Paul Auster, the American writer, has died at the age of 77

Paul Auster, the great New York writer, has died at 77. He imposed himself with his New York Trilogy, the monumental 4321 and cult films like Smoke (con William Hurt e Harvey Keitel) e Blue in the Face. At 73 you wrote Baumgartner, in a hospital bed. In finishing the novel, Auster had discovered that he was ill. The news was given by his wife and writer Siri Hustvedt, talking about spending time in “Cancerland.” And to that damned cancer he said: “Take me wherever you want”.

He wrote books translated into over forty languages, sold millions of copies, was an essayist and director, wrote about New York, America, was a friend of Wim Wenders e Woody Allen with whom he shared a dispassionate love for the city where he lived. Protagonist of contemporary American literature, and therefore of world literature, he is considered the master of Postmodernism together with his great friends Thomas Pynchon e Don DeLillo. He recounted the anxieties and neuroses of today’s man, the solitudes of contemporary lives, starting from New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), The music of the case (1990), Brooklyn Follies (2005).

Difficult childhood

Paul Auster’s life was difficult, from his childhood in Newark to Jewish parents of Polish origin: he grew up in the extreme suburbs, at the age of three a little sister was born to him who later showed serious psychological problems, to the point that his family members were forced to interdict. During his senior year in high school, the family breaks up: his parents divorce and Paul and his sister go to live with their mother. He does not participate in the graduation ceremony: “While my classmates were wearing their caps and gowns and receiving their certificates, I was already on the other side of the Atlantic.” So for two and a half months he lives in Paris, Italy, Spain and Ireland.

The first marriage

Upon returning to the United States he began dating the woman he would later marry, his colleague Lydia Davis. In the meantime he begins to write articles for literary journals, poems and short stories, often using pseudonyms such as that of Paul Quinn. After graduating for a year he embarked as a sailor on the oil tanker Esso Florencee, from 1971 to 1974, with the money he earned, he returned to live in Paris. In this period, marked by severe economic hardship, he lived on private lessons, occasional collaborations with newspapers, and writing scripts for silent films.

Upon returning to his homeland, he began to publish stories, articles and reviews in various newspapers and magazines. In 1977 his son Daniel was born and he moved with his family to the countryside, but money was scarce and Paul – who now had little time to write – tried his hand at various jobs, even inventing a card game called “Action baseball”, which at the New York Toy Fair with very poor results.

The drama of the son and granddaughter

Paul Auster becomes one of the most appreciated contemporary writers on an international level, managing to have leading roles not only in the strictly literary field, but also in cinema. From this moment Paul Auster became a cult writer with multifaceted activities: he wrote films and became a director with a keen eye also on theatre.

But drama is part of his life. And so he is overwhelmed by the death of his son Daniel, who died of an overdose, and that of his granddaughter Ruby. The writer’s son was 44 years old and had been struggling with drug addiction since he was a teenager and was accused of having unintentionally caused the death of the little girl: killed by an overdose of fentanyl and heroin while he slept next to her under the effects of the drugs. The discovery of cancer was the last blow in the life of a literary talent.