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One big question for all 32 NFL teams ahead of training camp: Caleb Williams' debut and more

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One big question for all 32 NFL teams ahead of training camp: Caleb Williams' debut and more

Football is finally here with training camps commencing across the league this week.

It means the most pertinent questions begin to get answered. How will the rookie quarterbacks like Jayden Daniels or new faces in new places like Kirk Cousins look? How will Anthony Richardson or Joe Burrow fare coming off injuries? Are there any contract impasses to follow? What about the fresh wrinkles from new head coaches like Jim Harbaugh in Los Angeles or coordinators like Kellen Moore in Philadelphia?

The Athletic’s NFL staff compiled one major question for each NFL team as camp begins. These are the talking points to follow with the Hall of Fame Game just 10 days away.


Can Kyler Murray elevate the organization?

Apologies upfront. This question has been presented in this space before but has yet to be fully answered. There are several reasons — an ACL injury, a coaching change, subpar receivers — but Murray himself is the biggest. He has had strong moments, but not nearly enough. Entering Year 6, this is his time. Concerns about Murray’s leadership and preparation have faded. Coaches and teammates rave about the quarterback’s commitment and drive. He is healthy. His supporting cast is better. And he understands what it means to be the face of the franchise. The next step is the biggest. — Doug Haller

Was quarterback really the only missing piece?

The Falcons have lived the last three years under the assumption that if they had consistently good quarterback play, their offense would come alive thanks to its young skill position talent and highly paid offensive line. Matt Ryan’s final year in Atlanta, followed by basically a season each from Marcus Mariota and Desmond Ridder, didn’t provide that. Kirk Cousins, who signed as a free agent in the offseason, should. That’s why Atlanta gave him a guaranteed $100 million. Now the Falcons find out if Kyle Pitts, Drake London and Bijan Robinson are as good as they’ve been saying all this time. — Josh Kendall

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Will the Ravens be able to piece together a strong offensive line?

With two-time league MVP Lamar Jackson leading an offense that now has Derrick Henry, an emerging No. 1 receiver in Zay Flowers and two dangerous pass-catching tight ends in Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely, the Ravens have the makings of an offense that could be highly productive and tough to defend. For things to come together, Baltimore must be excellent up front. Yet, the offensive line starts training camp as a work in progress. The Ravens have three starting spots up for grabs and at least two of them, if not all three, could be filled by a first-time starter. — Jeff Zrebiec

Will kicker Tyler Bass avoid the yips?

Perhaps it’s a show of confidence, but the Bills decided not to bring in another kicker this offseason. Once considered automatic, Bass increasingly struggled as last season wore on. He was perfect through the first five weeks and then missed three of his next four field goal attempts, all wide right from 52, 53 and 42 yards. A week after missing an extra point, he made only two of his four FG tries (one blocked, the other wide right again) in a Week 12 overtime loss to the Eagles. Bass was abysmal in the playoffs, making only two of his five field goals. He was wide left from just 27 yards against the Steelers. With the Bills desperate to tie the Chiefs with 1:43 to play, he sent his 44-yard attempt wide right yet again, ending their season. — Tim Graham

Can Bryce Young be the guy?

The Panthers spent a ton of draft capital and traded DJ Moore to Chicago to take Young first overall. Young’s rookie season was a disaster, as the Panthers finished last in total offense and tied with the Patriots as the worst-scoring offense at 13.9 ppg. Young had the league’s worst passer rating but also had poor pass protection and receivers who couldn’t separate from coverage. The Panthers fortified the O-line by signing free agent guards Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis to big contracts. They also gave Young a few playmakers by trading for Diontae Johnson and drafting Xavier Legette and Jonathon Brooks. Now it’s up to Young to prove he can be a franchise QB like friend and former AAU basketball rival C.J. Stroud. — Joseph Person

How well will Caleb Williams play as a rookie?

The Bears have built a favorable situation for Williams to join. He’s surrounded by talent: Moore, Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze, tight ends Cole Kmet and Gerald Everett, running back D’Andre Swift and right tackle Darnell Wright. He has an experienced play caller in Shane Waldron. The Bears should also have one of the better defenses under coach Matt Eberflus. The expectations should be high for Williams and the Bears this season. — Adam Jahns

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Will Joe Burrow look like himself?

Ask this question daily for the rest of his career and it wouldn’t be too much. Health feels like the only obstacle in front of Burrow, narrowly missing MVPs and championships in his first four seasons. If he can show the same pinpoint accuracy and necessary velocity in recovering from his rare wrist injury in camp, everyone in Cincinnati will exhale and prepare for a title run. All went well in the offseason program, but now will be the time to judge — not to mention avoiding another random ailment (ACL, appendectomy, calf) clouding his August and September for yet another year. — Paul Dehner Jr.

What are the Browns going to get from Deshaun Watson?

