I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table.

M. The common factor of both ideas is the question of the meaning of symbols for human beings. Paul Auster is heard reading from his books Hand to Mouth and The Red Notebook either as straight recitation integrated with other sounds as if in a radio play or passed through an electronically realized string resonator so that the low tones interact with those of a string ensemble.

Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3 1947) is an American author whose writing blends absurdism existentialism crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy (1987) Moon Palace (1989) The Music of Chance (1990) The Book of Illusions (2002) and The Brooklyn Follies (2005).