His books were half of what I read between age 12-25 (edit: more like 12-20, and I meant only novels, but it doesn't matter here)<p>Sad to see him go.<p>Picking up his books again as an adult only took away the magic in some of his weaker works.<p>Mostly, the magic remained.<p>The guys learning to play Bach and building a wall, the delirant anon in NYC chasing paper trails, the adolescent boy learning to levitate... the evil man offering glasses in a post-apocalyptic city:<p>so many memories remain, I don't know much about Paul Auster but I can say he was an influence on my life. Because of randomness (a relative picking Mr Vertigo as a present for me, probably because of book-store recommendations)<p>Paul Auster's characters always appear as somewhat mythical, living through a personal transformation.<p>Many of his characters have an aura of NYC artist/cultural authority stick around then, but it does not bother me at all.<p>Like many of my favorite authors, he injects much of his own personality into the main characters, even with multiple books using a novelist/writer as the main character.