Pardon the exhaustion and repetitiveness; this has been the big question for three summers now. The Browns are coming off a playoff season but Watson is coming off November shoulder surgery. The folks in charge have spent big and feel a sense of urgency to win now, and in a loaded AFC (and AFC North), the Browns will only reach their ceiling if Watson is consistently available and playing at a high level. Amari Cooper’s contract status and Nick Chubb’s rehab are major questions, too, but the Browns know they have a good team. They also know that Watson mixing efficiency with the occasional bit of explosiveness is the best way to return to the playoffs and establish themselves as a true AFC contender. — Zac Jackson

How will Mike Zimmer use Micah Parsons?

Obviously, we can go the easy route with the handful of contract situations, headlined by a potential CeeDee Lamb holdout, but let’s get a little deeper and look at the pending new look on defense. The Cowboys brought back Mike Zimmer following Dan Quinn’s departure to Washington and a lot of attention justifiably goes to how Zimmer improves the run defense. However, how Zimmer goes about using his best defensive player between pass rusher and linebacker, or both, will go a long way in dictating how different the Cowboys’ defense may look than what it’s been in recent years. — Saad Yousuf

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Will Bo Nix look the part as a rookie quarterback?

You don’t draft a 24-year-old quarterback with 61 college starts to have him sit for a season, especially when there isn’t an established answer at the position ahead of him. Even if Nix doesn’t win the race with Jarrett Stidham and Zach Wilson to become the Week 1 starter, he’ll undoubtedly see the field at some point during his rookie season. When he does, Nix must show he can push the ball down the field in critical situations, limit drive-altering mistakes like he did at Oregon and generally provide confidence that he’s ready to pilot an efficient offense by 2025. If he can do those things, the Broncos can count the transition year ahead as a success. — Nick Kosmider

Is this the year Detroit’s secondary comes together?

The Lions’ defense has yet to match its explosive offense in the Dan Campbell-Aaron Glenn era. The secondary, in particular, has been brutal. With the team so close to a Super Bowl appearance last season, the front office addressed those defensive needs — bringing in Carlton Davis III, Terrion Arnold, Amik Robertson and Ennis Rakestraw Jr. to bolster the position. All four are DBs with a challenge mindset who fit the man-heavy style Glenn likes to play. It’s a strong position on paper. At the same time, it’s too early to anoint this group. We need to see it perform. — Colton Pouncy

Will a change in defensive coordinator produce better results?

After three years of underwhelming relative to its individual talent, Green Bay’s defense has a new maestro in former Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley. Players have heaped praise on the 45-year-old this offseason and he carries a reputation of playing aggressive, getting after the quarterback and being a back-end specialist. But will all the good offseason vibes surrounding head coach Matt LaFleur’s surprise hire translate to on-field production for a team with Super Bowl aspirations? — Matt Schneidman

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Can C.J. Stroud avoid the sophomore slump?

Last season, quarterback C.J. Stroud delivered one of the most impressive rookie campaigns in NFL history. His efforts helped the Texans win the AFC South and reach the playoffs. Now, he’ll be expected to further elevate his game and his team. Stroud and the Texans won’t be able to sneak up on anyone. Rival coordinators have spent the offseason scheming on ways to contain him. Stroud and offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik must find ways to remain a step ahead of the competition. Questions remain about the Texans’ offensive line quality, but the franchise has invested in wide receivers and defensive playmakers. Can Stroud do his part to keep the ascension going? — Mike Jones

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Can Anthony Richardson stay healthy?

Richardson is widely beloved in Indianapolis despite playing just four games, albeit an impressive four games, throughout his rookie season. An unlucky hit cut his first year short, but his inability to stay healthy dates back to high school. An AC joint injury prematurely ended Richardson’s senior season at Eastside High in Florida. He had repeated hamstring issues and underwent knee surgery at Florida. Then, he sustained another season-ending AC joint injury last year. The Colts still view Richardson as their franchise QB, although he must remain on the field to prove it. — James Boyd

Where do the Jaguars truly stand in the AFC pecking order?

They seemed so, so close to establishing themselves as a conference power early in 2023, but a rash of missteps coincided with the Texans’ rapid ascension. Are they still a team that makes too many unforced errors on offense, or was that just a sign of a group that wasn’t truly ready to make the leap? Or was it as simple as Trevor Lawrence’s inability to lift his supporting cast while trying to play through a handful of challenging injuries? If Lawrence stays healthy and the defensive changes yield improvements, the Jaguars should challenge the Texans for the division title. Otherwise, ceding AFC South control after a brief taste of success will be tough to swallow for a fan base that’s been starved for annual consistency. More than that, the wild-card chase in the AFC is expected to be brutal, so a drop into that pool makes it challenging to return to the playoffs. — Jeff Howe

Kansas City Chiefs

Who will protect Patrick Mahomes’ blind side?

