I Thought My Father Was God: And Other True Tales from NPR's National Story Project - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312421001 ISBN 13: 9780312421007

Publisher: Picador, 2002

Synopsis

The true-life stories in this unique collection provide "a window into the American mind and heart" (The Daily News). One hundred and eighty voices - male and female, young and old, from all walks of life and all over the country - talk intimately to the reader. Combining great humor and pathos this remarkable selection of stories from the thousands submitted to NPR's Weekend All Things Considered National Story Project gives the reader a glimpse of America's soul in all its diversity.

About this title

Review:

When the call went out to listeners of National Public Radio's Weekend All Things Considered to submit stories about their personal experiences, the results were overwhelming. I Thought My Father Was God: And Other True Tales from NPR's National Story Project contains editor Paul Auster's pick of the best submissions. The stories, whether fact or fiction, all exhibit a heartfelt earnestness to be heard, and share similar themes of bizarre coincidences, otherworldly intervention, love and loss, life-changing experiences, and mundane pleasures. Some are deeply moving, most are not. But it is uplifting and well worth the time to sift through these brief snapshots of our collective human experience.

To give the book shape, Auster has done his best to categorize the material by subject, such as Animals, Families, War, Love, Dreams, and the like. These categories hold true to the submission criteria: "[I was most interested in] stories that defied our expectations about the world, anecdotes that revealed the mysterious and unknowable forces at work in our lives, in our family histories, in our minds and bodies, in our souls.... I was hoping to put together ... a museum of American reality." I Thought My Father Was God is a testament that, despite what on a bad day we may think is a drab existence, we all have a few good stories in us. --Michael Ferch

About the Author:

Paul Auster is the author of ten novels, including Timbuktu, which was a national bestseller, and most recently The Book of Illusions. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0312421001
• ISBN 13: 9780312421007
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416
• Editor: Auster Paul