True Tales of American Life - Hardcover

True Tales of American Life is a collection derived from a project launched by Paul Auster on US National Public Radio. Auster credits his wife with the idea of having listeners send in their own short pieces of true-life writing, from which Auster would choose half a dozen to be read on air each week. But, for all the success of the radio programme, as Auster writes, "you can't hold the words in your hands". Here, then, is the fully "holdable" book. Auster has selected 179 pieces from the 4,000 plus he had received by October 2000. Split fairly evenly between male and female authors, with an age range of 20 to "pushing 90", the collection revels in its multifariousness: the contributors include "a postman, a merchant seaman, a trolley-bus driver, a gas-and-electric-meter reader, a restorer of player pianos, a crime-scene cleaner", and so on. The biographical detail is relevant because inevitably most of these true stories draw on the rawest of raw materials, the writers' own experience.

Auster wanted "true stories that sounded like fiction". In an age where talk shows (think Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake) demand that we tell our life stories as fiction--and encourage us to live our lives as fiction--it's a particularly timely and potent meeting place of reality and art, or in Auster's words, "an archive of facts, a museum of American reality" in fictional form. Unlike Auster, who regularly has to wade through 60 of these tales in a day to meet his weekly radio deadlines, the regular reader can dip in and out. And at a rate of, say, one story per day, this book will keep you fascinated with (and occasionally horrified at) American's true life tales for just about six months. --Alan Stewart

A captivating 'by-the-bed book'... This technicolour picture of everyday life proves that fact is definitely stranger than fiction. -- She Magazine, December 2001

An intriguing book... True Tales shows the importance of personal experience: how events shape us... and how much of life is simply inexplicable. -- Glasgow Herald, December 8, 2001

Finally a bathroom book worthy of Pulitzer consideration: the one-to-three-page stories gathered in this astonishing, addictive collection are absolute gems. -- Publishers Weekly, 2001

Paul Auster's astonishing anthology of Americana -- Sunday Herald, December 16, 2001

Reading them is like walking into a shiny diner on a rainy morning and... chatting, one by one, with every guy hunched over the counter. -- Financial Times, November 24 2001

Stories of coincidences, lives lost and friendships found mean that Tales... frequently glows with the truth of shared human experience. Fantastic stuff. -- The Face, November 2001

The British marvel and wince at the confessional nature of Americans. Here it is a boon, for it is the characters... that emerge most strongly. -- The Scotsman, December 15, 2001

These tales... remind us of what real life is without the intervention of the storyteller to shape it and give it meaning. -- San Francisco Chronicle, 2001

Unforgettable. The 179 stories are beautifully written and intensely emotional. -- Dazed and Confused, November 2001