This message comes from NPR's sponsor, Organic Valley, the farmer-owned cooperative dedicated to providing ethically sourced food from small organic family farms.

Discover how you can support local organic farmers at o v. coop slash ethically sourced.

This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Today we remember writer Paul Oster. He died Tuesday of complications from lung cancer. He was

77. In his New York Times obituary he was described as the patron saint of

literary Brooklyn, one of the signature New York writers of his generation.

He's also been called the Dean of Postmodernists.

Writer Megan O'Rourke described Auster as remarkably good at getting at the texture of solitude at telling stories about the lonely mind,

evoking the almost supernatural corners of life.

His books include the New York trilogy Moon Palace, Leviathan, and The Book of Illusions.

He also wrote screenplays, including for two films starring Harvey Kitell, Smoke, and Lulu on the Bridge.

In his memoir Winter Journal, he wrote about the history of his body,

describing his scars, smoking habit,

travels, home, near-death experiences, and entering what he described as the winter

of his life.

I spoke with Auster about that memoir when it was published in 2012.

We'll hear that interview a little later, along with an interview we recorded in 2004.

Let's start with our 1997 interview. He just written a memoir called Hand-to-mouth,

about his early efforts as a writer and the

odd jobs he did to make a living. Here he is reading from the opening of

Hand to Mouth. In my late 20s and early 30s I went through a period of several years when everything I touched turned to failure.

My marriage ended in divorce, my work as a writer foundered, and I was overwhelmed by money problems.

I'm not just talking about an occasional shortfall or some periodic belt

...