The lone major position battle for the Chiefs is at left tackle, the premium position where the player is most responsible for protecting Mahomes’ blind side. The two players competing are rookie Kingsley Suamataia and second-year player Wanya Morris. During mandatory minicamp, the Chiefs gave more first-team repetitions to Suamataia to help prepare him for training camp. Morris was solid in four starts as a rookie but showed he needed to improve as a pass protector. Suamataia appears to be the more athletic option for the Chiefs if he can show progress throughout training camp. The winner of this battle might not be decided until after the Chiefs’ second preseason game, often when coach Andy Reid plays the projected starters for most of the first half. — Nate Taylor

Can Raiders cornerbacks hold up, and when is the new one showing up?

What, you thought we would say something about the quarterbacks? Excuse our skepticism, but does it really matter if Aidan O’Connell or Gardner Minshew is starting the opener? The margin is slim, and both likely start games this season. If the Raiders are going to advance to the playoffs for the third time in 22 years, it will be because of the defense. Maxx Crosby and Christian Wilkins lead a deep, robust defensive line, and the linebackers and safeties are fine. The question is at corner. Jack Jones made many plays in the last half of the season, but are we sure he is a No. 1 corner? Nate Hobbs is a tough player better suited for the slot, while Brandon Facyson has been an inconsistent role player his whole career. Jakorian Bennett hopes to build off a good offseason after a rough rookie year. Perhaps free agents Xavien Howard, Adoree’ Jackson, Stephon Gilmore, Patrick Peterson or J.C. Jackson might be interested in not paying any state taxes. — Vic Tafur

How will Justin Herbert fit into a Jim Harbaugh offense?

Since Harbaugh was hired as head coach in February, he and his offensive staff have been explicit about their offensive plan. They want to run the ball and build what offensive coordinator Greg Roman called a “strong, powerful identity.” The Chargers also have one of the most talented throwers in the league in Herbert. Will Harbaugh be able to maximize Herbert’s arm talent while still cultivating the offense — schematically and philosophically — that he believes in? How will the staff at large create the balance they hope to achieve? That will come into focus during camp when the pads come on and the run game can truly be tested. — Daniel Popper

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Can the revived Rams make a real run?

The Rams gutted most of their roster and generally were the butt of the joke of the NFL’s 2023 offseason and preseason. But behind special play from quarterback Matthew Stafford, the breakout of then-rookie receiver Puka Nacua and running back Kyren Williams, the team made the playoffs when most predictions had them winning four to six games total. Momentum can be a fickle friend, but this group certainly had it after their bye week last season and wants to build into an actual contender this fall. Health is always a worry — Stafford and star receiver Cooper Kupp are getting older and have respective lengthy injury histories, and Stafford’s contract situation needs a resolution. Questions also loom about a young, developing defense now minus Aaron Donald, under new coordinator Chris Shula. Still, if the Rams can stay healthy they’ll be a tough out all year. — Jourdan Rodrigue


Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel talks to cornerback Jalen Ramsey (5) during the team’s mandatory minicamp in June. (Sam Navarro / USA Today)

Can Miami finally snap its 24-year playoff drought?

Coach Mike McDaniel’s offenses have taken the league by storm two years running, only to see their hot starts fade into distant memories come January. The Dolphins have been unceremoniously ousted from the playoffs in the wild-card round in back-to-back seasons, including a 26-7 thrashing at the hands of the Kansas City Chiefs last year. The loss pushed their playoff winless streak to 24 years. Will this be the year the Dolphins finally get over the hump? McDaniel isn’t afraid to face his team’s failures — historically and in the present — but if Miami can’t advance to at least the second round of the playoffs for a third straight year, he might have some more difficult questions to answer in January. — Jim Ayello

Are the Vikings finished adding talent for 2024?

The Vikings revamped their defense in free agency. They added two potential franchise cornerstones in J.J. McCarthy and Dallas Turner through the draft. But holes still exist — specifically, on the defensive line, at cornerback, the interior offensive line and potentially at receiver. Minnesota has cap space. Over The Cap currently projects the Vikings around $26 million, though that figure does not include the hits of McCarthy or Turner, nor money budgeted for later in the year. Do the Vikings want to squeeze their available funds for 2024 or add more flexibility for 2025 and beyond? They might do both, but how that looks into training camp will be fascinating to watch. — Alec Lewis

Can Drake Maye beat out Jacoby Brissett?

Success for the Patriots in 2024 isn’t determined by wins and losses but by how Maye, the No. 3 overall pick, looks. For now, they’ve signaled that they are content with Brissett starting and Maye likely replacing him at some point in the season. But this will be Maye’s first extended chance to show coaches what he can do. If the competition between him and Brissett is a virtual tie, Brissett is probably the starter. But can Maye do enough to leave no doubt that he should be under center from the very beginning? — Chad Graff

Can Klint Kubiak bring more life to the offense?

Of all the rumored candidates, Kubiak seemed like the best hire the Saints could make as their offensive coordinator to replace Pete Carmichael. He’ll be the first leading offensive voice without a Sean Payton connection in New Orleans since the 2005 season. So while the voice may be fresh, how much spark can Kubiak provide for players like Derek Carr, Alvin Kamara, Chris Olave, Taysom Hill and company? Carr seemed to be playing his best football in a Saints uniform toward the end of last year. But he’s no longer the best quarterback lurking in the division with Kirk Cousins in Atlanta. Throw in a questionable offensive line and Kubiak’s task to turn a mediocre group into a top flight unit seems challenging. — Larry Holder

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Will the offensive line actually be improved?

