Remembering Paul Auster through his time as an NPR contributor
By
Jacki Lyden |
NPR
Saturday, May 4, 2024
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Paul Auster was many things: novelist, screenwriter, poet, and NPR contributor. He died this week from cancer at the age of 77. Former NPR host Jacki Lyden has a remembrance.
Transcript
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The writer Paul Auster died this week in Brooklyn, a place he made come alive in book after book. His great voice and his charm led former NPR host Daniel Zwerdling to invite him to read stories of ordinary Americans on our air some two decades ago. We asked Jacki Lyden, who worked for NPR then, for this remembrance of Paul Auster.
JACKI LYDEN, BYLINE: The invitation to read stories on Weekend All Things Considered was called NPR's National Story Project. It seemed overwhelming to Paul Auster at first. Then his wife, the writer Siri Hustvedt, suggested he asked listeners for their stories. They had to be short, and they had to be true.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
PAUL AUSTER: Imagine that you're just simply writing me a letter. Even if you're a little shaky on your spelling or your grammar, it doesn't matter at all. I mean, that's - those are details that can be fixed. You see, it's the story that matters, not so much the words.
LYDEN: The National Story Project was a love letter to our listeners. I was hosting Weekend All Things Considered then, a year of over 4,000 submissions, culled by Paul to about 180 short stories. He called them stories of democracy. They were collected into a bestselling book. The title comes from a sentence in a piece sent in by Mr. Robert Winnie of Bonners Ferry, Idaho. See if you can guess what it is.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
AUSTER: (Reading) There was Mr. Bernhauser yelling at us to get the hell out of his tree. And my father asked him what the problem was. Mr. Bernhauser took a deep breath and launched into a diatribe about thieving kids, breakers of rules, takers of fruit, and monsters in general. I guess my father had had enough, for the next thing he did was shout at Mr. Bernhauser and tell him to drop dead. Mr. Bernhauser stopped screaming, looked at my father, turned bright red, then purple, grabbed his chest, turned gray, and slowly folded to the ground. I thought my father was God. That he could yell at a miserable old man and make him die on command was beyond my comprehension.
LYDEN: Yes. The title is "I Thought My Father Was God." Paul was so many things - a poet, a novelist, filmmaker, director, God's raconteur, and a beloved husband and first reader to his literary partner of 43 years, Siri Hustvedt. In 1981, she was a graduate student from Minnesota doing her Ph.D. at Columbia, and she'd gone to a poetry reading at the 92nd Street Y.
SIRI HUSTVEDT: And I saw this very beautiful man, and I said to my friend, you don't happen to know who that guy is, do you? And he said, oh, yes, that's Paul Auster, the poet. And I thought, oh, that's a really good-looking poet. And that was the night that our love affair and friendship and dialogue started, and it ended on April 30 when he died here in the house.
LYDEN: He died in the room he loved, the library, with its abundant window light, surrounded by family, including his daughter, singer Sophie Auster. His friend, Salman Rushdie visited him there last Sunday.
SALMAN RUSHDIE: I loved Paul Auster before I met him. From the moment I read "The New York Trilogy" and "The Invention Of Solitude," I knew that he was going to be one of the important writers for me. I'm going to miss him terribly.
LYDEN: The first book in The New York Trilogy, a meta noir detective collection, was rejected 17 times by publishers. It sold over a million copies. Back in the day, Paul was so broke, he invented a baseball card game to make money, but it never took off. His love for the Mets lasted until the day he died. Here's one announcer's tribute at a recent Mets-Royals game.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GARY COHEN: I want to take a moment to send out some best wishes to one of my favorite authors and a good friend, Paul Auster, who's been a little bit under the weather. Paul's the author of such great books as "Brooklyn Follies" and "Sunset Park," and my personal favorite, "4321."
LYDEN: That's the voice of Gary Cohen, Mets announcer. Paul thought he was the best in the business. The novelist Don DeLillo visited Paul just before he died. He told us that among his words to Paul at the end were these three - baseball, baseball, baseball. Salman Rushdie had been there the day before.
RUSHDIE: I kissed his hands. As I left, he said, I think of you as a brother. I said, I think of you the same way, and I never had a brother. And he said, neither did I.
LYDEN: Siri Hustvedt.
HUSTVEDT: He was translated into more than 40 languages. We lost count many years ago. So I actually don't know how many languages it is. But he wrote out of deep feeling and created books that were generated out of unconscious spaces inside himself. I think he reinvented fiction with "The New York Trilogy," and that was why it caused such a splash.
LYDEN: On the air or on the page, such an inviting resonant voice. Again, from the National Story Project.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
AUSTER: I think for me, it's a kind of experiment. I want to see if what I think about the world is actually true.
LYDEN: I'll hear his voice forever. Thanks, Paul.
For NPR News, I'm Jacki Lyden.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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