For a work that starts so strongly, The New York Trilogy descends into banal gibberish remarkably quickly, and continues in this mode until its unsurprising, unenlightening denouement. Presumably the result of the young Auster having improvised his opening in a fever-dream, put it aside, and then felt constrained but uninspired to continue it at a later date, this opening section is a small marvel of verbal invention and imagination, and entirely worthy of the two other would-be masters that possibly inspired it: Peter Handke (in the play Kaspar) and Werner Herzog (in the film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser). That this sub-genre (of the child locked in the room and forced to develop or not develop its own language) is essentially a cliche is not a problem; in fact it helps propel us into the story, and when couched in terms of the book's other cliches (the crime novelist-become-detective, the Calvino-esque metafictional first few pages) is made to shine in a whole new light. Still, it's brief. Auster, a Beckett disciple, seems to pay homage to his hero and quickly decide it's not worth the effort, and from then on it's as if he's given in to an early, disillusioned middle-age. The prose is wooden, the concepts shallow, the plot non-existent. Every promising lead is forgotten. As to the idea of New York as a setting, forget it - this could be anywhere. Is Auster making comment on the post-modern city's anonymity, or is it just an accident of publishing/marketing that put these three fairly unrelated pieces together and called them a trilogy? Late in the book (in 'The Locked Room') he offers a trite and unconvincing explication of the three pieces as a trilogy, a typically Austerian author's-voice intrusion which feels like an afterthought and does nothing but break the admittedly tenuous flow. By now every mistake of the young over-reaching storyteller has been committed repeatedly. 'Show don't tell'? Nope, Auster's determined to tell - and just in case you miss his meaning he'll spell it out for you. To a degree, I feel for him. The whole idea of this alter-ego (Fanshawe) who disappears bequeathing a lot of unfinished manuscripts to our narrator who has always idolised him - I mean it's the fever-dream inspired-opening-without-a-follow-up scenario in a nutshell, right? And in a way it's an admirable way to tackle the situation - head-on, with a maximum of self-awareness. The type of idea a thousand writers have probably had ever since they first read Borges's 'Pierre Menard'. But if there is a lesson to be learnt here it's 'APPROACH WITH CAUTION'. Self-referential becomes vacuous so easily! From memory I have read this thing twice now, despite my bad first impression. Why? Because I want to like Auster. He makes you feel as if maybe, one day, he'll stumble upon some revelation. But ultimately I suspect he's just too conflicted, capable of inspired passages but too in thrall to the demands of the professional author. You ask me, almost everything he writes has a stilted unnaturalness that bespeaks of either lack of sufficient editing or straight-up not keeping his eye on the ball. Moon Palace was passable, The Music of Chance almost alive; in Oracle Night he just about convinced me he was on the verge of saying something, but when it wasn't forthcoming I gave up and didn't look back. Perhaps tellingly, I came to Auster via a chapter from his early pseudonymous crime novel Squeeze Play, which was included by Michael Dibdon in The Picador Book of Crime Writing, and this piece shone (I thought) more than almost anything in that anthology save Raymond Chandler, or anything Auster has written since. Is this whole subsequent heir-to-Beckett/poet-laureate-of-New-York 'literary' schtick just a case of Auster taking himself too seriously? It might be.

As an aside, does anyone else find Auster's infrequent but jarringly out-of-key sexual passages disturbing? I think it's the way he narrates them so matter-of-factly, usually in a single sentence, after obsessing over trivial details for pages. It's almost as if some bolt of self-expression suddenly breaks through all the consciously-impersonal meandering. Stillman puts 'his worm' in 'whores' who 'squirm'. The narrator of 'The Locked Room' 'finds' himself opposite an exquisite Tahitian prostitute in Paris. Most disturbingly, in The Music of Chance, Nash (the hitherto eminently-sensible adult protagonist) falls obsessively in love with a prostitute brought into his life by the younger, reckless Pozzi. Nothing wrong with that, but it's so glossed-over, so abrupt, working only as a plot-device, that again I'm forced to wonder if it's some unwanted intrusion from Auster's personal life that he has tried to edit out of existence only to be thwarted by its necessity to the plot. Equally as repellent is the scene in 'City of Glass' where Quinn meets Paul Auster's wife, whom Auster-as-narrator eulogises in vomit-worthy tones as if (I can't help thinking) asking forgiveness for those other scenes. Maybe I'm reading this wrongly - certainly Auster gives us little to aid in our interpretation of these stylistic hiccups - and I'm not suggesting he should excise all sexuality from his writing. At least not on principle. But, well, either explore it meaningfully or, yes, excise it. Beckett did without it, after all, whatever went on in his personal life. As it is, it just feels to me as if every 200 pages or so Auster opens his trench-coat to compulsively reveal his naked prick then hides it away again and pretends it never happened. Embarrassing all round.