The Giants have made an annual tradition of trying — and failing — to fix their offensive line every offseason for the past decade. The latest plan involved signing veterans Jon Runyan and Jermaine Eluemunor to mid-level contracts to solidify the guard spots. Meanwhile, the Giants are counting on 2022 first-round pick Evan Neal and 2023 second-round pick John Michael Schmitz to live up to their draft stock at right tackle and center, respectively. The offensive line assuredly can’t be worse than last season when it allowed the second-most sacks in NFL history. But will this group develop into an actual quality unit? The answer to that question will go a long way to determining the fate of the Giants this season. — Dan Duggan

When will Mike Williams return — and how will he look?

The free-agent wideout tore his ACL last September with the Chargers and will open his first Jets training camp on the PUP list. That has been the plan all along, but now it’s fair to wonder when Williams will actually return to the field, when he will be a full-go and how he will look when he’s back. Some players respond better to ACL surgery than others. Running back Breece Hall was stellar in 2023 post-surgery, as an example. Williams’ game is predicated on downfield speed and winning 50/50 balls. The Jets took a gamble signing Williams in hopes that he’d return to form as one of the NFL’s best deep threats and provide support for Garrett Wilson as the No. 2 receiver — as Wilson has gotten little to no support from his wide receiver teammates the last two years. Williams will be an essential part of the offense if healthy. If not, the depth at the position suddenly doesn’t look so good. — Zack Rosenblatt

Philadelphia Eagles

Will the Eagles restore their defense’s reputation?

General manager Howie Roseman and coach Nick Sirianni both said they wanted to regain their toughness and swagger on defense. They plummeted from the NFL’s third-ranked overall defense in 2022 to the league’s 26th in 2023. It was often a disastrous defense under former DC Sean Desai, and it veered deeper into dysfunction when Sirianni replaced Desai with Matt Patricia midseason. Sirianni secured the source of his favored scheme by hiring Vic Fangio, whose old-school approach reveals itself to be a better fit in Philly than in Miami. Roseman invested heavily in defensive players during the offseason. Will a revamped secondary that features C.J. Gardner-Johnson, first-round pick Quinyon Mitchell and second-round pick Cooper DeJean cut down on explosive plays? — Brooks Kubena

Pittsburgh Steelers

Will Russell Wilson find the fountain of youth?

Wilson turns 36 in November and you can pretty much count on one hand how many quarterbacks that age have won championships. Wilson said at the end of offseason workouts that he found the fountain of youth. He looks the part and works harder than anybody but can that be translated onto the field? How will his skills mesh with new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith’s scheme? Wilson doesn’t have to play like he did during his Super Bowl days in Seattle but he needs to be a significant upgrade for the Steelers to have any chance of competing for a playoff spot. All eyes will be on Wilson, and he still has the ability to make enough plays to allow the running game of Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren to succeed, as well as a defense full of Pro Bowlers to dominate games. — Mark Kaboly

Can the 49ers reverse trajectory on defense?

The 49ers dropped from the No. 1 to the No. 10 ranking in defensive EPA per play from 2022 to 2023. Their offense, meanwhile, remained elite. If the 49ers can re-establish themselves as a top-3 or at least top-5 team on both sides of the ball, they should be able to live up to their standing as preseason Super Bowl favorites. But if their defense continues struggling against the run (they were No. 26 in EPA per play there last season), there’ll again be a vulnerability for opponents to exploit. The 49ers fired defensive coordinator Steve Wilks, who was only with the team for one season, after the 2023 slide. They’ve also rehauled their defensive line and deepened their secondary. Will all these moves get the defense back on the right track? That might be the ultimate key for a team facing enormous pressure to win it all. — David Lombardi

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What will the offense look like?

While much of the Seahawks’ offensive personnel will be familiar, everything else is new. Coordinator Ryan Grubb has never worked in the NFL. The offense he ran at the University of Washington provides a general template. Coach Mike Macdonald has never been a head coach previously, so it’s less clear how he might influence offensive style. The most prominent offensive assistant, passing-game coordinator Jake Peetz, has worked under Sean McVay and Norv Turner, but it’s unclear what his influence might be. — Mike Sando

How will coordinator change affect Baker Mayfield and the Bucs’ offense?

Mayfield had a career year under Dave Canales, but there is room for growth with new coordinator Liam Coen, with whom Mayfield worked for a short time with the Rams two years ago. Mayfield will be given more authority at the line of scrimmage than he had, which could make him more dangerous. He also would benefit if Coen could improve the run game, which ranked 32nd in the NFL one year ago. — Dan Pompei

Will Brian Callahan bring out the best in Will Levis, and what would that mean?

