The talented American writer Paul Auster passed away this week, aged 77 years. Joyce Carol Oates, another contemporary American writer, described Auster as ‘a thoroughly warm, witty, sympathetic, laughter-loving individual, with insatiable intellectual curiosity and a gift for friendship; at the same time, he was a monumental literary presence, somewhat intimidating for the zeal with which he immersed himself in his writing, near-overwhelming in the abundance of his creative energies’.  According to the Irish writer, Colum McCann, Auster was ‘quite extraordinary’. He had the ability to ‘think concretely, and sympathetically, about the world within, in order to also acknowledge the wider world around us.’

I have taught Paul Auster’s 1982 memoir, The Invention of Solitude, to many Year 12 English students over the years. This powerful text, written after the sudden death of Auster’s father, had a profound effect on students and teachers alike. In this rich and heartfelt account of memory and loss, Auster privileges the redeeming power of love, and the necessary struggle with the ‘magic’ of language. The writing of his life enabled Auster to reconnect with his father whom he described as ‘impenetrable’. Auster writes, ‘I had lost my father. But at the same time, I had also found him.’  The text closes with the following words: ‘It was. It will never be again. Remember’.

Auster felt that we must understand the lives beyond our own. And this happens, he suggested, within the labyrinthian nature of storytelling. The beauty of quality literature is that it is enduring. It remains well after death. Auster’s gift to us is that we will have his words still speaking to us down through the years. 

Clare Murphy

English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach