Death of Paul Auster: his wife, author Siri Hustvedt, claims to have been “robbed of the dignity” of announcing the death of the writer herself

Siri Hustvedt, American novelist and essayist who lost her husband, Paul Auster, on Tuesday April 30, felt on Thursday that she had been “robbed” of her “dignity” when a friend of the couple announced to the New York Times the death of the New York writer.

“I was naive, but I imagined that I would be the person who would announce the death of my husband, Paul Auster”, stormed on her Instagram account Siri Hustvedt who revealed in March 2023 her husband’s lung cancer .

Paul Auster, prolific novelist, poet and film screenwriter, propelled onto the international literary scene by his New York Trilogy, “passed away this evening, at his home, surrounded by his loved ones”, including Siri Hustvedt and their daughter Sophie Auster , of complications from lung cancer at the age of 77, revealed the New York Times on Tuesday just before midnight, citing a family friend, American author and journalist Jacki Lyden.

“We were robbed of that dignity. I don’t know the whole story but I know this: it’s bad,” denounced Ms. Hustvedt, 69, author of numerous novels and essays such as Blindfolded and A Summer Without Men.

“Even before his body was taken away.”

Paul Auster “died at home [in Brooklyn] in a room he loved, the library (…) with us, surrounded by his family, on April 30, 2024 at 6:58 p.m.”, specifies the poet and philosopher on Instagram . “I discovered shortly after, that even before his body was taken away, news of his death was circulating in the media and obituaries were being published. Neither I, nor our daughter Sophie, nor our son-in-law Spencer, nor my sisters whom Paul loved like his own sisters and who were there when he died, had time to realize the pain of this loss,” protests Siri Hustvedt .

“None of us were able to call or email our loved ones before the online outcry started,” she laments.

Siri Hustvedt revealed in March 2023 the lung cancer from which Paul Auster was suffering. At the end of August, in a poignant message on Instagram, accompanied by photos of the young couple, she deplored that her husband had not “left Cancerland” and, that “now old”, his “childhood, his youth, ‘adulthood’ are ‘behind him’.

“Paul never left Cancerland. In the words of [philosopher Sören] Kierkegaard, it was from illness to death,” concludes Siri Hustvedt, citing the title of a treatise by the 19th-century Danish theologian.