Paul Auster, who rose to fame in the 1980s for reviving the noir novel genre in a postmodern style and was considered one of the most valuable authors of his generation, has passed away. Auster, the author of 34 books, including the highly acclaimed New York Trilogy, was a prolific novelist and screenwriter who was 77 years old. Auster’s friend and co-author Jacki Lyden confirmed to The Guardian that the author passed away on Tuesday at his home in Brooklyn from complications of lung cancer. As novelist Joyce Carol Oates wrote in 2010, Auster was known for his „highly stylized, strangely enigmatic postmodern fiction, where narrators are rarely unreliable and the narrative foundation constantly shifts.“ Auster was often referred to in the news as a „literary superstar“ with his squinted eyes, melancholic demeanor, and charismatic presence akin to leading actors in Hollywood films. The British newspaper Times Literary Supplement described Auster as „one of America’s greatest creative writers.“ According to the news from Independent Turkish, New York stood out as a central character in many of the author’s works, despite his birth in New Jersey. Author and poet Meghan O’Rourke wrote, „Paul Auster was Brooklyn’s most esteemed novelist of the 1980s and 1990s, a time when there were few famous writers.“ „His books lined the shelves of all my family’s friends. When we were young, my friends and I eagerly read Auster’s works because we found them both strange and relatable.“ „No matter where in the world, when approaching Auster’s work, one first hears French,“ noted The New Yorker in 2007: „Only Auster, a best-selling author here, is a rock star in Paris.“ Auster’s novel 4321, published in 2017, was nominated for the prestigious Man Booker Prize. Auster, born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1947, began his writing career at the age of eight when he didn’t get an autograph from his baseball hero Willie Mays because neither he nor his family brought a pen to the game. From that day on, he carried a pen everywhere. In an article from 1995, he wrote, „If you have a pen in your pocket, there’s a good chance you’ll need it one day.“ At the age of 14 during a hike at a summer camp, Auster witnessed a child die from a lightning strike just a few meters away from him. Auster said the incident „absolutely changed“ his life, and he thinks about that moment „every day.“ „Coincidence understandably became a recurring theme in his fiction,“ noted critic Laura Miller in a 2017 article, pointing to the impact of that moment on Auster. In 1995, he also ventured into cinema by writing the screenplay for the drama „Smoke,“ directed by Wayne Wang, for which he won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. In 1981, Auster met his colleague Siri Hustvedt. The couple married the following year and had a daughter named Sophie in 1987. In April 2022, Auster and his first wife’s son, Daniel Davis, passed away from a drug overdose. In March 2023, Hustvedt announced that Auster, who was diagnosed in December, was undergoing cancer treatment. Despite his long and productive career, Auster occasionally expressed discomfort about being identified with his groundbreaking work, the New York Trilogy. „Journalists tend to consider the work in which you first appear in public as the most beautiful work,“ said Auster, adding, „Let’s take Lou Reed. He can’t stand Walk on the Wild Side. That music is so famous that it has accompanied him throughout his life.“
