from Hacker News

Paul Auster has died

by koevet on 5/1/24, 5:31 AM with 48 comments

  • by neonate on 5/1/24, 5:52 PM

  • by moritzwarhier on 5/1/24, 6:11 PM

    His books were half of what I read between age 12-25 (edit: more like 12-20, and I meant only novels, but it doesn't matter here)

    Sad to see him go.

    Picking up his books again as an adult only took away the magic in some of his weaker works.

    Mostly, the magic remained.

    The guys learning to play Bach and building a wall, the delirant anon in NYC chasing paper trails, the adolescent boy learning to levitate... the evil man offering glasses in a post-apocalyptic city:

    so many memories remain, I don't know much about Paul Auster but I can say he was an influence on my life. Because of randomness (a relative picking Mr Vertigo as a present for me, probably because of book-store recommendations)

    Paul Auster's characters always appear as somewhat mythical, living through a personal transformation.

    Many of his characters have an aura of NYC artist/cultural authority stick around then, but it does not bother me at all.

    Like many of my favorite authors, he injects much of his own personality into the main characters, even with multiple books using a novelist/writer as the main character.

  • by sharadov on 5/1/24, 7:22 PM

    His entire genre of writing revolved around chance and coincidence and how big of a hand it played in one's life.

    I was captivated after reading Leviathan and could not stop till I read his entire pantheon.

    RIP Paul Auster.

  • by ktzar on 5/1/24, 9:07 PM

    I can thank him for having taught me his language, the intricacies of baseball, for having shown me corners in the state of New York unheard of outside the States. For having explained what love and passion are and aren't, for having instilled dreams and hopes. And most importantly, that life can be lived to its fullest at any age.

    A life worth living. Rest in peace, he will continue living while he's read.

  • by eszed on 5/1/24, 10:13 AM

    The movie Smoke, which he wrote, is one of my favorites. I've enjoyed several of his novels, but none of those are among my personal canon, for what that's worth.

  • by dang on 5/1/24, 5:53 PM

    Related (but we merged the thread hither):

    Paul Auster: How I Became a Writer (2014) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40221327

  • by browningstreet on 5/1/24, 3:11 PM

    In college, I read all of the New York Trilogy at a coffee shop in one sitting, and it left me bent for the rest of the day. Good times. RIP.

  • by mdh on 5/1/24, 7:31 AM

    Sad news. '4 3 2 1' is one of my favourite novels with its variations on a theme of a single person's life. The same character's showing up in each thread but in totally different contexts worked particularly well.

  • by finikytou on 5/1/24, 10:50 AM

    He was for a moment quite popular and his books were definitely above the average overhyped populer american writer.

    Mr Vertigo was a nice little book that punched above its weight and would def recommend reading it

  • by GBAdvanced on 5/2/24, 2:31 AM

    The Music of Chance is one of my favorite books and is such an underappreciated book. Pick it up if you get a chance.

    Anyway it's sad to see him go. Rest in peace.

  • by earlyriser on 5/1/24, 6:01 PM

    I'm guessing Paul Auster fans will comment here. 20 years ago I read a book that I cannot remember the name and I vaguely remember it was from Auster, but I'm not sure and I have been looking for ages. It was a compilation of short stories with the Noah's Ark somehow in each of them, but the stories were very different besides that part. Does this ring a bell?

  • by ojosilva on 5/2/24, 8:26 AM

    My sister was an Auster buff, she read nearly all of his books when she was around 19, I unfortunately didn't read a single one. But I did read True Tales of American Life, a compilation organized by Auster from NPR-compiled stories (the "National Story Project") of true Americana. That book is a gem I can recommend!

  • by deviantbit on 5/1/24, 8:19 PM

    RIP.

    I enjoyed City of Glass, but Ghost and The Locked Room I found dull. Leviathan was good, it made me curious if he was the Unabomber.

  • by autoexec on 5/1/24, 7:11 PM

  • by alephnerd on 5/1/24, 5:46 PM

    Loved his NY Trilogy. Sad to hear of his passing.

  • by paulpauper on 5/1/24, 8:44 PM

    was a smoker. damn. gotta give up the habit while you can