I'm surprised by some of the low and middling ratings this book and its three stories (City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room) have received. Some characterise the stories as boring, derivative, simplistic, pretentious, or pointless. But for me, this is exactly the kind of book I love to stumble upon: one that surprises, and that seeks new and unconventional paths to expression. To me the writing suggests Calvino, Kafka, Borges, perhaps even Beckett and Sartre, without being derivative. This is not to say that The New York Trilogy stands beside Beckett’s trilogy in terms of literary achievement - indeed much of the ground it treads has already been broken - but I believe that novels should be judged on their own merits, on the basis their own peculiar mix of intentions, constraints and products, without necessarily having to justify their existence by comparison to other works. I think this novel stands as an exceptional work in its own right.

The New York Trilogy consists of three stories, which are distinct from each other but interact in direct and indirect, linear and nonlinear ways. There is a lot of thematic overlap between the stories, and even a fair amount of repetition. Each story could be thought of as a parallel retelling of the same story, or perhaps an examination of the same set of questions from a related viewpoint.

At the core of the stories is a questioning of identity. What does it mean to exist as an individual, separate from others? What does it mean to be oneself and not someone else? What, if anything, can it mean to live a meaningful life? There is an examination of the limitations of literature and the written record. The novel compares accounts of real and fictitious lives, and demonstrates more similarity than difference between the two, revealing a reflective quality to what is real and not real, a determination based more on perception than objective truth. It's an interesting perspective.

The stories develop so as to always avoid the next logical narrative step. There is a subversion of purpose, of cause and effect, and loss of natural sequence (which I expect is a cause of frustration for some readers). Yet in this absence of narrative logic, these stories latch on to something else, a more intuitive and direct kind of logic. I would characterise them less as coherent narratives than as meditations. The experience is one of detached observation and interpretation, like allowing one's thoughts to arise and pass, or dropping a pebble into a pond and watching the ways the ripples distort the reflection. The prose is direct and unspectacular, which supports this kind of reading, as do the dark and ambiguous thematic implications; the lack of resolution or redemption.

I was surprised by this novel - it was not at all what I had expected - and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. At the very least it inspired me to finally pick up a copy of Don Quixote and add it to my reading list.

Paul Auster
پل استر نویسنده ی مشهور امریکایی
سه کتاب شهر شیشه ای، ارواح و اتاق در بسته با استقبال بی نظیری همراه شد که باعث ادغام این سه کتاب در یک مجموعه به نام سه گانه ی نیویورک شد


نمی شود آنقدر از کسی متنفر بود مگر آنکه قسمتی از روح مان آن را بسیار دوست داشته باشد

Trilogia di New York è una raccolta di tre romanzi ambientati nella città di New York. Anche se si tratta di “gialli”, non ci sono morti, non c'è nessun assassino da trovare, nessun corpo abbandonato.

Nel primo romanzo, “Città di vetro”, un narratore racconta di uno scrittore di romanzi polizieschi che si firma con uno pseudonimo, che si finge un investigatore per puro caso e accetta l'incarico affidatogli da un uomo per pedinare suo padre, omonimo.

Nel secondo, “Fantasmi”, un uomo viene assunto da un altro per sorvegliarne un terzo. Pian piano l’investigatore si accorge di essere il sorvegliato. E che il sorvegliato è uno scrittore, perché non fa altro che scrivere. E alla fine si scoprirà che sta scrivendo proprio il libro stesso, “Fantasmi”.

Nel terzo romanzo, “La stanza chiusa”, il protagonista si immerge nella vita del proprio migliore amico, interpretandolo, fingendosi lui, sposandone la vedova, adottandone il figlio e scrivendo addirittura libri usando il suo nome.

Tre romanzi complessi, non facili da seguire e che lasciano un senso di angoscia e confusione forte. Tanti i punti oscuri, forse lasciati così proprio per lasciarne al lettore l’interpretazione. I tre romanzi sembrano indipendenti, ma hanno temi conduttori comuni e creano un continua ricorrenza di analogie. Ci accorgiamo alla fine, come dice lo stesso Auster, che siamo di fronte ad una storia sola, forse ad un diverso stadio di consapevolezza. Una storia strana, che disorienta a tal punto da risultare incomprensibile.

