A couple of weeks ago, as the news spread that the New York novelist Paul Auster had died, a black-and-white photo of him circulated on social media. It shows Auster in his early twenties, wavy hair swept back, dark crew-neck sweater. He looks off to one side, his fingers outstretched towards something out of frame. He is strikingly handsome, like a French movie star of a bygone era; a young Jean Marais, an Alain Delon.