Siri Hustvedt announced today on social networks the disease of the great American writer. «Living with someone who has cancer and is bombarded with chemotherapy is an adventure of closeness and separation»
‘I think it would be awful to be alone in Cancerland.’ He did very well Siri Hustvedt to officially break the news of her husband’s illness Paul Auster. Because the literary world of Manhattan is very small, the rumor was beginning to spread, and at least that’s how the matter was closed from the start: Auster has been ill since December, is being treated in one of the best oncology centers in the world, is receiving chemo and immunotherapy. Point.
Bizarre the medium, Instagrambecause Auster doesn’t have a cell phone, doesn’t use a computer, and if you need him you have to call him on the landline, in the beautiful house in Brooklyn, or write him a note if it’s not urgent. Hustvedt chose the social network to post a few words that moved all of Auster’s readers — he is one of those apparently “cold” writers who are instead capable of striking at the heart.
Here is Hustvedt’s post: «I’ve been away from Instagram for a while. The reason: a my husband was diagnosed with cancer in december — hadn’t been well for several months. Now she’s being treated at Sloan Kettering in New York, and I’ve moved to a place I’ve called Cancerland, the land of cancer. Many people have crossed its borders, either because they are, or have been, ill, or because they love someone — a parent, child, spouse, or friend — who has or has had cancer. Cancer is different for every patient. All human bodies are the same and no two are alike. Some survive and some die. Everyone knows it, yet living close to this truth changes the reality of everyday life. Intimacy with another person is not just a parallel experience, two lines moving in the same direction but not crossing. It’s much more like a dynamic Venn diagram, if such a thing is possible, the overlapping parts of two circles keep moving by changing over time. A moving I, and a you, which is also a us. I think it would be awful to be alone in Cancerland. Living with someone who has cancer and is bombarded with chemotherapy and immunotherapy is an adventure of closeness and separation. You have to be close enough to feel the treatments, unnerving, as if they were your own. And far enough away that they can be an effective aid. Too much empathy can make a person useless. Balancing this tightrope isn’t always easy, of course, but it’s the true labor of love.”
Auster has just turned, February 3, 76 years old, he comes from a terrible 2022 with the death of newborn granddaughter Ruby before and, shortly after, of her son Daniel, she for drug intoxication and he for an overdose, a frightening story. In 2021 you published in the United States and in 2022 in Italy at Einaudi the biography Boy on fire. The life and work of Stephen Crane, essay on the great poet who died at the age of 28 which is one of his most beautiful books. Nine years ago Auster published Winter Diary, astonishing corporal memorial. He ends like this: «How many stumbles, slips, falls? How many blinks? How many steps taken? How many hours do you spend with a pen in your hand? How many kisses given and received? Carrying your babies. Hugging your wife. Your bare feet on the cold floor as you roll off the bed and go to the window. You are sixty-four years old. Outside the air is gray, almost white, the sun is not seen. You ask yourself: how many mornings are left? A door has closed. Another has opened».
March 11, 2023 (change March 11, 2023 | 19:37)
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