“I libri vanno letti con la stessa cura e con la stessa riservatezza con cui sono stati scritti.”

I tre romanzi sembrano essere delle riflessioni, a tratti anche troppo cerebrali e metafisiche, sulla relazione tra scrittura e vita reale e sul ruolo dello scrittore stesso. Si racconta di gente che scrive sullo scrivere e che descrive libri già scritti o ancora da scrivere. E sullo sfondo, la città di New York a fare da cornice.

“New York era un luogo inesauribile, un labirinto di passi senza fine: e per quanto la esplorasse, arrivando a conoscerne a fondo strade e quartieri, la città lo lasciava sempre con la sensazione di essersi perduto. Perduto non solo nella città, ma anche dentro di sé.Ogni volta che camminava sentiva di lasciarsi alle spalle se stesso, e nel consegnarsi al movimento delle strade, riducendosi a un occhio che vede, eludeva l’obbligo di pensare; e questo, più di qualsiasi altra cosa, gli donava una scheggia di pace, un salutare vuoto interiore. Il mondo era fuori di lui, gli stava intorno e davanti, e la velocità del suo continuo cambiamento gli rendeva impossibile soffermarsi troppo su qualunque cosa. Vagando senza meta, tutti i luoghi diventavano uguali e non contava più dove ci si trovava. Nelle camminate più riuscite giungeva a non sentirsi in nessun luogo. E alla fine era solo questo che chiedeva alle cose: di non essere in nessun luogo. New York era il nessun luogo che si era costruito attorno, ed era sicuro di non volerlo lasciare mai più”.

Mi è capitato molte volte, girovagando per qualche mostra d’arte, di imbattermi in un’opera di qualche artista contemporaneo. E mentre ero lì, davanti a quell’opera con aria ebete cercando di identificare un sopra ed un sotto, un significato recondito, di trovare un indizio che potesse farmi “capire” cosa stavo osservando, casualmente si avvicinava qualche critico o qualche guida che improvvisamente mi regalava una spiegazione illuminante. Mi spiegava che il significato non lo vedevo perché non era evidente perché era “dietro” l’opera. Il significato era nelle spiegazioni che conducevano alla produzione dell’opera. Il significato era la costruzione, l’idea, non l’opera.

Ecco. È esattamente la stessa cosa che ho pensato leggendo la Trilogia di New York di Auster. Ad una lettura superficiale si capisce poco, la trama è abbastanza prevedibile, nulla viene risolto, non ci viene data nessuna risposta, ci sono tantissimi interrogativi non risolti, c’è poco piacere nella lettura.
Poi pian piano la nebbia si dirada e comprendiamo che la bellezza del libro non sta nella trama, sta nella costruzione, nell’idea, nella ricerca quasi ossessiva di originalità. Forse si potrebbe fare la similitudine con la vita degli uomini, che fine a sé stessa non ha senso, ha senso solo per il suo sviluppo. Ossia è importante il viaggio, non il risultato.

Solo comprendendo questo allora realizziamo la indubbia grandezza di questo autore che cambia stile e prospettiva ad ogni libro che scrive.

Further update, June 19th 2012.

In response to several thoughtful comments that take issue with the nastiness of my initial review, I have come to the conclusion that the comments in question are essentially correct. Please see my own response in comment #32 in the discussion. And thanks to those who called me on this, apologies for my earlier vitriolic responses. In general, I try to acknowledge the validity of other opinions in my reviews and comments, something I notably failed to do in this discussion. I should have been more civil, initially and subsequently.


Update:

WELL, CONGRATULATIONS, PAUL AUSTER!!

I wouldn't actually have thought it possible, but with the breathtakingly sophomoric intellectual pretension of the final 30 pages of "City of Glass", you have actually managed to deepen my contempt and loathing for you, and the overweening, solipsistic, drivel that apparently passes for writing in your particular omphaloskeptic corner of the pseudo-intellectual forest in which you live, churning out your mentally masturbatory little turdlets.

Gaaaah. Upon finishing the piece of smirkingly self-referential garbage that was "City of Glass", I wanted to jump in a showever and scrub away the stinking detritus of your self-congratulatory, hypercerebral, pomo, what a clever-boy-am-I, pseudo-intellectual rubbish from my mind. But not all the perfumes of Araby would be sufficient - they don't make brain bleach strong enough to cleanse the mind of your particular kind of preening, navel-gazing idiocy.

All I can do is issue a clarion call to others who might be sucked into your idiotic, time-wasting, superficially clever fictinal voyages to nowhere. There is emphatically no there there. The intellectual vacuum at the core of Auster's fictions is finally nothing more than that - empty of content, devoid of meaning, surrounded with enough of the pomo trappings to keep the unwary reader distracted. But, if you're looking for meaning in your fiction, for God's sake look elsewhere.

And, please - spare me your pseudoprofound epiphanies of the sort that the emptiness at the core of Auster's tales is emblematic of the kind of emptiness that's at the core of modern life. Because that brand of idiocy butters no parsnips with me - I got over that kind of nonsense as a freshman in college. At this point in my life I expect a little more from anyone who aspires to be considered a writer worth taking seriously.

Which Paul Auster, though I have no doubt that he takes himself very, very seriously indeed, is not. This little emperor of Brooklyn is stark naked, intellectually speaking.

The only consolation is that I spent less than $5 for this latest instalment of Austercrap.

Gaaaah. PASS THE BRAINBLEACH.


Earlier comment begins below:

My loathing for the only other of Paul Auster's books that I had read (the Music of Chance) was so deep that it's taken me over ten years before I can bring myself to give him another chance. But finally, today, after almost three weeks of reading only short pieces in Spanish, my craving for fiction in English was irresistible, so I picked up a second-hand copy of The New York Trilogy in the English-language bookstore here in Guanajuato.

So far so good. I'm about three-quarters through the first story of the trilogy and I'm enjoying it, without actually liking it, if that makes sense. Auster seems to owe a clear debt of influence to Mamet - there's the same predilection for games, puzzles, and the influence of chance. Thankfully, the influence doesn't extend to dialog, which Mamet has always seemed to me to wield clumsily, like a blunt instrument. Auster is more subtle, but he still holds his characters at such a remote distance, it gives his writing a cerebral quality that is offputting at times. Thus, one can enjoy the situations he sets up and the intricacies of the story, without quite liking his fiction.

Who knows, maybe I will feel differently after I've read all three stories?

ريفيو قريب
أفوق بس B-)

_____________
تحديث 1992012


إنه كتاب غريب ،،،فهو كما تعلم ليس من نوع الروايات التى تميل إليها ، بل لا ينتمى إلى أى نوع على الإطلاق ، و لكن ليس هناك مجال للتشكيك فى قدرة الرجل على الإبداع ،،، لقد قرأت الكتاب قبل ما يزيد عن أسبوعين ، و قد لازمنى منذ ذلك الحين ، و ليس بمقدورى انتزاعه من ذهنى ، فهو يواصل الإلحاح على ذاكرتى ،و دائما فى أغرب اللحظات ، و كما تعلم فإن ذلك لا يحدث معظم الوقت ، و لكن الكتاب يفرض نفسه ، هناك شيئ قوى فيه و أغرب ما فى الأمر أننى لا أعرف ما هو هذا الشئ.







حسنا ،،،،،، الفقرة السابقة منقولة بتصرف من الكتاب نفسه ، يتحدث فيها أحد الناشرين عن كتاب ما بصدد الطبع......

و هذا جزء من عجائبية هذا الكتاب الغريب الذى لا يخضع لتصنيف و قد يصل فى بعض أجزائه إلى الثرثرة المطلقة ،،،،

جزء من جنون هذا الكتاب أن يفرد المؤلف فقرة كهذه تصف شعورك تماما بلا زيادة و لا نقصان تجاه كتابه ، فكأنه *المجنون* يحدثك !!!!!

خلطة غريبة من الأدب الروائى ، الفلسفى و الثرثرة.
هذا كتاب لا يمكننى أن أرشحه فهو كتاب (مزائجى) جدا _ ان كان هناك شيئا كهذا _ فهو إما يخضعك و يجعلك تتبنى جنونه و تصيبك العدوى ، أو تلعنه صارخا

»ماذا تقصد !!!!!!!!«

Sometimes certain books are not meant to be read when you first hear about them. I heard about Auster's "City Of Glass" almost 20 years ago and somehow I never stuck with reading it after starting it. Somehow I knew I should wait to read it. My current life experience has given me the capacity to relate and engage with this subtle story cycle, as the themes and concepts involved are poignant to my own personal struggles. This subjective viewpoint doesn't make this novel great, but it has provided me with spiritual and philosophical guidance at a time in my life where it is greatly needed. Luckily, the writing is done by a master of the craft, and I highly recommend it.

O Poder da Palavra de Paul Auster em três romances curtos, que se interligam.
Um livro "negro" em que ficção e realidade se confundem; e onde a obsessão por entender o "Outro" pode levar à solidão extrema, à loucura e à perda da própria identidade.

Como não tenho o poder de Auster para elaborar um comentário razoável sobre este livro (nem sei se entendi todo o seu significado), selecionei, para ilustrar a ideia que retirei de cada história, imagens de três Grandes de outra Arte que, como a Literatura, me faz "perder o juízo"...

n  A CIDADE DE VIDROn


(Georgia O'Keeffe - Street of New York II)

n  FANTASMASn


(Zdislav Beksinski)

n  O QUARTO FECHADOn


(Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Schlemihls in the Loneliness of the Room)

Actually i didn‘t finish it. i read thoroughly to page 101. then it started to blur me and it made no sense at all. to call this stupidity a „literary sensation“...i dont know.
I thought this book will redeem Paul Auster in my head, after the failure called 4321.
This is the first book that i cannot end. Until page 101 it was somehow ok. but then it started to be so absurd and stupid, just opening it made me aggresive. Apart from that, and this was the thing also 4321, Paul Auster writes with no emotion, no feeling. One should be warned - if you want some encyclopedic show off, read this one.

Maybe someday I will feel differently and give this one another try. i will turn back to literature that makes some sense to me. life is too short to read bad books.

It is so great. all the few people that gave 1 star say basically the same things. boring, dull, unnecessary cleverness, superficial. You name it

“The story is not in the words; it's in the struggle.”
― Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy



REVIEW 1: City of Glass

An interesting PoMo novella. Auster's first novel/second book/first of his 'New York Trilogy', 'City of Glass' is simultaneously a detective novel, an exploration of the author/narrative dynamic, and a treatise on language. I liked parts, loved parts, and finished the book thinking the author had written something perhaps more interesting than important.

My favorite parts were the chapters where Auster (actual author Auster) through the narrator Quinn acting as the detective Auster explored Stillman's book: 'The Garden and the Tower: Early Visions of the New World'. I also enjoyed the chapter where Auster (character Auster) and Quinn (acting as detective Auster) explored Auster's (character Auster) Don Quixote ideas. Those chapters reminded me obliquely (everything in City of Glass is oblique) of Gaddis.

In the end, however, it all seemed like Auster had read Gaddis wanted to write a PoMo novel to reflect the confusing nature of the author/narrator/translator/editor role(s) of 'Don Quixote', set it all in Manhatten, and wanted to make the prose and story fit within the general framework of a detective novel. He pulled it off and it all kinda worked. I'll say more once I finish the next two of the 'New York Trilogy'.

REVIEW 2: Ghosts

An uncanny valley of Gaddis IMHO. 'Ghosts', the second book in Auster's 'New York Trilogy' reminds me what I both like and don't like about MFA writers. Often clever and grammatically precise but they don't say so much. If they were painters their perspective would be perfect and their posters would sell, but the pigment or texture or something between the edges is just missing that undercurrent of something to give a real shit about.


REVIEW 3: The Locked Room

Not much to add that I haven't already written in my reviews of Auster's first two 'New York Trilogy' novels. In 'The Locked Room' Auster dances with the same themes, with slightly different variations. The novellas are more brothers to each other instead of cousins. In a lot of ways he reminds me of an earlier generations' Dave Eggers. There is definitely a lot of talent latent in the guy. He certainly can write, but unlike Fitzgerald who was able to tell a similar themed story in his novels and still provide weight. I just didn't feel the gravity. It was like Camus couldn't really decide whether to kill the Arab, didn't know if he cared or not, so he just walked around and killed himself but made the Arab watch.

I don't know. That may not be right. I'll probably just delete this review anyway. Only Otis will read it and I've asked him to delete all my reviews he doesn't like anyway. How do I guarantee this? Well, I could talk about Otis. I could tell you that there are things about author Auster, unrelated to his books I just don't like (who lives in NY Anyway?). He is a bad behaving author (untrue). He keeps sending me his manuscripts and wants me to say nice things about his work (untrue). I don't know. Is Auster married? Maybe, I'll go and console his wife now.

Auster's trilogy of stories are basically the same story with a different slant. Written in the guise of a detective story : man seeks man but is really seeking himself and the nature of his being? All very metaphysical/existential if you like that sort of thing, but highly readable.

Σε αυτή την τριλογία θα άλλαζα τίτλο. Θα την ονόμαζα
" Έτσι ειναι η ζωή" και αφού ειναι έτσι,μπορεί να γίνει και κάπως ετσι και αλλιώς και διαφορετική και πάλι ίδια και ξανά αλλιώτικη.

Δεν είμαι σίγουρη τι να γράψω για αυτό το βιβλίο. Δεν θα ήθελα να μπω σε στερεότυπα και κοινά λόγια. Άλλωστε αυτός ειναι και ο σκοπός του βιβλίου, δεν χωράει σε πλαίσια,σε συνηθισμένες πλοκές με αρχή-μέση-τέλος. Αποτελεί απο μονο του"είδος",υπηρετεί δικούς του κανόνες ρεαλισμού,ωμότητας,φαντασίας και ισως αυτογνωσίας ή απελπισμένης προσπάθειας προς την αυτογνωσία.

Και στις τρεις ιστορίες ο συγγραφέας ειναι οι ήρωες του και οι ήρωες του -δλδ ο ίδιος- ειναι υπάρξεις που ζουν, εξελίσσονται,μεταλλάσσονται, ψάχνονται,διαμορφώνονται μπερδεύονται και κρατούν σημειώσεις σε ένα υπέροχο κόκκινο σπιράλ σημειωματάριο.(ένα τέτοιο πρέπει να πάρουμε όλοι θαρρώ).
Αυτές λοιπόν οι υπάρξεις προσπαθούν με αυτοθυσία να μην παρεκκλίνουν απο τους πραγματικούς τους εαυτούς οι οποίοι-όπως και ο συγγραφέας-δεν πρέπει να χάσουν την αλήθεια τους μέσα στο ψέμμα που δημιουργούν οι ίδιοι ανάμεσα σε αυτόν τον κόσμο και τον κόσμο της φαντασίας. Δεν πρέπει να χαθούν,δεν πρέπει να χάσουν το νόημα. ΑΠΟΤΕΛΕΣΜΑ: αρνητικό. Δεν τα καταφέρνουν.
Όλοι αυτοί οι ήρωες μπορεί και να είμαστε εμείς οι ίδιοι ή κάποιοι που προσποιούνται πως ειναι εμείς.

[Ας μην τρελαθούμε άλλο ...]

Κοντολογίς, αν ψάχνεται γιατί και πως καθαρογραμμένα και αυτονόητα, αν θέλετε αναγνωρίσιμο και συγκεκριμένο τροπο γραφής με αναλύσεις και μυθιστορηματική πλοκή και ως εκ τούτου ένα καποιο τέλος, ΜΗΝ το διαβάσετε.

Αυτή βεβαίως κατα την γνώμη μου ειναι και η μαγεία του συγγραφέα. Απέριττη,ανεπιτήδευτη, χαοτική. Μια μαγεία που σε παρασύρει σε άλλη πραγματικότητα σε διττή και συμβολική ομορφιά με μια απογοητευτική κοσμοθεωρία.

Καλή ανάγνωση;
Πολλούς ασπασμούς!!

* Με συγκλόνισε ο μονόλογος του γιου Πίτερ Στιλμαν.

CRITIQUE:

Consummate Metafiction

If you’re interested in reading just one example of metafiction, I can’t think of any better work than "The New York Trilogy" (except perhaps Thomas Pynchon’s n  "The Crying of Lot 49").n

Paul Auster mightn’t get the same accolades as other writers of post-modern fiction, if only because he has built a loyal readership that doesn’t depend on post-modern academics and spin merchants:

n"This recognition by a non-academic community may account for the lack of critical attention given to The New York Trilogy." ("Paul Auster: Bloom's Modern Critical Views")

Paul Auster’s fiction is innovative without making ostentatious claims to either inordinate length or gratuitous experimentalism. In fact, he seems to regard experiment as a mere transitional step on the way to perfection:

n  "I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don't know what you're doing."n  
n  
n  "When you become aware of what your limits have been so far, then you’re able to expand them. And every artist has limits. No one can do everything. It’s impossible. What’s beautiful about art is that it circumscribes a space, a physical and mental space. If you try to put the entire world into every page, you turn out chaos. Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about."n

A Sense of Plenitude and Economy

By these standards, the Trilogy is both beautiful and highly structured. At 314 pages, it’s totally focussed (it’s quite the opposite of chaotic maximalism or excessivism), yet, like the detective fiction or mysteries adored by the character Daniel Quinn, what appeals so much is its "sense of plenitude and economy":

n  "In the good mystery there is nothing wasted, no sentence, no word that is not significant...The world of the book comes to life, seething with possibilities, with secrets and contradictions."n

An Organic Part of the Written Word

The Trilogy is also a highly philosophical work. However, unlike most post-modern fiction, the philosophy is tightly wound into the structure or narrative of the novel. The philosophy is almost inseparable from the fiction itself. It’s no mere gratuitous insertion designed to contribute to either length or literary pretension. In other words, it’s both relevant and essential to the fiction:

n  "Over the years, I’ve been intensely interested in the artificiality of books as well. I mean, who’s kidding whom, after all. We know when we open up a book of fiction that we’re reading something that is imaginary, and I’ve always been interested in exploiting that fact, using it, making it part of the work itself. Not in some dry, academic, metafictional way, but simply as an organic part of the written word."n

The Triple Meaning of the Private Eye

This applies equally to the manner in which Auster co-opts elements of detective fiction to pursue his goals. In contrast to Robert Coover, he doesn’t just exploit genre conventions to house a story or myth he has invented.

Auster sees detective fiction as related to the role of both the author and the reader. In the words of Quinn:

n  "The detective is the one who looks, who listens, who moves through this morass of objects and events in search of thought, the idea that will pull all these things together and make sense of them. In effect, the writer and the detective are interchangeable. The reader sees the world through the detective’s eye, experiencing the proliferation of its details as if for the first time. He has become awake to the things around him, as if they might speak to him, as if, because of the attentiveness he now brings to them, they might begin to carry a meaning other than the simple fact of their existence. Private eye. The word held a triple meaning for Quinn. Not only was it the letter ‘i’, standing for ‘investigator’, it was ‘I’ in the upper case, the tiny life-bud buried in the body of the breathing self. At the same time, it was also the physical eye of the writer, the eye of the man who looks out from himself into the world and demands that the world reveal itself to him. For five years now, Quinn had been living in the grip of this pun."n

Each of the three novellas is a mirror image of a private eye novel (not to mention the works of Cervantes, Sterne, Poe and Hawthorne), only, this being Paul Auster, there is a "deft little twist" or reversal in the image. It can’t be and isn’t a perfect analogue of the real object. In the first story, the private eye is a crime writer who pretends to be the fictive detective Paul Auster, in order to accept an assignment. In the third story, a writer very much like the real Paul Auster becomes the literary executor of another writer who has disappeared, so the writer sets out to discover his whereabouts and for a while to write his biography. In the second novella, the real detective, Blue, progressively takes on the role of an author during the process of speculating about the reports he’s required to write for his client, White.

The Perils of Invention and Make-Believe

A detective (particularly in the police force) is a vital part of a legal process that aims to successfully prosecute the perpetrator of a crime. Thus, they must be concerned with the collection of facts that can be used to prove guilt. Paradoxically, fiction is a work of the imagination that does its best to appear real. It strives for verisimilitude and credibility:

n  "Since this story is based entirely on facts, the author feels it his duty not to overstep the bounds of the verifiable, to resist at all costs the perils of invention."n

This statement is part of an almost Nabokovian game, because we readers know and understand that the whole novel is make-believe.

Auster builds his metaphysics on the foundation of facts and empiricism, before embracing the challenge of metafiction.

Speculating on the Other

The author, the reader and the private eye alike take it upon themselves to peer into the world of the other:

n  "If thinking is perhaps too strong a word at this point, a slightly more modest term - speculation, for example - would not be far from the mark. To speculate, from the Latin speculatus, meaning mirror or looking glass. For in spying out at Black across the street, it is as though Blue were looking into a mirror, and instead of merely watching another, he finds that he is also watching himself."n

Fiction is therefore a reflective process.

Blue has previously thought of his own inner life in terms of darkness. Yet his pursuit of Black (no matter how confusing) has allowed him to channel some reflected light on his own self. Nevertheless, Blue gets caught up in the persona of an other (namely Black).

Observed by Another

So we have a scene in which Black is reading a book, and Blue is watching Black reading it. Inevitably, Blue speculates:

n  "It seems perfectly plausible to him that he is also being watched, observed by another in the same way he has been observing Black."n

This other other might be another character in the fiction, or it might be us the readers (who begin and end outside the realm of fiction).

Fiction entangles and ensnares the reader in a hall of mirrors, in which everybody is both watcher and watched:

n  "They have trapped Blue into doing nothing, into being so inactive as to reduce his life to almost no life at all. He feels like a man who has been condemned to sit in a room and go on reading a book for the rest of his life."n

The Severity of Inwardness and Solitude

Auster also approaches this dilemma from the perspective of the author, who turns their back on the real world in order to create a fictional world. A writer must learn to live with "the severity of his inwardness" and the consequences of his isolation. Perhaps the author doesn’t really exist outside the work of fiction, in that they vanish and become someone else when they’re not writing. They might also die when their writing is done:

n  "What will happen when there are no more pages in the red notebook?"n

In the third novella, the author Fanshawe disappears, leaving behind a beautiful wife and child (Daniel), allowing his childhood friend (also a budding author) to take his place as loving husband and attentive father.

Traditionally, detective fiction has reinforced the reader’s confidence in the power of logical analysis to solve a crime or understand the world (including the world within the book). Here, Auster uses the genre to create a work of fiction that questions the ability of logic and language to convey and understand the outside world and the other, not to mention oneself.

The Trilogy is a book that constantly stimulated me while I was reading it, and already beckons me toward a re-reading.



An image from the graphic novel "City of Glass" by Paul Auster, Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli

SOUNDTRACK:

Robyn Hitchcock - "Beautiful Girl"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYfB4...

Robyn Hitchcock - "Glass Hotel"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlxcH...

Robyn Hitchcock - "Linctus House"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X4Sh...

Robyn Hitchcock - "I Saw Nick Drake"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2tHV...




HOMAGE:

Virginia Stillman and the Two Misses Fanshawe
[An Homage]

Let me tell you a little about myself, so I can then move on and start this story at the beginning.

When I first moved to Manhattan in 1985, I gravitated to Chelsea. This was a natural consequence of the fact that I had stayed in the Chelsea Hotel for two weeks in 1982 and had got familiar with the area.

I found a small apartment in a three-storey brownstone walk-up that didn’t eat up too much of my savings. I sub-let it from Mrs. Jane Fanshawe, an attractive widow in her early 50’s, who lived in the building. Her daughter-in-law, Sophie Fanshawe, lived in her own apartment on the same floor as me. Her husband, Jane’s son, was a writer who had recently disappeared and was believed to have died. The only other tenant in the building was a woman in her late twenties called Virginia Stillman.

