Collected Prose

Auster has slipped some rules of his own inventing into his portrait of Maria. In order to bring Maria and myself closer together, I decided to go by the book.
    II

    The life of Sophie and how it influenced the life of Maria.
    The rituals that Auster “borrowed” from me to shape Maria are: The Wardrobe, The Striptease, To Follow …, Suite vénitienne, The Detective, The Hotel, The Address Book, and The Birthday Ceremony. Leviathan gives me the opportunity to present these artistic projects that inspired the author and which Maria and I now share.
    III

    One of the many ways of mingling fact with fiction, or how to try to become a character out of a novel .
    Since, in Leviathan, Auster has taken me as a subject, I imagined swapping roles and taking him as the author of my actions. I asked him to invent a fictive character which I would attempt to resemble. Instead, Auster preferred to send me “Personal Instructions for SC on How to Improve Life in New York City (Because she asked …)”. I followed his directives. This project is entitled Gotham Handbook.

    Gotham Handbook
    Personal Instructions for S.C. On How to Improve Life in New York City (Because she asked …)
    SMILING

    Smile when the situation doesn’t call for it. Smile when you’re feeling angry, when you’re feeling miserable, when you’re feeling most crushed by the world—and see if it makes any difference.
    Smile at strangers in the street. New York can be dangerous, so you must be careful. If you prefer, smile only at female strangers. (Men are beasts, and they must not be given the wrong idea.)
    Nevertheless, smile as often as possible at people you don’t know. Smile at the bank teller who gives you your money, at the waitress who gives you your food, at the person sitting across from you on the IRT.
    See if anyone smiles back at you.
    Keep track of the number of smiles you are given each day.
    Don’t be disappointed when people don’t smile back at you.
    Consider each smile you receive a precious gift.
    TALKING TO STRANGERS

    There will be people who talk to you after you smile at them. You must be prepared with flattering comments.
    Some of these people will talk to you because they feel confused or threatened or insulted by your show of friendliness. (“You got a problem, lady?”) Plunge in immediately with a disarming compliment. “No, I was just admiring your beautiful tie.” Or: “I love your dress.”
    Others will talk to you because they are friendly souls, happy to respond to the human overtures that come their way. Try to keep these conversations going as long as you can. It doesn’t matter what you talk about. The important thing is to give of yourself and see to it that some form of genuine contact is made.
    If you find yourself running out of things to say, bring up the subject of the weather. Cynics regard this as a banal topic, but the fact is that no subject gets people talking faster. Stop and think about it for a moment, and you’ll begin to see a metaphysical, even religious quality to this preoccupation with wind-chill factors and Central Park snowfall accumulations. Weather is the great equalizer. There is nothing anyone can do about it, and it affects us all in the same way—rich and poor, black and white, healthy and sick. The weather makes no distinctions. When it rains on me, it also rains on you. Unlike most of the problems we face, it is not a condition created by man. It comes from nature, or God, or whatever else you want to call the forces in the universe we cannot control. To discuss the weather with a stranger is to shake hands and put aside your weapons. It is a sign of goodwill, an acknowledgement of your common humanity with the person you are talking to.
    With so many things driving us apart, with so much hatred and discord in the air, it is good to remember the things that bring us together. The more we insist on them in our dealings with strangers, the better morale in the city will be.
    BEGGARS AND HOMELESS PEOPLE

    I’m not asking you to reinvent the world. I just want you to pay attention to it, to think about the things around you more than you think about yourself. At least while you’re outside, walking down the street on your way from here to there.
    Don’t ignore the miserable ones. They are everywhere, and a person can grow so accustomed to seeing them that he begins to forget they are there. Don’t forget.
    I’m not asking you to give all your money to the poor. Even if you