The author writes on her social networks that living in ‘Cancerland’ is a “bombing” and also “a labor of love”
siri hustvedt has announced on Instagram that her husband, the novelist Paul Auster, 76 years old, has cancer. The author has written several paragraphs explaining the news and making a declaration of love. “Live in cancer land (the land of cancer) is a bombardment & rdquor ;. It means “being on a tightrope that is not easy to walk & rdquor ;. But it is -concludes the author of ‘Leer para ti’- a true labor of love. Hustvedt accompanies her emotional text with a sweet photo of the couple, taken at Christmas 2020.
The revered author of ‘Brooklyn Follies’ -a novel starring precisely a lung cancer patient who returns to Brooklyn- was diagnosed of cancer last month December after being unwell for several months before. The novelist is being treated by doctors at Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York. Hustvedt does not specify the ailment of her husband, who quit smoking in 2014.
“Cancer is different for every patient. All human bodies are the same, but no two are the same. Some survive and some die. Living this truth up close changes everyday reality & rdquor ;, explains the philologist, who, like her husband, was awarded the Princess of Asturias award.
After referring to the words you, me and us, the writer assures that “it would be horrible to be alone in Cancerland& rdquor ;. Chemotherapy and immunotherapy is, in addition to a bombardment, a closeness and separation adventure. “You have to be close enough to feel the treatment as your own and far enough away to be genuine help. Too much empathy can make a person useless & rdquor ;, she concludes.
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Poet, filmmaker, essayist and playwright, Auster (Newark, USA, 1947) has two dates marked on fire. In the first one I was 14 years old, I was at a summer camp with other kids and there was a huge storm. Lightning killed a boy. It could have been him, but no. It was another. Chance? Destiny? The author flees from those labels and prefers to call it “the unexpected”. This is how he explained it in Madrid in 2017, during the promotion of ‘4321’ (Seix Barral in Spanish; Edicions 62 in Catalan), an ode to youth, a treatise on fatherhood and a review of the second half of the 20th century in the US; a demanding and monumental novel of almost a thousand pages that the author of the ‘New York Trilogy’ took seven years to write. When he typed the last paragraph on his machine (he doesn’t use a computer) he almost collapsed from exhaustion, he revealed to journalists.
Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters of France and staunch enemy of the former president of his country Donald Trump, Auster has always assured that he is not a philosopher but “just a guy who tells stories & rdquor;. Considering the legion of followers he has around the world, it’s hard to believe that, in his early years, he received 17 negative responses to publish his first novel. What he least misses when he sees his hands (big and strong, traits that he attributes to the strong typing of his typewriter) is that he spent almost half a year on board an oil tanker collecting fuel. He was 23 years old and not a dollar in his pocket. At 76, he is a fundamental intellectual to understand the United States.