Paul Auster, the acclaimed novelist who also wrote and directed films, died at his home in New York City on April 30. He was 77. Auster’s novels centered around questions of identity, language and personal meaning.
His wife, writer Siri Hustvedt, told the New York Times he died of lung cancer.
His works include the series “The New York Trilogy” (1987), comprised of “City of Glass” (1985), “Ghosts” (1986) and “The Locked Room” (1986). The trilogy explored various philosophical themes through a postmodern lens of detective and mystery fiction.
Auster also penned the screenplays for “Smoke” (1995), “Blue in the Face” (1995), “Lulu on the Bridge” (1998) and “The Inner Life of Martin Frost” (2007), directing the latter two and co-directing “Blue in the Face” with Wayne Wang.
Popular on PvNew
His work was particularly popular in France, where “Lulu on the Bridge” played at the Cannes Film Festival in Un Certain Regard and “Smoke” was nominated for a César award for best foreign film.
“Lulu on the Bridge” follows a jazz saxophone player whose life is flipped upside down after being shot at a jazz club. “The Inner Life of Martin Frost,” a romantic-mystery drama, details the story of an author who travels to a friend’s country house to spend time alone, only to fall in love with a young woman who inspires him to keep writing.
His novels also include “In the Country of Last Things” (1987) and “Leviathan” (1992), which follows a writer investigating a man who blew himself up while building a bomb and more. Among Auster’s memoirs are “Hand to Mouth” (1997), about his early struggles as a writer, and “Winter Journal” (2012).
Born in Newark, N.J., Auster attended Columbia University as an undergraduate and also earned his master’s degree at the school. He later moved to Paris, where he translated French literature. When he returned to the U.S. in 1974, he published poems, essays and novels, and translations of French writers.
Auster also published several books in recent years, including “Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane” (2021), “Bloodbath Nation” (2023) and his final novel, “Baumgartner” (2023).
Some of Auster’s influences included Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Auster is survived by his wife, Siri Hustvedt; daughter, sister and a grandson.
