Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure [Paperback]

Paul Auster (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 19, 1998

This is the story of a young man's struggle to stay afloat. By turns poignant and comic, Paul Auster's memoir is essentially an autobiographical essay about money--and what it means not to have it. From one odd job to the next, from one failed scheme to another, Auster investigates his own stubborn compulsion to make art and describes his ingenious, often far-fetched attempts to survive on next to nothing. From the streets of New York City and Paris to the rural roads of upstate New York, the author treats us to a series of remarkable adventures and unforgettable encounters and, in several elaborate appixes, to previously unknown work from these years.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It's no wonder that Paul Auster (The Music of Chance, Leviathan, Mr. Vertigo) creates such singular characters. While his youth comprised a series of failures too unbelievable for fiction, it also equipped him with a range of experiences to draw from that most fiction writers only dream of. He worked with Bowery bums at a summer camp, had a childhood friend join the Weather Underground, and was a student at Columbia in 1968 at the height of the student uprisings there (and at which point, he boasts, he knew seven of the FBI's ten most wanted men). He worked on an oil tanker, for a French Mafia-style film producer in Paris, and for a rare-book organization in New York. He translated the North Vietnamese constitution from French into English (don't ask). His work brought him in contact to varying extents with Jean Genet, Mary McCarthy, Jerzy Kosinski, Sartre, Foucault, and John Lennon. The encounters and experiences must have been fascinating, failure aside, but Auster's prose here, sadly, lacks the tightness and luster of his fiction. The remainder--and major portion--of the volume consists of three plays, a baseball card game, and a detective novel, all written during this time. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Coming upon this "chronicle of early failure," readers of translator, poet, screenwriter, and novelist Auster (Mr. Vertigo, LJ 6/15/94) may be charmed by his new publisher's presentation though left puzzled by the derivative offerings. The work consists of one original, down-beat essay, "Hand to Mouth," a flat record of Auster's inauspicious early years struggling to make money while writing (the essay was recently excerpted in Granta), and three appendixes: a medley of Beckett-inspired plays, an "action baseball" card game that Auster was convinced would make his fortune, and a Chandleresque detective novel, "Squeeze Play"?all of which failed in one way or another when first created. Auster's collection of essays and reviews, The Art of Hunger (Sun & Moon, 1991), develop more fully and satisfactorily the author's literary development, while the appendixes here will interest few but devoted literary archivists.
-?Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 164 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks; later printing edition (October 19, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805054898
• ISBN-13: 978-0805054897
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,767,127 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Travels in the Scriptorium, The Brooklyn Follies, and Oracle Night. I Thought My Father Was God, the NPR National Story Project anthology, which he edited, was also a national bestseller. His work has been translated into thirty languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not All Editions Include Game & Detective Novel Extras, August 25, 2003

By 

Renee Thorpe (Karangasem, Bali) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure (Paperback)

Hand to Mouth, by itself, is a somewhat raw but not at all insensitive memoir of life before publishing. I found it engrossing at times.

Auster recounts his youthful rejection of middle class consumerism, his odd and fascinating encounters with all kinds of characters and life situations, his stay in Paris, his first marriage, his ...well... failures to make it big as a writer. His admirable sense of integrity (no jobs except ones literary) unfortunately kept the author wallowing in translation work to put food on the table, and the sense of pain, desperation and even a sort of starvation are palpable. Agonizingly, but rather fittingly, he tells only of his years BEFORE success. This is no rags to fame & riches story.

Hand to Mouth is basically a reality check. Of some value to anyone who wants to get published, but the only thing that keeps this from being totally depressing is our knowledge of Auster's eventual literary success.

Lovely sections about the wacky people he met on ships and on streets reveal inspiration for characters he brings alive in his humanistic fiction.

If you do buy an edition (check out the number of pages before you order) which contains "Action Baseball" and "Squeeze Play", you are in for a treat. The former is a complete card game and the latter is a detective novel. Squeeze Play was written under a pseudonym and features a Jewish private eye with a law degree from Columbia who has a taste for fine wine and music. Mickey Spillane gets urban Semitic spit & polish in this totally enjoyable bonus read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For the true auster fan only, March 23, 2000

By 

Brent Woods - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure (Paperback)

Like some obscure import record of your favourite band or musician, Hand To Mouth is really only going to appeal to the most die-hard fan. Auster's honest though somewhat uninteresting chronicle of his early failures may appeal to struggling 20-something wannabe writers, but generally the appeal is limited. One can't help but feel Auster should of held onto this material until later in his life - a complete autobiography in his later years would be more valuable.

The early previously unpublished works included in the book are a must for fans and Auster must be commended for being so brave as to include them here. Perhaps most entertaining is the publication of his 'action baseball' game.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting autobiography, flat prose, December 10, 1999

By 

Alan DeNiro "alan_deniro" (Oakdale, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failures (Hardcover)

This is a book for hardcore Auster fans only, I think. It has interesting tidbits that illuminate his prose and the 'chronicle of early failure' is indeed harrowing and interesting. yet, unlike most of Auster's prose, this account never trandescends itself; that is, it doesn't achieve the luminescence of the prose that Auster is capable of. There was a LOT of filler near the end of the book too (did we really need to see the Action Baseball game?) A far better account of the starving artist routine is Samuel Delany's _The Motion of Light in Water_