American writer Siri Hustvedt announced on Instagram this Saturday that her husband, novelist Paul Auster, 76, has been diagnosed with cancer. “My husband was diagnosed with cancer in December after being ill several months earlier,” she explained.
Auster is being treated for his illness at Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York, according to published information. “I’ve lived in a place I’ve called Cancerland,” the author continues, “many people have pushed its boundaries, either because they are or have been ill, or because they love someone, a parent, child, spouse, or a friend who is ill or has had cancer. Cancer is different for each person who has it. All human bodies are the same and no two are the same. Some people survive and others die. Everyone knows that, and yet living close to that truth changes everyday reality.”
Reflecting on how hard it would be to have such an experience alone (“being alone in cancer country”), Hustvedt also points to the harshness of the chemo and immunotherapy treatments Auster is receiving, which he describes as a bombardment and an “adventure ’, in which closeness and separation are contrasted. “You have to be close enough to feel the debilitating treatments almost like your own and far enough away to be of real help. Too much empathy can render a person useless! Of course, walking this tightrope isn’t always easy, but it’s a real labor of love,” he writes. In the accompanying photo, Hustvedt kisses her husband on the temple.
The family had recently experienced other tragedies. In April 2022, the couple’s son Daniel Auster died of an overdose at the age of 44. Remains of heroin and fentanyl, a powerful opioid wreaking havoc in the United States, were found in his body. He was on probation and charged with involuntary manslaughter over the death of his 10-month-old baby. The deceased also had previous convictions for robbery and drug possession and was linked to the murder of the trafficker in the latter years of the 20th century.
Paul Auster is one of the most successful American novelists of recent decades, author of works such as The Invention of Loneliness, The New York Trilogy, The Country of Last Things or The Brooklyn Follies, in which a lung cancer patient plays the leading role. In 2006 he received the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters, an award that his wife also received in 2019.
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