The American writer Paul Auster, to whom we owe the books Brooklyn Follies, Moon Palace or city of glass, is going through a particularly trying period. At 75, he is struck by a terrible double mourning. After the recent death of his granddaughter, he has just lost his son Daniel (the child’s father). The latter had been charged in mid-April with manslaughter after the overdose death of his ten-month-old daughter.
It was the New York police who revealed the death of Daniel Auster, which occurred on Tuesday, April 26. The 44-year-old man was found”unconscious” on a subway platform in Brooklyn on the morning of April 20 and transported to the hospital where he died on April 26, told AFP a spokesman for the police. According to police sources quoted by the tabloid New York PostDaniel Auster succumbed to a “accidental overdose“.
As a reminder, the discreet forties had been arrested, charged and released on bail ten days ago for manslaughter and criminal negligence against his daughter Ruby. While in custody on November 1 at his home in Brooklyn, the baby was found unconscious. hospitalized, Daniel Auster’s daughter had died of acute poisoning due to the combined effects of fentanyl and heroinaccording to the police.
Daniel Auster’s drug problems did not seem recent since, as AFP points out, in Paul Auster’s novel titled The Night of the Oracle, the narrator is a writer whose son is a drug addict. Was he inspired by his own son for his story? The novelist who has won awards around the world (Princess of Asturias Prize in Spain, Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France and the Odyssey Prize in Quebec), is one of the most renowned New York writers, translated in the whole world. He is married to American novelist and essayist Siri Hustvedt, but Daniel Auster’s mother is American writer Lydia Davis.