American writer Paul Auster dies at 77

The writer Paul Auster died at the age of 77 from cancer this Tuesday, April 30. The news about his death was announced by his friends to the New York press. Poet, essayist, screenwriter, author of more than thirty novels, he was one of the greatest exponents of contemporary American literature.

For Paul Auster, it was enough to move from France to New York, the place that would be his home, for publishing success to knock on his door. For although he had ink running through his veins and letters flowing through his fingers, Auster’s pen found its place only until he returned to the Big Apple.

On several occasions his wife, also a writer, Siri Hustevdt spoke of that Canceraland where the Auster family lived in recent months. Through a publication on Instagram, the novelist broke the news of Paul’s illness accompanied by a photograph of herself giving her husband a kiss on her temple. In the text she related how hard it was to be living the experience of having someone close to her suffer from the disease.

A year ago, he released a photograph of the author standing in the sunbeam taken by Spencer Ostrander, Hustevdt’s son-in-law, accompanied by a text in which he stressed that “no person can be reduced to the name of his illness,” but that in his Again, the disease cannot be separated from the person who has it.

Newark, New Jersey, was the birthplace of Paul Auster in 1947. His Jewish family of Polish origin found refuge in the United States from the threat of Nazism. Many years later, in Brooklyn, New York, Auster’s first hit was born: Crystal Cityin 1986. New York Trilogy (1987), his compilation of novels of experimental stories by detectives and writers, was the one that catapulted his name after publishing his first novel, pressure play (1976) which, in addition to not having had great success, was published under the pseudonym Paul Benjamin.

His work was steeped in existentialism, the self, and above all, chance in novels such as moon, S Palace (1989), Leviathan (1992), Timbuktu (1999), The book of illusions (2002), The invention of loneliness published in 1982 (which, by the way, was inspired by the death of his father, so it touches on topics such as fatherhood).

The author, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 2006 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2003, was not only decorated in his country and in Europe (where his work was even more recognized) but also He passed through Mexico, where he was awarded the Carlos Fuentes Medal at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in 2017.

Always New York

Studying literature at Columbia University allowed him to take his letters to the other side of the ocean, to France, before establishing himself as an author upon his return to the United States. It was to Brooklyn, one of the five boroughs of New York and his home since then, where his career became relevant, but also where his illness appeared.

The writer was diagnosed with cancer in December 2022 after spending some time ill, as mentioned by his wife on his Instagram. His treatment took him to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Treatment Center in New York.

Not only New York accompanied him in his literary career and in his illness. His wife, with whom he had lived since the eighties, Siri Hustvedt, shared with him his love of letters. Both had been awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature; he in 2006 and she in 2019. It was she who told the world how painful it was to share the experience of cancer, that it was an “adventure of closeness and separation.”

But cancer was not the first we heard of the Auster surname beyond his great contributions to American literature. The author’s family faced another tragedy with the death of the writer’s granddaughter, in 2021; and later, the arrest and death of his first-born son, Daniel Auster, son of his first marriage with the writer Lydia Davis, unfortunately both at the hands of drugs.

Acts and words

Auster’s pen was not the only thing that rose, but also his voice. The author had very clear opinions about himself and his actions were not far from them. Auster did not hesitate to call Donald Trump a “psychopath” and “maniac” at the 2020 Hay Festival Querétaro to emphasize his disapproval and fear of the politician’s re-election due to his intolerant speeches. Nor did he hesitate to condemn the stripping of nationality from three hundred Nicaraguans by President Daniel Ortega through a manifesto signed by him and many other intellectuals such as the Mexican Elena Poniatowska.

Auster also did not hesitate to not assist countries, such as Turkey, which, with a large number of imprisoned journalists and writers, clashed with his ideological principles of defense of freedom. And speaking of defense of freedom for La Jornada he wrote, or rather, prayed, for Salman Rushdie. Auster was outraged by what was happening to his colleague, a victim of his literary practice threatened by the fatwa. He recognized his own freedom as an advantage, and prayed, as he himself related, that Rushdie would achieve it.