Hand to Mouth - Softcover

The story of a young writer's struggle to stay afloat. Paul Auster's memoir is essentially a book about money - and what it means not to have it. From one odd job to the next, from one failed scheme to another, he investigates his own stubborn compulsion to make art.

In this aptly titled memoir Paul Auster takes a hacksaw to the romanticised notion of the Starving Artist. Deciding he needs experience more than schooling ("I didn't want to talk about books anymore, I wanted to write them"), the would-be writer heads off to seek his fortune...as an airconditioner installer, a utilityman on the Esso Florence, and a writer of educational filmstrip copy (to name only a few). In doing so, he strips bare the glamour of the writing life to reveal the grainy, sad truth of an unknown scribe trying to make ends meet. And as further evidence against the Hollywood version he includes early writings and money-making attempts in a fascinating set of appendices.

But rather than let this marginal existence get him down, Auster fuels his writing with the folks he meets along the way. For instance, Casey and Teddy, a hilarious vaudevillian duo whom he encounters while groundskeeper at the Commodore Hotel, bear a striking resemblance to the two main characters in Auster's early play, Laurel and Hardy Go to Heaven (included in Appendix 1). And no memoir would be complete without a few brushes with the rich and famous; enter Jerzy Kosinski (Auster edited Cockpit), as well as brief encounters with John Lennon and the home of Mark Rothko.

Of all the schemes Auster cooks up to stay afloat, none is more doomed (nor more endearing) than Action Baseball (Appendix 2), a card game he invents and endeavours to sell to various toy companies. Of course, his final scheme--to write and publish a detective novel (Appendix 3)--is the reason you're reading this now. --Martha Silano