their early days, her ingenuity, and her independent spirit. Baumgartner examined Anna’s archive and found her writing, and her life became vivid through his exploration of her work. Like much of Auster’s older work, he observes and illustrates places and time through his characters. In this case, New York in the 1960s and 1970s.
Then, Auster jumps through time for the rest of the book as he documents Baumartner’s love life after Anna’s death, his trip to Ukraine to seek out his ancestors, the “Auster” side of the family, and ends with his digital relationship with a graduate student who planned to move into his house to study Anna’s archive and a car accident.
Nothing happens in the book in terms of plot—we are primarily inside BBaumgartner’s head. In the broadest stroke, it’s a book about grief and tracing one’s life and family history. However, it’s also a book that provides his reader one last lap around Auster’s mind. Through Sy, we get inside Auster's thoughts, concerns, and processes. It’s a fitting final work for a writer with such a long and illustrious career, and it also seemed like an appropriate farewell.
Now, I have to reread all his books, starting with Winter Journal, which I have a hard copy of. Sadly, all my other Auster titles are back in my brother’s storage in Surrey, BC, along with my old journals and the books by the literary heroes of my youth. Maybe this time, I’ll relive all of Auster’s repertoire through my Everand subscription. I want to get lost in his seductive, deep voice, full of emotions, soothing me like the first sip of bourbon on a Friday night.