Paul Auster: The Invention of Solitude: A Memoir (Amazon Online Reader)

on Page 59: "... But I am no longer able to speak of it." To begin with death. To work my way back into life, and then, finally, to return to death. Or else: the vanity of trying ..."

To begin with death. To work my way back into life, and then, finally, to return to death. Or else: the vanity of trying to say anything about anyone.

those three sentences are the epigraph in galley of book Brother, I Am Dying. by Edwidge Danticat.
whose name for me is together with these words: Krik Krak, bones. yes, she wrote Krik! Krak? and Farming of the Bones. was that her first? mid-1990s, Politics & Prose. then Breath, Eyes, Memory. but I did not read these and am still not drawn bcs 'diaspora' ~ too much a narrative of real peoples ~ real things of the world.
not of beginning with death. to work way into life. and then.
I saw this epigraph and felt hopeful: maybe it's okay to want to do that - to begin with stillness, not moving, not sustaining life. and to wait.

ah, p.59 he's quoting Maurice Blanchot yes I see. it didn't sound much like what I think of Auster.
For the past two weeks, these lines from Maurice Blanchot echoing in my head:
"One thing must be understood: I have said nothing extraordinary or even surprising. What is extraordinary begins at the moment I stop. But I am no longer able to speak of it. "
To begin with death. To work my way back into life. and then, finally, to return to death.
Or else: the vanity of trying to say anything about anyone.
so that is Auster, outside the quotation marks?

I read a little of Invention of Solitude. could take on that voice, easily seems. in past when I read Hand to Mouth incl Red Notebook about chance, coincidence, I felt Auster too obvious or sth like that. Inv of Solitude has its own second part called The Book of Memory, a lot of sentences beginning with "I remember..."
I could see that. I remember this, I remember that. 'She meant hardly anything to me. but I can still remember her shoulder, the way she cried about her father, the way she laughed saying Blueberry Blueberry Blueberry.' that's hardly at all the lines but it's a gist of Hass, it's what comes to mind. Meditation at Lagunitas. Hass comes to mind often, Meditation or the other one the one with the angels weeping keening braiding. most often Meditation at Lagunitas. longing full of distances. all the new thinking is about loss in this it resembles all the old thinking. the old masters how well they understood (Auden now) how tragedy _ when someone standing idle, opening a window, a horse scratching. blackberry blackberry blackberry what could you want me to even tell you? we had nothing. I only need one friend. only one.
'it was not about her not really.' 'but I still remember -'
fifty years a letter unread. moonshine. fifty years. she has been with me fifty years. (Briggflatts.) my heart is broken. a giraffe, weeping like flowers in the moon. and you rock him, and you rock him. (Menagerie.) tonite I could write the saddest lines: I hardly loved her, I loved her. (Neruda not remembered).

Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example: ...  I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.  ... My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

   and I remembered how, holding
  her small shoulders in my hands sometimes

  It hardly had to do with her.
  ...
  But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
  the thing her father said that hurt her, what
  she dreamed.