Here and Now: Letters (2008-2011) by Paul Auster, J. M. Coetzee

adulthood.
    Some people, of course, are saddled with atrocious names, comical names, deeply unfortunate names. The most pathetic one I have ever run across belonged to a man who married a distant relative: Elmer Deutlebaum. Imagine walking through life as Elmer Deutlebaum.
    My Canadian-born grandfather, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, out of some incomprehensible loyalty to the British crown, named my mother Queenie. It took her many years to grow into that one. When she was eight or nine, after years of teasing from her classmates, she decided to change it to Estelle. Not as bland as Enid, perhaps, but hardly an improvement. The experiment lasted for approximately six months.
    Not to be forgotten in all this is our common ancestor, Adam. According to the Old Testament, God gave Adam the task of giving names to all things animate and inanimate. As interpreted by Milton in Paradise Lost , Adam—in his innocence, in the state of grace he lived in before he came to know good and evil and was expelled from the Garden—is able to reveal the essences of each thing or creature he names, to reveal the truth of the world through language. After the fall, words were severed from things, and language became a collection of arbitrary signs—no longer connected to God or a universal truth.
    Needless to say, I have spent my whole life exploring and meditating on my own name, and my great hope is to be reborn as an American Indian. Paul: Latin for small, little. Auster: Latin for South Wind. South Wind: an old American euphemism for a rectal toot. I therefore shall return to this world bearing the proud and altogether appropriate name of Little Fart.
    Write again soon.
Yours ever,
Paul

September 13, 2009
    Dear John,
    Just back from Ireland (yesterday) and the immense relief to have the “Beckett Address” behind me. A dinner with Edward Beckett, the nephew and executor, born 1943, a professional flautist and former music teacher, ensconced in London for many years, a shy, pleasant man, unsophisticated in literary matters, well meaning, earnest, more attached to his uncle as uncle than as literary hero. He was happy with my talk, said so several times, and that, finally, was all I was hoping to achieve: not to fall on my face in front of him and the other 500 people in the room. Gripped the podium tightly, my knees locked out of tension during the 50-minute discourse, and by the time I left the stage, my legs were so stiff I could barely move and nearly did—literally—fall on my face.
    They plan to do this every year. I suggested you for the next one, and the organizers were enthusiastic. Perhaps you will hear from them in the coming months. It’s your call, of course, whether to accept or not, but if you do accept, rest assured that you will be treated well.
    While there, we learned that you are up for the Booker Prize. Fingers crossed on your behalf—and felicitations.
    And then, this anguishing dilemma. We have been invited to a screening of Disgrace on the 17th—a film I am eager to see, in spite of your reservations—but it turns out that we have a conflict. A prior commitment, made many months ago, and when I suggested we break that date to attend the screening, Siri said she would never talk to me again, perhaps even kill me. I don’t doubt that she means it. In today’s New York Times , however, which lists all the new films of the upcoming season, I see that the movie will be opening on Friday. We will go next weekend, then. Would you like me to clip local reviews for you—or would you rather not know?
With big hugs to you and Dorothy,
Paul

September 26, 2009
    Dear Paul,
    You write about the associations that the name “55th Street” has for you, and mention in passing Avenues A through Z in Manhattan. At once my thoughts go to the long poem of Galway Kinnell’s on Avenue C. What a feat for a poet to have pulled off: a stranger from faraway Africa, hearing mention of avenues named after the letters of the