Sophie had originally lived in my apartment, but moved to a larger one, when it became available, which left a vacancy that I agreed to fill.

One night, soon after I moved in, I was just about to go to bed, when the phone rang. The person on the other end of the line asked, “Paul Auster?” The name wasn’t familiar to me. I responded, “No, Marvin Graye.”

This happened a further three nights in a row, until finally I surrendered and said, “Yes.”

“Good, Paul. The board has approved your fee. It wants you to keep the man across the road under surveillance. You will receive a weekly payment of $350, upon submission of a weekly report. Do you have a pen?”

I did, and then wrote down the P.O. box number he gave me.

Despite the late hour, I opened the curtain in my lounge, and used my new binoculars to spot the dark-haired man in the apartment on the third floor of the house across the road. He was sitting at a desk illuminated by an old anglepoise lamp. Unlike the previous nights I had seen him, he wasn’t writing in a red notebook. He was reading a book. When he turned the page, I could just make out that it was “Don Quixote”.

My job was to document the man’s activities each week. For the first week, there was nothing much to report. I haven’t read it since school, but “Don Quixote” is a pretty long book. Besides, he didn’t seem to be reading it from cover to cover. He jumped around within the book, as if he was trying to find a particular passage or was trying to check something he had remembered.

During the week, he received no visitors, nor, as far as I could tell, any phone calls. However, about 8pm on Friday night, there was a knock on the door, and an attractive woman I recognised as Virginia Stillman walked in, holding a bottle of champagne. When she handed it to him, he went to kiss her on the cheek. She moved her head, so that their lips collided in what seemed to start a passionate kiss. She nudged him towards the couch, where he spread out full-length on his back. Meanwhile, she walked over to the window and drew the curtains. I have no other verifiable facts about what happened this evening.

The next Friday, when it was still light, I was surprised to see Sophie Fanshawe visit the man, who by now I inferred was a writer, despite how little writing he seemed to be doing, even compared with the amount entailed in the reports I had committed to.

If Virginia Stillman had appeared to be forward, Sophie was even more enthusiastic. She walked into the bedroom, turned on a bedside light and started to remove her blouse. Then she looked out the window, through which it was quite possible that she could see me and my binoculars. She didn’t seem overly alarmed, although she walked over and closed the bedroom curtains.

Sophie arrived at the writer’s apartment each night until the following Thursday, when she seemed to have an argument with him. Nobody drew the curtains this time, because Sophie left the apartment and slammed the front door, leaving the writer to resume his reading.

I took this opportunity to go downstairs in the hope that I would cross paths with Sophie and see what condition she was in. I caught her just as she was entering our building. Although we hadn’t spoken much up to that point, I said I was going out for a drink at the local bar and asked if she was interested. She smiled courteously and replied that she would like to have, but she had to settle some business or other with her mother-in-law.

The following night, Friday, I was surprised to see Mrs. Fanshawe (Jane) enter the writer’s apartment with a bottle of wine and what appeared to be a book wrapped in brown paper.

The writer had set the dining table for a meal for two. He brought out a salad bowl, placed it on the table and opened the wine. It was a white, and Mrs Fanshawe seemed to drink it more voraciously than the writer, as if it was her favourite or something. As they consumed the salad, I could see that Mrs Fanshawe had placed her hand on the writer’s leg, and he had taken no steps to object, which was understandable from my point of view. Pretty soon, they too moved to the couch and drew the curtains, so that I was unable to witness what happened next, though I could and did imagine.

By this time, I had written two reports and received two payments, which I banked in my account. The cheques were drawn by a well-known publishing company. I noticed that the writer had changed his reading matter. He had received some mail, and was now busy apparently transcribing what he had read into his red notebook. A year later, when I met him at a party hosted by Mrs Fanshawe, he gave me a copy of his latest novel. I had never met a novelist before, so I devoured the book quickly, stopping only to note the resemblance of some parts to the reports I had written. But then I suppose it was his life after all (if not his fiction as well).