Early indications on this pairing of rookie head coach and second-year quarterback are positive, but there’s work to do. Callahan stressed base and footwork with Levis during the spring to elicit more consistent accuracy. Those efforts will continue into camp, for a team with low expectations overall despite investing a lot in helping Levis — Calvin Ridley, Tyler Boyd, Tony Pollard, Lloyd Cushenberry and first-round pick JC Latham. Callahan has worked closely with Peyton Manning, Matthew Stafford and Joe Burrow on the way to this opportunity. This is his first “project,” but if it’s the start of a long-term partnership, the 2024 Titans should be competitive. — Joe Rexrode

Washington Commanders

How will Jayden Daniels perform?

This isn’t the first dual-threat, Heisman Trophy-winning rookie QB drafted second overall to come through Washington this century. Say whatever you want about Robert Griffin III’s career, but the 2012 OROY wasn’t helped by the organization’s persistent chaos. Daniels arrives amid a wave of positivity following an ownership sale and new football leadership. There are some concerns with the offensive line and receiver depth. There is also Terry McLaurin, a solid 1-2 RB combo and an arsenal of offensive assistant coaches hired to help the mature Daniels’ adjustment run as smoothly as possible. — Ben Standig

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(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Photos of Bryce Young, Caleb Williams and Anthony Richardson: Kevin C. Cox, Jared C. Tilton and Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

Culture

In Her New Memoir, Siri Hustvedt Captures Life With, And Without, Paul Auster

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In Her New Memoir, Siri Hustvedt Captures Life With, And Without, Paul Auster

Siri Hustvedt was halfway through a new novel, about a writer tasked with completing his father’s unfinished manuscript, when her husband, the novelist Paul Auster, died from lung cancer.

Continuing that story in his absence felt impossible. They were together for 43 years, the length of her career. She’d never published a book without his reading a draft of it first.

Two weeks later, in the Brooklyn townhouse they shared, she sat down and wrote the first two sentences of a new book: “I am alive. My husband, Paul Auster, is dead.”

“It was the only thing I could write about,” she said.

She wrote about her feelings of dislocation: how she vividly smelled cigar smoke, even though Auster had quit smoking nine years before; how she woke up disoriented on his side of the bed and got into the bath with her socks still on; how she felt a kind of “cognitive splintering” that bordered on derangement. She had lost not only her husband, but also the person she had been with him. She felt faded and washed-out, like an overexposed photograph.

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Those reflections grew into “Ghost Stories,” Hustvedt’s memoir about her life with and without Auster. Partly a book about grief and its psychological and physiological side effects, it’s also a revealing and intimate glimpse into a literary marriage — the buoyant moments of their early courtship, their deep involvement in each other’s work, their inside jokes (“I’ll have the lamb for two for one”).

She also writes publicly for the first time about the tragedies the family endured several years ago, when Auster’s son, Daniel, who struggled with addiction, took heroin while his infant daughter Ruby was in his care, and woke up to find she wasn’t breathing. He was later charged with criminally negligent homicide, after an examination found that her death was caused by acute intoxication from opioids. Soon after he was released on bail, Daniel, 44, died of a drug overdose.

A few months later, Auster started to come down with fevers, and doctors later discovered he had cancer. He reacted to the news as perhaps only a novelist would — lamenting that dying from cancer would be such an obvious, unsatisfying ending to a life marked by so much tragedy.

“He said so many times, it would make for a bad story,” Hustvedt said. “It was so predetermined, almost, and he hated predictable stories.”

Tall and lanky with short blond hair, Hustvedt, who is 71, met me on an April afternoon at the elegant, art and book-filled townhouse in Park Slope where the couple lived for 30 years. She took me to the sunlit second floor library, where Auster spent his final days, surrounded by his family and books. “He loved this room,” Hustvedt said.

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“I’ll show you his now quiet typewriter,” she said, leading me down to Auster’s office on the ground floor, which felt as tranquil and carefully preserved as a shrine. A desk held a small travel typewriter, an Olivetti, and next to it, his larger Olympia. “Click clack, it really made noise,” Hustvedt said.

Auster rose to fame in the 1980s thanks to postmodern novels like “City of Glass” and “Moon Palace,” which explore the mysteries and unreliability of memory and perception. Hustvedt gained renown for heady and cerebral literary novels that include “The Blazing World,” “What I Loved” and “The Summer Without Men.”

They were each other’s first readers, sharpest editors and biggest fans. They even shared characters — Auster borrowed Iris Vegan, the heroine of Hustvedt’s 1992 novel “The Blindfold,” and extended her story in his novel “Leviathan,” published the same year. (Critics and readers assumed she had used his character, not the other way around.)

“We were very different writers and always were, and that was part of the pleasure in the other’s work,” Hustvedt said.

Friends of the couple who have read “Ghost Stories” said they were moved by Hustvedt’s loving but not hagiographic portrait of her husband.

