Paul Auster, Author of 'The New York Trilogy,' Dead at 77

Novelist and screenwriter Paul Auster died of complications from lung cancer at his home in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening, The New York Times reported, citing friend and author Jacki Lyden. He was 77.

Auster was surrounded by family, including his wife, Siri Hustvedt, and daughter Sophie Auster, Lyden said.

The New Jersey-born writer was known for a string of acclaimed works including "The New York Trilogy" and "The Book of Illusions."

His noirish, existentialist novels about lonely writers, outsiders, and down-and-outers were huge hits, especially in Europe.

The author with the soulful, sunken eyes gained cult status in the 1980s and 1990s with his trilogy of metaphysical mysteries and his hip film "Smoke," about the lost souls who frequent a Brooklyn tobacco shop.

Hustved, also an author, announced his cancer diagnosis in March 2023.

In a long moving post on Instagram in August 2023, she wrote about their life in "Cancerland" next to photos of them as a younger couple.

"The patient, and I with him, have traveled straight ahead on the road, been delayed, and turned in circles," she wrote. "We haven’t reached the sign that marks the country’s boundary: You are now leaving Cancerland.

"We are very sad to hear of the death of Booker Prize shortlistee Paul Auster, whose work touched readers and influenced writers all over the world, and whose generosity was felt in just as many quarters," the Booker Prizes posted on social media platform X.

The literary body shortlisted his book "4 3 2 1" for its award in 2017.

The author of more than 30 books, including poetry and memoirs, told Reuters in 2011 he liked to write by hand in notebooks and then produce the finished copy on a typewriter rather than a computer.

"I feel more alive when I'm working," he said.

"I am convinced that writing is a kind of illness. Who would want to spend his life sitting in a room, putting words on paper? It's a strange occupation. You got to have a great taste for solitude."

His life was marred by tragedy in later years, with his 10-month-old granddaughter dying after ingesting heroin and his son Daniel, the child's father, dying of an overdose 10 months later. Daniel's mother was Auster's first wife, the writer Lydia Davis.

Lyden called Auster a "writer's writer" who covered "every facet of loss, loneliness, and the joys and sorrows of a life in words".

"He never lost touch with human suffering, and connectedness, and it made him the beloved writer he has become," she said.

Auster was born in 1947 and grew up in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Jewish Polish immigrants.

He moved to New York to attend Columbia University where he studied French, Italian, and British literature.

After graduating, he spent four years in France, where he made a living off translating French poetry while honing his craft as a writer.

His fluent French later made him a popular guest on French television culture shows.

After returning to the U.S. in 1975 he held a number of jobs before his father's death in 1979 left him with an inheritance allowing him to concentrate full time on writing.

He first gained notice in 1982 with "The Invention of Solitude" — an autobiographical novel that dealt with the memory of his father — but his big breakthrough came with "The New York Trilogy," a philosophical twist on the detective genre featuring a shady quartet of private investigators named Blue, Brown, Black, and White.

The three books in the series were "City of Glass" in 1985, followed by "Ghosts" and "The Locked Room" in 1986.

Many of his novels deal with the role of chance and coincidence in shaping his characters' destiny.

His gift for sharp dialogue — Auster mercilessly edited himself for sentence rhythm — was key to the success of "Smoke," which he wrote and co-directed, about a Brooklyn tobacconist played by Harvey Keitel.

He also he wrote and co-directed "Blue in the Face" — another Brooklyn-based story — with the same director, Wayne Wang.

In 2017 he broke with his concise style to deliver a 866-page tome, "4 3 2 1", charting American society through the life of an everyman, Archie Ferguson.

Auster presented it as his masterwork.

But while America's National Public Radio found it "dazzling," others were less positive, with The Irish Times deeming it "the last fat novel of a collapsed American pride".