Paul Auster responded to the section The last day of my life in La Vanguardia Magazine on the occasion of the appearance of his book 4, 3, 2, 1, an extensive masterpiece. The text reproduced below was published on December 31, 2017.
4, 3, 2, 1 (Seix Barral/Edicions 62) are four stories in a single book, the last novel by Paul Auster (Newark, 1947). His protagonist is Archie Ferguson, a contemporary of the writer, and his four destinies. It is a novel marked by death and life; a treatise on life. Who was born when Auster was 14 years old and has marked his remaining 56 years.
–I was at a summer camp, and a group of kids went for a walk in the forest. We were caught in a terrible electrical storm and, wanting to get away from the lightning, we tried to access a clearing by crawling under a wire fence. We went in single file. Meanwhile, the companion who was in front of me, so close that his feet were a hand’s breadth from my head, was struck by lightning and struck down. Seeing that boy die in an instant is the most decisive thing I have ever experienced.
This tragic event runs through 4, 3, 2, 1 and the life of Paul Auster, who has come to the conclusion that a 57-year-old man is more afraid of dying than a 70-year-old man, the age he is today. Because you keep wondering: what if…? “It is a constant that accompanies us from the cradle to the grave. What if that day he had turned left instead of right? What if I had taken the bus instead of missing it? What if that night when it rained he hadn’t taken the dog for a walk? And if…? From the most wonderful to the most terrible, much of our course is determined by micro-decisions or strokes of good or bad fortune,” says the writer. Like the great family tragedy that his father, Sam Auster, experienced when he was 7 years old. Her mother, Paul’s grandmother, murdered her husband in the kitchen after an argument.
–He shot him. I found out when I was older. They argued, and she shot him. She was acquitted for temporary mental insanity.
He does not believe in destiny, which he considers something mystical. He prefers to talk about good or bad luck and believes that you cannot judge anyone until their life is over, because “things can change at the last second.” More and more people have disappeared from the photograph of their lives, “so you walk around with dead people. And I feel that way.”
Confined to a single life, he said, we have the feeling that there are other lives we could have lived.
What if we had?
1. If you knew that tomorrow was the last day of your life, what would you do? How would I spend it?
Forget that I knew.
2. What would you have liked to do but can’t do anymore because you won’t have time?
Learn to play the piano.
3. What would you advise those who stay?
Dying people should never give advice.
4. What would you say your life was like?
Too short.
5. What are you most proud of?
To not pretend that I have answers to impossible questions.
6. Do you regret anything?
Of many things, but not of all things.
7. The best memory of your life?
Meeting Siri Hustvedt (his wife) thirty-six years and ten months ago.
8. What would be the menu for your last dinner?
Croquettes.
9. Would you go to sleep?
If I was tired, yes.
10. What would be your epitaph?
Bye bye.
