The author of the New York trilogy has died

Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1947, Paul Auster became a writer—in his own words—because, at the age of eight, he couldn’t get an autograph from his hero, baseball player Willie Mays, because he didn’t have one. pencil at hand. From that day on, he never let go of this item, which became indispensable to him. “When you carry a pencil with you, chances are that one day you will start using it…” he explained in 1995. After studying at Columbia University, he lived for a time in Paris and published more than 12 novels in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000, including A Música do Acaso and O Livro das Ilusões. He also wrote the screenplay for Wayne Wang’s Smoke – Fumo, starring Harvey Keitel and William Hurt, which won him an award for best debut screenplay.

He was married twice—to writers Lydia Davis (from 1974 to 1977) and Siri Hustvedt (from 1981 until his death)—and had two children: Daniel Auster from his first marriage, who died of an overdose in 2022; and Sophie Auster, who he had with Siri Hustvedt, an actress and singer. In March 2023, his wife announced that he had cancer, a disease he discovered while working on the book Baumgartner, published in October. “If this is the last thing I write, leaving surrounded by attentive and encouraging people and good friends was worth it,” he said. Six months later he died at the age of 77.