A similar incident is also in Auster’s 2017 Booker Prize shortlisted novel “4 3 2 1”: in one of the four versions of the life of the main character Archie Ferguson, he is killed by a huge branch that was torn from a tree by a lightning strike, and this episode also takes place in a summer camp.
In 1959, the future writer’s parents bought a large private house in the most prestigious area of the city; the advantage of this house turned out to be that Oster’s uncle, the translator Allen Mandelbaum, left a couple of boxes of books there for safekeeping when he went on a trip to Europe. The young boy avidly read everything left behind, and his growing interest in literature further deepened his estrangement from his parents.
His first attempts at writing were strongly judged by his uncle, whose importance Oster always emphasized. “He was very strict with me, very demanding, and that was only good for me,” Oster recalls in an interview with Publishers Weekly magazine.
Oster attended graduate school in Maplewood, near New York. Instead of trying to finish his studies, the young man went to Europe. He traveled to Italy, Spain, visited Paris and went to Dublin in honor of James Joyce.
Oster returned home in the fall to begin his studies at Columbia University. In 1967, he went to Paris as part of a university program. Disillusioned with the exchange program and the low academic requirements, Auster dropped out again, but stayed in Paris for the duration.
After returning to New York, however, he was enrolled back at Columbia. Auster’s luck saved him from being drafted into the Vietnam War, and instead of writing a doctoral thesis, he began working and writing the novels “Land of the Last Things” (Country of Last Things) and “Moon Palace” (Moon Palace), which were completed later, in the late 1980s.