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Salman Rushdie, who visited Auster just a few days before he died, said Hustvedt’s vivid portrayal of Auster — who was witty, warm and expansive, always ready with a joke — captured a side of him that was rarely reflected in his public image as a celebrated literary figure.

“He’s very present on the page,” Rushdie said. “They were so tightly knit, and Paul was Siri’s greatest champion. They were deeply engaged in each other’s work.”

Hustvedt was 26, a budding writer who had just published a poem in the Paris Review, when she met Auster, 34, after a reading at the 92nd Street Y. He was wearing a black leather jacket, smoking, and she was instantly smitten.

They went downtown to a party, then to a bar in Tribeca, and talked all night. He was married to the writer Lydia Davis, but they had separated. He showed her a photo of his and Davis’s 3-year-old son, Daniel. They kissed as she was about to get into a taxi, and he went home with her to her apartment on 109th Street.

Shortly after they began seeing each other, Auster broke it off and told her that he had to return to his wife and son. She won him back with ardent, unabashed love letters that she quotes in “Ghost Stories”: “I love you. I’m not leaving yet, not until I am banished.”

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In 1982, a few days after Auster’s divorce, they got married. They were so broke that guests had to pay for their own dinners.

Their writing careers evolved in parallel, but Auster’s fame eclipsed Hustvedt’s. She often found herself belittled by interviewers who asked her what it was like to be married to a literary genius, and whether her husband wrote her books.

“People used to ask me what my favorite book of Paul’s was; no one would ever ask him that,” Hustvedt recalled.

When Hustvedt complained about the disparity, Auster joked that the next time a journalist asked what it was like to be married to him, she should brag about his skills as a lover.

The slights persisted even after Hustvedt had established herself as a formidable literary talent. “One imagines that will go away, but it didn’t,” she said. She’s sometimes felt reduced to “Paul Auster’s wife” even after his death: At a recent reading, a fan of his work asked if she took comfort in reading his books in his absence, as if the real loss was the death of the literary eminence, not the man she loved.

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She felt the weight of his reputation acutely when Auster died, and news of his death spread online just moments after he stopped breathing, before the family had time to tell people close to him.

The shadow Auster’s fame cast over the family became especially pronounced when scandal and tragedy struck.

In “Ghost Stories,” Hustvedt details a side of Auster’s personal life that he closely guarded: his relationship with Daniel, whose drug use and shiftiness was a constant source of worry. As a teenager, he stole more than $13,000 from her bank account, her German royalties. In 2000, Auster and Hustvedt learned that Daniel had forged his transcripts from SUNY Purchase after he had promised to re-enroll; he hadn’t, and kept the tuition money.

After each breach of trust, she and Auster forgave him.

“I have to leave the door open, just a crack,” Paul said about Daniel, Hustvedt recalls in “Ghost Stories.”

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She writes about rushing to the hospital in Park Slope, where Daniel’s daughter was pronounced dead: “It’s the image of her small, perfect dead body in the hospital on Nov. 1, 2021, that forces itself on me.”

The shock of Ruby’s death, followed by Daniel’s arrest and overdose, was made even more unbearable by the media frenzy. Auster and Hustvedt were hounded by reporters, and made no comment.

“We were not in a position to speak about it when it happened, it was all so shocking and overwhelming and trying to deal with your feelings was more than enough,” Hustvedt told me.

But she felt she had to write about Daniel and Ruby in “Ghost Stories” because their lives and deaths were a crucial part of the family’s story, yet had been reduced to lurid tabloid fodder, she said.

“It would not have been possible to write this book and pretend that these horrible things didn’t happen,” she said. “I also didn’t want the horrible things to overwhelm the book, and that’s a tricky thing, because it’s so horrible, you feel it has to be there, but it isn’t the whole story.”

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Before he died, Auster told Hustvedt he wanted that story to be told.

“I didn’t feel that I was betraying him,” she said.

Auster and Hustvedt’s daughter, Sophie Auster, a musician who lives in Brooklyn, said reading her mother’s memoir was painful, but she also felt her father’s voice and presence in its pages.

“Opening the book was extremely difficult for me, but you just sink in,” she said. “She doesn’t let you sit in the sorrow for too long. There’s a lot of life and a lot of joy.”

Hustvedt found it strange to write “Ghost Stories” without sharing drafts with Auster, her habit throughout her career. But often, his voice popped into her head.

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“I kind of heard him in my ear, saying things like, ‘That’s a wavy sentence, straighten that thing out,’” she said.

After finishing the memoir, Hustvedt went back to the novel she’d been working on when Auster died. She realized she had to rewrite the first half entirely.

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Culture

In ‘Rocky Horror,’ Luke Evans Finds His Ballad of Sexual Liberation

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In ‘Rocky Horror,’ Luke Evans Finds His Ballad of Sexual Liberation

There’s a Hollywood action star, standing in silhouette at the top of a creepy manor’s staircase, dressed in a corset and jockstrap, thighs fitted into fishnets and hair secured under a wig that could have been scalped from Charli XCX.

