[.ca] The New York Trilogy (ISBN 1933382880)

ONE OF A KIND!:
The novels that make up Paul Auster's New York Trilogy are notable for their brevity, inclusion of relatively extraneous material, and chronicling the main character's disintegration. In each of the three, the detector (a mystery writer enrolled as a detective, a detective watching a writer, and a writer trying to find his childhood friend who has made him his literary executor) becomes obsessed, his previous life cracking up. In the last (The Locked Room) he recovers. In the middle one (Ghosts) he perhaps kills his quarry. In the first (City of Glass) he is cared for after his dissolution (suggesting that in all three, the detector is engaged by his quarry, though in the first one it remains unclear whether the wife is an agent for her father-in-law who is tailed by Quinn). Auster's detective's remorseless quest for answers destroys their lives: All the questioning makes them implode. Auster's detectives (and, surely, Auster himself) are very concerned with inscription: the notebook of the first, both the reports of surveillance and what Black is writing in the second, the texts Fanshawe left behind and the biography of him that never gets written in the third. Auster seems to be a postmodernist who believes in the lives of authors -- unraveling Don Quixote, recalling incidents in the life of Walt Whitman, disquisitions on Hawthorne and an unliterary reader's reading of Walden; the characters of The Locked Room have names from Hawthorne and enact a variant of the Hawthorne story related in Ghosts. (He also manages to tell the story of "Out of the past" and work in a Brooklyn Dodger game from Jackie Robinson's first season and to use many names of former New York Mets players for his characters.) Is it metafiction? (Metamystery?) Or a very literature-obsessed writer playing with the mystery genre? Probably some of both. Epistemological mysteries. The most explicit statement of ultimate unknowability is: "We exist for ourselves, perhaps, and at times, even have a glimmer of who we are, but in the end we can never be sure, and as our lives go on, we become more and more opaque to ourselves, more and more aware of our incoherence." (p. 368). Ghosts irritated me and I almost didn't read the last and best of the three novels as a result. Its aftertaste is better than its taste while chewing (reading) it. The Locked Room seems less coolly stylized, with less abstract characters. Fanshawe has many experiences from Auster's life (as revealed in his recent account of making money to write). The super boy idealized by all, he is eventually indicted for lacking heart. Inhuman is not how even the coolest Auster prose strikes me. I don't think that he lacks compassion, but I have to think that he is concerned about lacking feeling. Not just in cannibalizing life in writing but in being incapable of love. Admittedly, this is reading a lot into the book. A fear of cracking up from observing too closely would be a more obvious moral of all three. Anyway, as you can see I became totally absorbed in this book. Buy a copy of New York Trilogy -- you'll be happy. Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to Auster, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition," a funny, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.

review of "City of Glass":
I like to give you a little impression of my opinion about Paul Auster's book "City of Glass". We were supposed to read it in the 13.form as a part of our main topic "detective stories". It took us some time but it was more interesting than the other books we read in this year(Macbeth, Of Mice and Men). When you have read this book you get a closer look into the world's different identities and those of its citizen. In Paul Auster's clever piece of work "City of Glass" fiction and reality is mixed up. The theme of chance is like in other works of Auster seen as the main topic of the story. Daniel Quinn, normally an author, who lost his family, is mixed up with Paul Auster and so starts to become a detective. During the story it is not obvious which identity the protagonist uses and who he will be next. The order of actions is unpredictable. Paul Auster created a novel which is extraordinary and which will be kept in mind by every one who read it. I would everybody give the advice to read this book because of its postmodernist style which suits very well to our time.

not a real detective story BY BROWNY:
We were suposed to read "City of Glass" out of Auster's NEW YORK TRILOGY in our English advanced class. I believe the mystery of chance and the multiple personalities of the protagonist are crucial for Austers first detective story. The well chosen setting fits perfectly into the plot. Auster writes about an isolated , lonely writer at the mid-thirty, who has pleasant success in writing detective stories. Just by accident the protagonist gets the opportunity to solve an obscure case as an pseudo-detetective. It is easy to follow the plot, but somehow the reader happens to mix up the charachters. But you will never be bored while reading it, even though there are parts of the story wiht not much suspense.

Review of Paul Asters " city of glass":
Hi I'm a german highschool studend. In class we were supposed to read "the city of glass". Today we all write a review on it. Honestly it is not to much of a story for me. The fact I liked, was the fall of the protagonist. After all it is just an everyday story about the facts of life. I feel people deerve to be what they are, not more not less. And that's what happens. After getting a job the detectiv gets lost in his task. Eventually he loses almost evrything he ownes but what he always thought he would be. Altough one could be of the opinion that everything in our lifes is pales and therefor chance does not exist the reader is only confronted with chance. In the end you feel that you really should not do anyhing, just because chance can probably do better than you.

Paul Auster's "City of Glass" - A review:
In my advanced english course at school we were supposed to read Paul Auster's "City of Glass" the first of Paul Auster's detective stories from his book "The New York Triology". With no expectations i began to read the story about Daniel Quinn while thinking that it certainly would be one of those boring books we are often to read in school. But my first impression was wrong. With every line i read the story got more and more interesting. Paul Auster achieves it to build up an exciting story in which Daniel Quinn, a detective story writer, recieves a phone call with whom the story turns into a curios way. The main protagonist has to protect a man whose psychotic father wants to kill him. Quinn loses track of the mystery so that he loses everything he has. Almost the whole story is based on chance and gets interesting by curving the story of Don Quiote or the history of the Paradies. Paul Auster also succeeds in connecting themes like "identities","isolaton","hunger" and "poverty".