His latest book, which he completed despite illness, traces the history of violence in America
Tuesday – 29 Shaban 1444 AH – 21 March 2023 AD Issue Number [16184]
Despite the shock caused by the news of the American novelist Paul Auster’s cancer, according to what his wife, writer Siri Hostwaldt, published on her Instagram account, his distinguished narrative achievement continues to fuel controversy on various media platforms in the United States and elsewhere, through what His latest book, “The Bloodbath Nation,” which he released earlier this year, sparked him.
The news of Auster’s cancer came like a thunderbolt, not only because of the seriousness of the disease; Rather, because the way his wife announced the news was not devoid of apparent despair over the possibility of his recovery. A pessimism that may be justified by Auster’s health, which has continued to deteriorate since last December. “I took a while off (Instagram) because my husband was diagnosed with cancer in December, after months of being ill,” says Hostwald. He is now receiving treatment at Sloane Kettering Hospital in New York, and I lived during this period in a place that I called (the land of cancer). A land crossed by many people, either because they were sick, or because they loved someone who fell ill… Some of them survive the disease but others die. A fact that everyone knows, yet living so close to that fact changes the daily reality.”
Cover of “Bloodbath Nation”
And in her attempt to disclose the psychological state she is living with her husband, Paul Auster, Siri Hostwald adds in her post: “I think it would be terrible to be alone in (the land of cancer), living with a person with cancer who is on chemotherapy and immunotherapy, is an adventure in proximity and distance. One has to be close enough to feel the therapies exhausting the patient’s body as if he were to take them, and at the same time far enough away to be able to provide real help. Excess pity may make the patient feel useless! This delicate task is not always easy to do, but it is a real labor of love.
This tragedy comes a few months after the death of Daniel, Paul Auster’s son from his first wife, writer Lydia Davis, after a drug overdose in April last year, when he was found passed out in the Brooklyn metro in New York City, a few days after his release. On bail after being accused of wrongfully killing his 10-month-old daughter, who was in his custody.
The successive tragedies in Auster’s life did not prevent him from dealing with writing with a commitment that was rarely found among writers. The author of “The Invention of Isolation”, the novel that made him in the first row of international writers since its publication in 1982, did not rely on the popularity he achieved, especially thanks to his most famous work, “The Trilogy”. New York” (translated into Arabic, Dar Al-Adab), consisting of “The City of Glass” (1985), “Ghosts” (1986) and “The Locked Room” (1987). Rather, he continued to write works, most of which he considered deeper and more influential than those that made him famous. The last of which was his tagged novel “1 2 3 4” published in 2017 (translated into Arabic, Al-Mustawasit Publications), which critical platforms considered the most important literary event of that year, to be followed by the book “The Bloodbath Nation” issued in mid-January. About the American “Grove Brass” house (translated directly into French under the title “Country of Blood”, Dar Act Sud).
In this book, Paul Auster relied on the photographs taken by the American photographer Spencer Ostrander, his wife’s son, Siri Hostwald, at sites that witnessed violent murders during the past twenty years, as Auster tries to trace the history of violence in the United States of America, stemming mainly from the provision stipulated in the Constitution American, and related to the right of any citizen and without reason to own a firearm, a right that practically divided the country into two camps that have nothing in common.
Oster believes that the possession of firearms in America has not seen such a prevalence since its legalization date, and that shooting deaths have increased dramatically in more than 40 American cities. These are indications that necessitate the American people to choose what kind of people they wish to be: a bloody people driven by the laws of violence, or a people who believe in order and tend to peace and tranquility? But instead of asking this question directly, Auster used his narrative intelligence, which made him question Ostrander’s photographs, among which he chose only those in which the human presence was absent. According to Auster, the absence of human figures is more striking, and the absence of firearms in images that originally speak of The fiery questions make dealing with the subject have a philosophical and forward-looking dimension away from politics and financial interests. The images that Auster questioned were content with depicting buildings that had become ugly because of killing and randomness, which created a kind of void in them, completely reflecting the vacuum of the world created by violence.
The author stresses the philosophical chasm that separates the two diminishing camps: those for and against the right to own firearms, between those who see the right to bear arms as a mainstay of American society and those who want to end it, those who see the problem with firearms and those who see it with the people who handle them. . An insurmountable chasm that prevents any serious and real discussion, as neither side seems willing to take any step. In these circumstances, Paul Auster is pessimistic about the future. From Sandy Hook Elementary School to Yevaldi, First Baptist Church, Sutherland and Paul’s Nightclub in Orlando, no lesson has been learned and no practical action taken. Too many deaths, too much life to end, too much life to destroy, too much life to stop, too much life to waste. But with this pessimism related to his realization of the size of the gap that separates the two teams, he states that what gives him hope for the future is the work that individuals and organizations do for change. He expresses optimism about the many social movements that seek to end violence and discrimination, as well as people who work hard. In the political field, to demand reforms that make the world more just and equitable, and hope is attached to those who work seriously to improve the future, and to find new solutions to the challenges facing society.
The book “The Bloodbath Nation” was deep and influential in a way that allowed the discussion related to the possession of firearms to be resurrected again, and it was dealt with far from politics and economic influences, and perhaps this is mainly due to the fact that Paul Auster is not a historian, nor a sociologist, nor a philosopher, nor even a politician, but Because he is a writer only, he dealt with the subject from the point of view of pain and the feeling of fear for his nation of extinction as it increased its love of violence. Auster did not hesitate to describe the relationship between Americans with weapons and violence, with a love relationship as old as American history, shaped by fear and a sense of terror that prompted the first settlers to arm themselves in defense of their lives, but with the passage of time they became certain that their lives meant the death of their opponents, and little by little the Americans forgot The real goal that prompted the editors of their constitution to legalize the right to own weapons, until they believed that this right is one of the basic rights that cannot be waived, and this is a perception that was finally enshrined in the sixties of the last century with the spread of assassinations and chaos.
Auster’s book includes a collection of Spencer Ostrander’s photographs taken over two years across the United States of America, of the sites of the largest mass killings of the last 20 years. It was photographed in black and white and does not show any of the bloody scenes, only empty, sad, ordinary places, most of which are related to schools, churches and shops that at some point witnessed killings with firearms, yet the photographer was able to convey the feelings of panic that usually accompany those who witness the facts Terrifying bloody.
