Siri Hustvedt Releases Ghost Stories Memoir
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- Siri Hustvedt published Ghost Stories, a memoir that chronicles her 40‑year marriage to Paul Auster and his death in 2024.
- Ghost Stories is written in fragmented short paragraphs and single‑sentence bursts, mirroring the concussive nature of grief.
- Paul Auster died of cancer in 2024 after a long illness, and Hustvedt describes his wish to die telling a joke and his immunotherapy drug derived from Chinese hamster ovarian cells.
- Hustvedt interweaves philosophical references, citing Kierkegaard, C.S. Lewis, and Maurice Merleau‑Ponty, and reflects on the “AND” of their overlapping identities.
- The memoir also recounts other family tragedies, including the overdose deaths of Auster’s granddaughter Ruby and his son Daniel, and a personal accident that left Hustvedt with a smashed wrist.
- Hustvedt notes Auster’s refusal to name Donald Trump, calling him “45,” and adds a political critique about the shutdown of USAID and rising fascism.
- Ghost Stories includes personal artifacts—emails from “Cancerland,” “Heroic Couplets” poems, and letters to their grandson—preserving intimate memories of Auster’s life and their shared world.
Why it matters: Hustvedt’s Ghost Stories offers readers an unflinching, fragmented portrait of grief that reasserts her literary identity beyond being Paul Auster’s spouse, while exposing the personal toll of his fame and family tragedies; this deepens the literary community’s insight into how intimate loss reshapes creative expression.