“I’m just a sweet transvestite,” the action star, Luke Evans, croons, suggestively caressing his nipples. “From Transsexual, Transylvania.”

Evans, 47, has taken on the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in “The Rocky Horror Show” on Broadway, which opened last month at Studio 54. He has lost almost 20 pounds since performances began at the end of March, he said, and he relies on a small can of oxygen to power through a production in which he barely leaves the stage. Every night, he grabs his blond dachshund, Lala, who waits in his dressing room, and returns to a rented apartment in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, covered in glitter. At one point, after Evans discovered glitter in her poop, Lala took a brief intermission from the theater.

“It’s mental,” Evans said of the demands of a Broadway show. He has been giving eight high-octane performances a week as a mad scientist who sees himself as a prophet of sexual liberation. It is a role made famous by Tim Curry in the 1975 film version. (Curry also performed in the original production in London in 1973, and the show’s subsequent runs in Los Angeles and New York.) About a week into joining the Broadway production of “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” the rapper Megan Thee Stallion was hospitalized in March for exhaustion.

But the physical strain of running across the stage in patent leather boots with five-inch heels has garnered him a Tony nomination for best performance by a lead actor in a musical. It may also do wonders for how the world sees Evans. For the past two decades, Hollywood has frequently cast him as an action hero. “I was somebody who could drive a bus, or build a wall, or kill a dragon,” he said.

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Well, it was a little more glamorous than that: He has starred in billion-dollar global blockbusters including the “Fast & Furious” franchise and “The Hobbit.” But it is no less confining for an actor who thinks he might have something more to offer audiences than pistol whips and fisticuffs.

“My career started at a breakneck speed,” Evans told me one morning on the patio of his Chelsea hotel as Lala gently snored in his lap. “For about eight years, I felt like I didn’t breathe.”

The marathon began in 2010 when Evans began the transition from a career on the London stage to one in Hollywood as a dependable Adonis. He played the sun god Apollo in a campy 2010 remake of “Clash of the Titans,” and within the next four years, he earned a promotion in the Greek pantheon (playing Zeus in “The Immortals”), drove expensive cars (playing the villainous Owen Shaw in the “Fast & Furious” series), learned archery (playing Bard the Bowman in “The Hobbit” movie trilogy), and became a vampire (playing the title character in “Dracula Untold”). His career seemed to be hitting a peak in 2017 when he received positive reviews as the meathead Gaston in the live-action remake of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.”

These days, Evans is looking ahead to the next 10 years. He has released music, built a clothing brand with his boyfriend, Fran Tomas, and developed properties across Europe, including in the places where he splits his time, Lisbon and Ibiza. He talks often about refusing to dwell on the past, but the past certainly informs his decisions.

Becoming famous in his early 30s left him feeling that he had limited time to make his mark in Hollywood. “This business is all about objectivity,” Evans said. But even as his star ascended, he was looking over his shoulder at the younger stars of the “Twilight” films.

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“They were porcelain and perfect. They glowed,” the actor said. “I would never have been cast. Maybe as some haggard, old half-wolf.”

Even a decade later, nobody would describe Evans as haggard. The director of the “Rocky Horror” revival, Sam Pinkleton, prefers to think of him as a “shape-shifter.”

“He contains multitudes,” Pinkleton said. “One of those is a giant dude who can kick your ass, and the next minute he is kitty-cat purr.”

“I remember Luke talking a lot about how he wanted to transform with this role,” the director added, saying that Evans was considered for the part early in the casting process. “He realized that he could do things with this role that he was never allowed to do.”

Evans now has a chance to redefine himself in portraying Frank-N-Furter. And knowing more about his back story is likely to enrich the performance that audiences see onstage.

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In his 2024 memoir, “Boy From the Valleys: My Unexpected Journey,” Evans describes being born in Wales on Easter Sunday and being raised a Jehovah’s Witness. His father was a bricklayer and his mother a homemaker; the family lived in a working-class neighborhood. Because of the strictures of the family’s religion, Evans was frequently bullied as a youngster and often felt excluded from typical childhood pleasures: Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate Christmas or birthdays, so there was no singing carols or going to birthday parties for Evans. He described himself as having been exceedingly thin at the time, and struggling with his sexuality.

“Looking back, I didn’t stand a chance,” he wrote.

But in his memoir, Evans is reluctant to blame others for his own hardships. One of the rare exceptions is discussing a neighbor, whom he blames for the death of one of his childhood cats, Tigger. It appeared to have been shot with a lead pellet. “Anyway, I own his house now,” Evans wrote. “And any animal can come and go as they please.” (Evans told me he bought it as a rental property to provide extra income for his parents.)

At 16, Evans left home and started dating an older man. He eventually moved to London with a boyfriend who encouraged him to pursue a career in theater and he went on to build a successful résumé in the West End through the 2000s, starring in productions like “Taboo,” “Avenue Q” and “Rent.” His parents gradually accepted his sexuality, though that came at the cost of being shunned by their community of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“It took a long time, a lot of conversations and a lot of patience from both sides for us to understand we were on different journeys,” Evans said. “It was not easy because the religion wanted my parents to cut me off, to have nothing to do with me.”

