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Writers who died this year include the novelists Edna O'Brien and Paul Auster, and the short-story writer Alice Munro.

Paul Auster was praised for his sharp dialogue, and his books have been translated into more than 40 languages.

Downey’s McNeal has the chiseled masculine swagger of such writers as Richard Ford and Paul Auster.

“Baseball is a universe as large as life itself, and therefore all things in life, whether good or bad, whether tragic or comic, fall within its domain,” novelist Paul Auster once wrote.

Other references include the parallel realities in Paul Auster’s fiction and the enigmas of “Last Year at Marienbad,” an Alain Resnais film from the early 1960s in which characters explore palatial spaces and contemplate the past.