“I discovered that before his body was even taken from our home, news of his death was circulating in the media and obituaries had been published”
“I was naive, but I imagined that I would be the one announce the death of my husband, Paul Auster“. Thus begins the long rant that Siri Hustvedt, wife of the American writer who passed away on April 30 at the age of 77 after a long battle with lung cancer, entrusted herself to a post on Instagram in the last few hours. “He died at home, in a room he loved, the library, a room with books on every wall from floor to ceiling, but also with tall windows that let in light. He died with us, his family, around him, on April 30, 2024 at 6:58 pm. Shortly after – continues Hustvedt – I discovered that, even before his body was taken from our home, news of his death circulated in the media and obituaries were published. Neither I, nor our daughter Sophie, nor our son-in-law Spencer, nor my sisters, whom Paul loved like sisters and who witnessed his death, we have had time to process our great loss“.
The anger of Siri, the second of Auster’s three wives, is at the fact that the news of Auster’s disappearance was first spread by “New York Times“, citing writer friend Jacki Lyden as a source. “None of us – insists Hustvedt – were able to call or send an email to the people dear to us before the online outcry began. We have been robbed of this dignity. I don’t know the full story of what happened, but I know this: It’s wrong.”
Auster had been suffering from lung cancer for some time and, at the time, it was she, Siri, who gave the world the news of his illness: “Paul never left Cancerland, the Land of Cancer”, writes Hustvedt again. “After the failure of treatments, his oncologist proposed palliative chemotherapy, but he refused and asked for hospice care at home. The harms of cancer treatment are experienced by many patients, and some recover, but what the medical world politely calls ‘adverse effects’ easily become a cascading reality of crisis after crisis, caused not by the cancer, but by the treatment. Immunotherapies, which act at the molecular level, can be particularly dangerous. One ‘effect’ may be life-threatening and require drastic intervention, which in turn causes another life-threatening effect, requiring further intervention, and the attacked body becomes increasingly weaker.”
“Paul had had enough“, writes Hustvedt. “But he never showed, either in words or gestures, a sign of self-pity. His stoic courage and humor until the end of his life are an example for me. You have said that several times he would have liked to die telling a joke. I told him it was unlikely, and he smiled.” Auster was one of the most important American writers of his generation. Among his most famous works we remember the New York Trilogy, Leviathan And Mr. Vertigo.
