American writer and poet Paul Auster died at the age of seventy-seven, local time on Tuesday evening. A friend of the family, Jacki Lyden, said in a statement to the press that Auster died at his home in Brooklyn, surrounded by his loved ones.
Auster, considered one of the greatest contemporary American writers, struggled with lung cancer and died of complications caused by the disease. The New York trilogy is one of the most famous works of the writer of Jewish origin, who is considered one of New York’s literary stars. During his life, he wrote more than 30 books, and his works were translated into more than 40 languages, including most of them into Hungarian. Auster lived in Paris between 1971 and 1975, during which time he also translated poems by French poets into English. He became famous in 1982 with his autobiographical novel The Invention of Loneliness.
He also worked as a screenwriter, among others, he wrote the script for the film Smoke directed by Wayne Wang.
“I have never written ten pages a day in my life. It’s good if I can finish only one page a day. If I have an exceptionally good day, then two. If a miracle happens, it’s three pages. Maybe if it happened three times in my life that four pages a day came together. Two came together today, but I haven’t had time to review them yet. I write everything by hand. First in a notebook, then when I’m done with a paragraph, I type it on my typewriter” – Auster told Magyar Narancs in an interview ten years ago.
He finished his last book, Baumgartner, in the midst of his battle with cancer.
24.hu
Photo: SARAH YENESEL / MTI / EPA
