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Reading

Some notes on a book I read recently.

A book by Paul Auster - "The Book of Illusions"

This is an excellent book. Auster refers a lot to the French writer Chateaubriand.
Chateaubriand wrote Mémoires d'outre-tombe which was published in 1848. It has two thousand pages, and is said (in Auster's book) to be the best autobiography ever written.

A suggestion in the book for the translation of Mémoires d'outre-tombe is Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, but it was felt that Memoirs of a dead man might be more like it.

Reference is made to a two-volume edition of Chateaubriand's Mémoires by Pléiade compiled by Levaillant and Moulinier.

Quote from the Mémoires: "Ce lieu me plaît; il a remplacé pou moi les champs paternels"

Other writers, singers, composers, etc. mentioned by Auster: Dashiell Hammett and André Breton; Pergolesi and Mingus; Verdi, Wittgenstein, Villon; Rimbaud, Laura Riding

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