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He does not believe in God anymore. “It was something I believe was created by man, and, over centuries, it became a way to control the masses.” But about five years ago, he did get a tattoo on his left thigh. You can see just a glimmer of it through his fishnets in “Rocky Horror.” It’s a quote from Corinthians: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” For Evans, it’s the story of how, in his family, love won over everything else.

Questions about his sexuality came up during the height of his movie career. “I wasn’t hiding, even then,” Evans told me, acknowledging that he may have lost roles because he refused to hide. “I had to do it,” he explained. “I had to walk so that the future generations of gay actors could run.”

“I play straight more than I play gay,” he said. “Why the hell not? I’m acting. I can do anything.”

Evans prefers to think of himself as someone who drives toward the future without dwelling much on the past. It’s a trait that he recognizes in Frank-N-Furter, who hurtles dangerously toward a utopian vision of “absolute pleasure.”

“The past is important, of course, but you can’t read too much into the past,” Evans told me.

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“People keep trying,” I said.

“But the present and the future is something you can have a say in, if you so choose,” the actor said.

“Is that a survivor’s mentality?” I asked.

“Possibly,” Evans laughed. “When I was younger and I had to leave home, I had to stop thinking about my past, because my past didn’t want to have anything to do with me. In fact, my past sort of stopped when I left home and left the religion. I lost everyone, all my friends.”

A similar psychology runs through the actor’s performance as Frank-N-Furter, a drag queen’s answer to Victor Frankenstein — if the good doctor had a penchant for sleeping with his monsters.

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“There is joy but also danger in Frank,” Evans explained, “because he is a speeding train.”

If the Jehovah’s Witnesses demanded a life of invisibility, and Hollywood demanded a life of rigid masculinity, then Broadway was offering Evans a path to total exposure. It was as Frank-N-Furter says: “Don’t dream it. Be it.”

By the time Evans reaches the show’s hedonistic peak, the parallels between the actor and the character become impossible to ignore. There is a joy in seeing Evans — once a boy who could not celebrate his own birthday — now presiding over the birth of Rocky, the musical’s golden Adonis. He embodies the doctor’s lustful jinx as a man making up for lost time, delivering a version of the character whose occasional glimmers of warmth are singed with rage and regret — two emotions that Evans has spent decades trying to evade in his own life.

“There is a menace to him,” Evans observed of his character, “that sits just under the surface of glamour and charisma. But there is also something very naughty, powerful and subversive.”

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Book Review: ‘From Life Itself,’ by Suzy Hansen

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Book Review: ‘From Life Itself,’ by Suzy Hansen

Admittedly, Americans seem to have a soft spot for books about faraway places that end up reminding them of themselves. Hansen’s, though, is in many ways too rich and complex to provide an easy parallel. Erdogan often gets lumped in with other 21st-century strongmen, but on migration, for example, he has taken an idiosyncratic tack. “Unlike Trump and Orban,” Hansen writes, referring to Hungary’s then prime minister, “Erdogan had seen the Syrians as part of his vision for a greater Muslim Turkey, rather than brown invaders of a white Western country.” His approach to immigration also allowed him to play a kind of power broker on the world stage, collecting European Union money to keep the Syrians out of Europe.

Much of what Hansen found in Karagumruk surprised her, too. Residents would complain relentlessly about their new Syrian neighbors while providing them with generous aid. She spoke with countless Karagumruk residents while necessarily directing our attention to a few. Ismail, the longtime muhtar, or neighborhood councilman, speaks lovingly of the city’s old cosmopolitanism and happens to be part of the same midcentury generation as Erdogan. Ebru, a real estate agent, resents the Syrians for getting European Union money and tries to unseat Ismail. Huseyin, a shop owner, defends his Syrian neighbors from a violent mob. Murat, an “Islamic fundamentalist barber,” pledges his fealty to Erdogan, whom he calls “the most democratic person in the world.”

Erdogan, for his part, emerges from this account as a ruthless autocrat who rose to power through undeniable popular support. He was a poor boy turned soccer player turned mayor of Istanbul. In his first several years as Turkey’s prime minister, he improved the health care system and civil infrastructure, bringing measurable benefits to people’s lives. But then came the corruption and oppression, and the gutting of state institutions, where loyalty was now favored over expertise.

In February 2023, when massive earthquakes tore through Turkey, killing more than 50,000 people, the cost of such depredations was laid bare: “Erdogan had so centralized power around his person until he rendered Turkey a country that no longer worked.”

Still, he won the election that was held later that year, with 52 percent of the vote. Hansen sees some hope at the edges: principled people who navigate their way around obstacles, finding the seams in the armor, “whatever pathways within institutions hadn’t yet been obstructed, whatever avenues of freedom remained open to them.” But improvisation doesn’t add up to an effective opposition.

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