Siri Hustvedt, in tribute to her husband, Paul Auster: “Books do not replace the living person” | Culture | EUROtoday

Siri Hustvedt shared greater than 30 years of her life with Paul Auster. It was she who introduced, in March of final 12 months, that her husband had lung most cancers and who, over the course of a 12 months, turned a narrator of the struggle towards the illness that was not so slowly destroying him. And it was she who, this Monday, on the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, starred within the posthumous tribute that their publishing home in Spain, Seix Barral, organized for the prolific novelist and movie scriptwriter. “When we knew that he would die, we knew that I would become a representative of his work and that I would defend it,” mentioned Hustvedt originally of a speech during which she recalled her husband’s life, his final days and his final job, Baumgartner, written within the months when he was sick. “Paul, with that ending where it is not known if the hero has died or not, wrote my sorrow in advance.”

The act in reminiscence of the writer of The New York Trilogy It was held in a spot that the author already knew: the columned room of the Círculo de Bellas Artes. There she met on June 16, 2003 – the anniversary, by the best way, of her marriage ceremony to Hustvedt – with a gaggle of readers to speak and inaugurate a collection of conferences. In Spain, along with being probably the most beloved authors—proof of that is the lengthy line that surrounded the constructing a few hours earlier than the occasion—he additionally had good associates. Some of them had been on the tribute.

Like the author Enrique Vila-Matas and the filmmakers David Trueba and Pedro Almodóvar, the latter current by a letter that was learn to the general public, during which he recounted a few of their mutual experiences. “From London I send you all my love,” he had written. Also in Spain he was awarded the then Prince of Asturias Award for Letters in 2006 and the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) named him a health care provider. for the sake of honor in June 2022. Also taking part within the occasion had been the rector of the UAM, Amaya Mendikoetxea; the editorial director of Seix Barral, Elena Ramírez; the journalist Inés Martín and the president of the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Juan Miguel Hernández León, sharing their private reminiscences with the novelist.

The final visitor to take part within the tribute was his daughter, Sophie Auster, singer and songwriter, who paid tribute to her father with a tune she had written for him: “I think of you and mom, dancing to a Tom Waits song. Although tears are always close, you and I are clear,” he sang within the firm of the tender sound of the piano, whereas photographs of the author and his household had been projected.

Another tribute from Siri Hustvedt to Auster will include a guide that he’s already writing and that, as he confesses, he began as quickly as the author was buried. “He started writing a book in his last days. He never finished it, but I include it in the one I am preparing,” he mentioned. It can be an essay about demise, mourning and permanence. It’s already over 100 pages and can name you Ghost tales. “Books are also a tool of ghosts. The dead speak to the living. Although books do not replace the living person.” That can be her manner of constant to speak to her husband, with whom, she acknowledges, she had such an excellent time: “They always asked me what it was like to be Paul Auster’s wife. Until today I have not answered the question. But in the last minutes of his life I understood it. He couldn’t speak, but he listened to me and I said ‘Oh, God, we had fun, didn’t we?’ What was it like being Paul Auster’s wife? “It was a lot of fun.”