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Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York. This is where New York’s well-to-do middle class live, where Paul Auster lives with his wife Siri Hustvedt, likewise a prize-winning author and internationally successful. The brownstone house where they live on four floors is attractive but not pretentious. A plain golden bell button on the door, no name. Even authors may sometimes find fans suddenly on their front doorstep, wanting to chat about their latest book. That they’ve had their share of “visitors” is confirmed by our host when he opens the door. Dressed all in black, he’s in a cheerful mood. Auster has just recently finished his novel 4321, over 1,000 pages long, on which he worked for three years. It tells the story of Archibald Ferguson, the son of Jewish immigrants, who grows up in the metropolitan area of New York. But Auster doesn’t tell the story in a purely linear way, rather he tells it four times, each time following a different fictional path. Auster groans as he sits down on a narrow leather armchair, his face contorted with pain. He’s got backache. Is the general political situation to blame? As a student at Columbia University, he protested against the Vietnam War and since then, has always taken a clear political position, usually on the left. And now Donald Trump is President, an election result that has still not been fully digested in the Auster/Hustvedt household.
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