A SURPRISING CONVERSATION WITH PAUL AUSTER: 'I'VE THOUGHT ABOUT DEATH EVERY DAY'
A Surprising Conversation With Paul Auster: 'I've Thought About Death Every Day'
They say you should never meet your cultural heroes, but my fears dissipated from the handshake outside author Paul Auster's Brooklyn home
May 02nd, 12PM May 02nd, 15PMThe last years of Paul Auster – who died on Wednesday at 77 – were not easy. His son and granddaughter died in terrible circumstances, and surely his already somewhat stooped back sunk a little further from the grief.
His writings teach us that from early youth, Auster was aware of death and its randomness, the chance of it hitting like the lightning that struck and killed a boy who was standing next to him during summer camp. After he turned 66 – the age his father died – Auster walked the earth with the possibility of imminent death haunting him like a shadow.
This fear of death, however, didn't weaken him or make Auster listless and depressed. On the contrary: it led to a creative outburst that culminated in his longest, and probably most ambitious, literary work – the novel "4321."
In this novel, Auster based the main character's life on his own terrifying experience of adolescence. As in many of his books, Auster sought to examine chance, arbitrariness, and fate. He wanted to ask, "what if?" What would have happened to him, his life, or someone else's life with a slight tweak to a detail or two?
I had the chance to meet Auster when the almost 900-page "4321" was published in Hebrew by Am Oved Publishing House in 2019.
They say it's better not to meet your cultural heroes. They say a reader should avoid a conversation with their most revered author. Auster, whose "Moon Palace," "Mr. Vertigo," "The Music of Chance," and "The New York Trilogy" (to mention just a few) were beloved, precious items on my reading menu, seemed like he could be the kind of writer I had been warned about.
Auster died at home, but death was almost always on his mind.
But from the moment we shook hands at the entrance to his house – a brown brick home separated from the Brooklyn street by 10 steps – it became clear that the revered author was friendly and warm – and a generous conversation partner.
It felt as if there was no topic or issue he wouldn't discuss. He also got worked up and ranted, of course. When then-President Donald Trump's name came up, for example, the steam rose all the way up to Auster's gray hair.
But there was also an almost dreamlike quality to our talk, which lasted two or three hours. It started with a discussion about his father, who died suddenly when Auster was young ("One moment he was making love to his girlfriend in their bed, and then he died. What a horrible way to go").
We continued talking about his childhood, his parent's divorce, and the death of his friend from a lightning strike when they were only 14. We then turned to discussing writing. Auster spoke of his huge book collection and even mentioned the fax machine in his study, through which he maintained close contact with his friend, the writer Don DeLillo. The two avoided technology and enjoyed writing by hand.
During our talk, Auster also spoke of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the situation in the United States – especially the support Trump continued to enjoy, even at the end of his term. This, he claimed, indicated that America is deeply racist, and perhaps also "deeply crazy." He added that Trump had allied himself with American radical conservatism, a movement he said should actually be considered pro-fascist."
In retrospect, like his many books and the ideas and experiences in "4321," our entire conversation was a journey with a great writer – indeed, one of the greatest in American literature – through milestone historical events he experienced over almost 80 years. Auster was a representative of a certain generation and a certain America, and he articulated both of them. "You can't grasp a general story in literature," he said after a while, reflecting while we were on the balcony. "You have to be specific to a place, a person, to particular experiences, and somehow magic happens."
Auster told me that the author's only responsibility is to write good literature. In a way, he added, it's always political when good literature is written. And he said that in fiction, there is no hierarchy of importance – a wonderful book will break a reader's heart, regardless of whether it's about Manhattan high society or a concentration camp. All nuances and shades of the human experience can be reflected in all kinds of stories and plots, he added.
Auster, who published two more books after "4321," announced his illness in March 2023. Siri Hustvedt, his second wife and mother of his daughter, singer-songwriter Sophie Auster, wrote on Instagram that he had been diagnosed in December after being unwell for several months. She added that he was under treatment and that they lived in what they called "cancer country," a place that, she said, was "an adventure in closeness and separation."
"One has to be close enough to feel the enervating treatments almost as if they were your own and far enough away to be a genuine help. Too much empathy can render a person useless! This tightrope isn't always easy to walk, of course, but it's the real work of love," she added.
Auster died at home, but death was almost always on his mind. At the end of our conversation, which took place before he was diagnosed and before the tragedy that befell his son and granddaughter, he concluded: "I've thought about death every day since I was 14. Everyone's dying around me now, all my friends. Some of them are frantic and anxious. They are unable to face what's coming. Who knows when my time will come? I hope not tomorrow."
2024-05-02T09:24:07Z dg43tfdfdgfd