Paul Auster’s readers, and all those who admired his work, have been mourning the writer’s death since Wednesday. Media around the world echoed his death and the great legacy he left in the form of novels, stories, essays and even plays. Her wife, the writer Siri Hustvedt, also regrets not having been the one to break the news, since it was leaked before she could even announce it to those closest to her, as she has confessed on her Instagram account.
“I was naive. I discovered that even before his body was removed from our home, news of his death was already circulating in the media and obituaries had been published. Neither I, nor our daughter Sophie, nor our son-in-law Spencer, nor my sisters, whom Paul loved like his own sisters and who witnessed his death, had time to come to terms with our painful loss. They stole our dignity. “I don’t know the full story of how this happened, but I know this: It is wrong.”
Hustvedt, who until now had always been in charge of updating Auster’s medical report on his networks, has called for a collective reflection, arguing that “behind our technical inventions and our social networks, there are human beings. That the defects belong to us, not to the machines, no matter how much technology helps to simplify. A machine didn’t shout the news of Paul’s death before our daughter or I had said a word about it. “One person, several people did that.”
Before the press and networks publish more information, the author of The Summer Without Men wanted to be honest with her followers and those of her husband, and confessed that “Paul never left Cancerland. It turned out to be, in Kierkegaard’s words, the deadly disease. After treatments failed, her oncologist offered him palliative chemotherapy, but he said no and requested palliative care at home. Paul had had enough. But he never, neither with words nor with gestures, showed signs of self-pity. He said several times that he would like to die telling a joke. I told him that was unlikely and he smiled, “she is sincere.”
He has also provided new details about his last goodbye: “He died at home, in a room he loved, the library, a room with books on every wall, from the floor to the ceiling, but also with high windows that let in the light.” . He died with us, his family, around him.”
He wrote until the end of his days. “My husband didn’t have a computer. He wrote by hand and typed his manuscripts on an Olympia typewriter. In the last days of his life, he wrote letters to our grandson, Miles. His tiny handwriting trembled as a result of the treatment, and he finished that correspondence until he lost all his strength. Our assistant and dear friend, Jen Dougherty, deciphered the texts after I photographed them and wrote them down for her. She wanted it to be her last book. In a breath of determination, she managed to finish a letter and round out her text, but the manuscript is not long. “With that letter she ended his life as a writer.”
Hustvedt has ended his Instagram post with the last sentence of Paul’s latest novel, Baumgartner (Seix Barral): “And so, with the wind in his face and blood still dripping from the wound on his forehead, our hero emerges in He looks for help, and when he reaches the first house and knocks on the door, the last chapter of the saga begins. by S.T. Baumgartner begins.
The author acknowledges that “when she read it to me, I did not feel the gravity of its meaning. Then he was sick, he suffered from fever every afternoon and, although he had not yet been diagnosed with cancer, he had the powerful feeling that he and I did not have much time left together, ”she concludes.
