The New York writeror Peter Kaldheim passed away this past Friday in Barcelona suddenly while performing a monologue in the living room Cronopios from the city of Barcelona, sources from the Medical Emergency System (SEM) have informed EFE.
Three EMS units responded to the scene and attempted to revive to the writer, who died in the same room in Barcelona, the same sources have indicated. The sudden death of Kaldheim, who began his literary career in the seventies in his native country, came to light this Saturday.
Graduated in English Literature from the prestigious Dartmouth University (United States), the writer saw his career as a writer and editor cut short due to his addiction to drugs and alcoholwhich even took him to the Rikers Island prison in New York.
He traveled throughout the US
After leaving prison in the 80s, he traveled throughout the United States, without family or money, living on the streets and traveling on freight trains like in the years of the Great Depression, with all the dangers that entails.
His only book, “The idiotic wind”, published by Planeta in Spain, brought him to Barcelona in 2020, a city with which he established a intense relationship which even led him to become interested in Catalan literature, in addition to Spanish.
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Yesterday was going to be his first public performance and in Spanish, something that made him especially excited, according to ‘La Vanguardia’, which has stated that he was a great admirer of the writers Jack Kerouac and Roberto Bolañoand describes him as an inveterate reader and wonderful prescriber, and who leaves what was going to be his second novel unfinished.
The mortal remains of what is considered ‘the last beatnik’, referring to the beat generation and its followers, will be repatriated to the United States.