Paul Auster was just a teenager of 14 when he witnessed a life-altering event – a young chap named Ralph was hit by a lightning while they were at a summer camp in New York in July 1961. The weather was extremely turbulent, Auster called it “the defining summer storm”, in his 1995 essay Why Write?. Every path they took during their hike in the woods was accompanied by thunderbolts. Soon they came across a field but it required them to slither beneath a barbed wire fence. As lightning fell, Auster saw Ralph turn still. When he later came to know about Ralph’s demise, he was learnt that Ralph had a severe burn on his back caused by the barbed wire.
According to Auster, the horrifying event had an enormous impact on his life. As he spoke in a 2012 BBC interview, he pondered about the incident daily, the image was etched forever in his mind. In his opinion, Ralph’s untimely death taught him about the unpredictability of life. “Once we get into this world, the only certain thing is our inevitable end, everything else in between is unpredictable,” he expressed.
Paul Auster, who was born in 1947 in Newark, New Jersey, recently passed away at his residence in Brooklyn due to complications from lung cancer. His life journey was full of unpredictable events. Auster pursued his higher studies in English and comparative literature at Columbia, acquiring a BA (from 1966 till 1969) and later an MA (in 1970). Subsequently, he moved to Paris where he did odd jobs as a translator to make ends meet. He also authored a novel named Squeeze Play (published in 1982), under the alias Paul Benjamin (his first two legal names). The novel was centred on baseball which he released to earn some money.
Moreover, he came up with a memoir named The Invention of Solitude that year, penning down memories of his recently passed away father. Though the book received critical acclaim, it wasn’t a commercial success. In its first paragraph, Auster pens: “And then, out of nowhere, the reality of death strikes… Death can sneak up on you unannounced. Which implies that life can halt at any given point.” The lightning stroke returns.
In 1971, author Paul Auster tied the knot with fellow author Lydia Davis, which, however, resulted in divorce by 1974. An enigmatic silence was all Davis offered on the subject of Auster during a 2013 interaction. The couple’s son, Daniel, battled a severe drug problem in his later years. In 2021, an incident of tragic proportions unfolded as Daniel, while in charge of his 10-month-old daughter, Ruby, at his apartment in Brooklyn, succumbed to the allure of heroin and lost consciousness. Upon his recovery from the drug-induced stupor, he discovered Ruby dead. Post-mortem investigations revealed that the cause of death was an overdose of the potent opioid fentanyl mixed with heroin. Shortly after, in April 2022, Daniel tragically lost his life to a drug overdose in lower Manhattan.
The silent approach to these incidents was chosen by both Auster and Davis and also by author Siri Hustvedt, Auster’s spouse from 1981 until his demise. However, an indirect nod to these personal tragedies can be spotted in “Oracle Night”, a 2003 novel by Auster, wherein a character bearing the likeness to Daniel makes an appearance. Although the book touched lightly on private calamities and revelations about the author himself, it typically returned to wordplay, mediation and skepticism about knowledge.
Auster’s standard approach in memoirs and fiction entailed a mosaic-like construction. Between significant remembrances, what did he fill? Often, it would be platitudes or hackneyed phrases. His memoir “Winter Journal” (2012), is composed mostly of such commonplace expressions. While critics had differing views on Auster’s literary style, Michael Dirda from The Washington Post praised it as “clear”, and Michelle Dean of the Los Angeles Times found some segments of “The New York Trilogy” unusually charming. However, these sentiments were not universally shared as James Wood noted in 2009 that the prose in Auster’s novels, despite having admirable aspects, was unimpressive.
Auster’s less triumphant works may provide some insight into the link between the unpredictability (the melody of fate) and commonplace (the melody of evacuated structure). Typically considered as an artistic norm, unpredictability threatens to eliminate significance at its foundation. The lack of meaning often makes way for lifeless language. Auster never completely achieved harmony between his realisation of randomness (lightning bolt moments) and literature’s fundamentally two-sided interaction with reality and its duty to view the world from a fresh perspective. This is why common phrases remain in his work. This is why recurring themes become barren as books accumulate.
Arguably, a cliché cloud isn’t only an aesthetic blunder but also acts as a refuge. Auster’s oeuvre, which spans over 40-volume fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, tantalisingly flits from high evasiveness (a dedicated effort to reflect the filtered nature of the post-modern self) to low evasiveness (posturing, textbook, mundanity). It feels like a peek-a-boo game.
Notably, Auster’s debut novel was a ghostwritten thriller. He spent his entire lifetime akin to a hermit crab, taking shelter in the discarded shells of mainstream fiction – yet another escape. His books are teeming with detectives, both literal and figurative, who seldom uncover much. The New York Trilogy mocks the detective narrative by veering its murder mystery story-lines into domains of knowledge uncertainty. Oracle Night vibes with Dashiell Hammett’s allegory in The Maltese Falcon (1930), concerning Flitcraft, a man who abandons his thriving life after a close encounter with a falling beam makes him realise the randomness of everything.
Auster successfully infused the closed-off room of genre storytelling – where all plot details are securely fastened – with profound queries about our knowledge source, how we piece together our individual meaning matrices, and how narratives mould our lives unnoticed. Simultaneously, he performed like an archetypal magician, distracting you from the significant issues he did not bring in – or provide solutions for.
Two decades back, it seemed almost certain that The New York Trilogy would make its way into literary canon. However, tastes in literature have since evolved. (Lightning strikes again). For those who take an interest, Auster’s most prime work, representative of his style, is perhaps Leviathan. The book’s first line (“Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin”) brilliantly draws you into Auster’s world, one that revolves around happenstance and reminiscence. Once past this point, just as Auster’s assortment of narrators will undoubtedly tell you, you’re left to navigate just like anyone else.
Author of this piece is Kevin Power, a novelist and critic who also carries the responsibility of an assistant professor of creative writing at Dublin’s Trinity College.