Interesante libro que me ha dejado un rato largo pensando. Eso si, quien se decida por este libro esperando encontrar una clásica novela de detectives, lo más probable es que salga decepcionado, Auster utiliza la estructura de novela policial apenas como una herramienta para un juego literario de opuestos y cruce de identidades mucho mas complejo, que invita a reflexionar sobre la identidad, sobre lo que conocemos de nosotros mismos, sobre personas que no son lo que aparentan, o sobre el riesgo de dejarse llevar por las obsesiones.
Es una novela con una prosa ágil pero que exige un rol activo de parte del lector; he terminado el libro y vuelvo a releer algunas lineas con mas pausa y cuanto más reflexiono y lo analizo creo que más estrellas podría darle, pero también es cierto que hay ciertas mesetas que se me hicieron algo pesadas, sobre todo en Fantasmas.

Cabe aclarar que La trilogía de Nueva York es el compendio de tres novelas (Ciudad de cristal, Fantasmas y La habitación cerrada) editadas por separado a mediados de los 80’s pero que referencian temas en común, y particularmente en La habitación cerrada se da que uno puede encontrar llaves que llevan a las otras novelas.

Me parece que no es un novela fácil de recomendar, pero en lo personal me ha gustado.
3,5

I can't believe I read this all the way through, but I just kept thinking that at some point, something has to happen. I was disappointed. The writing is mechanical and boring. It's like being told a story by someone barely interested what they are saying. There is no experience to it, no stake in the characters, and like I said, nothing of note really happens. When Auster makes an attempt to wrap up the disjointed and feeble plot lines after two and three-quarter books of emptiness and abrupt endings, it feels like he is just throwing words and sentences out in order to get it over with. At this point, I didn't care. I just wanted the book finished so I could move on to something with even a little more substance.

Μετά το αρχικό σοκ που συνοδεύτηκε από ένα υπόκωφο "μαλακατιδιαβασαμολις", ήρθε αυτή η γλυκιά συνειδητοποίηση ότι ο Οστερ είναι ένας σπουδαίος συγγραφέας και ότι, ευτυχώς για μένα, έχω ακόμα πολλά βιβλία του να διαβάσω. Είναι σπουδαίος για όλα τα αστεράκια που θα δείτε να διακοσμούν τις κριτικές των βιβλίων του αλλά κυρίως για όλα όσα δεν μπορεί να μεταφέρει μία τυπική κριτική - αν υποθέσουμε ότι το ασυνάρτητο κείμενο που γράφω αυτή τη στιγμή είναι κάτι τέτοιο.

Διορθώστε με αν κάνω λάθος, αλλά αν αυτά τα βιβλία γράφτηκαν την δεκαετία του '80, θα ήταν μεν παρακινδυνευμενο αλλά καθόλου άστοχο να ειπωθεί οτι στον κύριο Οστερ χρωστάμε ένα ολόκληρο είδος plot twist και μπορεί σήμερα, το σωτήριο έτος 2021, να μην μας λέει και πολλά - έχουμε φάει με το κουτάλι τα αρχέτυπα του Χίτσκοκ και έχουμε συνηθίσει αριστουργήματα σαν το Donnie Darko να προβάλλονται Παρασκευή βράδυ στο Star- αλλά αυτό δεν μειώνει ούτε στο ελάχιστο την αξία του. Ούτε της Τριλογίας ούτε του Χίτσκοκ ούτε του Donnie Darko. Μην παρεξηγηθώ με κανέναν τους και δεν το θέλω παναΐαμ.

Με συγχωρείτε, βρίσκομαι σε παράκρουση, είναι όμως τόσο σπουδαίο στα σημεία το βιβλίο που μόλις τελείωσα που δεν μπορώ παρά να ενδώσω σε αυτή, ίσως μάλιστα, τώρα που αποδέχτηκα τη μοίρα μου, να στείλω μια νοητή αγκαλιά στον κύριο Οστερ στην άλλη άκρη της γης και, αφού ήδη οι γείτονες έχουν καλέσει το 100, να κλείσω το μάτι στον Περεκ και να του πω ότι το μικρό Ταξίδι του στο Χειμώνα απέκτησε επιτέλους απόγονο. Μπράβο, να τους ζήσει.

Siamo forgiati dal mondo circostante, eppure c’è qualcosa in noi che ci rende unici, come un seme che racchiude la possibilità della pianta. Tale dualismo trova la massima tensione nelle grandi metropoli, in cui la vita brulica in un ammasso di volti sconosciuti, interscambiabili gli uni con gli altri. Nella folla che ci sommerge riconosciamo l’indistinguibilità altrui, e con orrore prendiamo coscienza che siamo parte integrante di tale moltitudine confusa. Siamo assaliti dal dubbio che, se per ciascuno di quei volti sconosciuti noi siamo altrettanto anonimi, allora non esiste più alcun nocciolo d’identità nella nostra persona. Ciascuno può essere chiunque, dimenticare sé stesso in una metropoli di vetro, così priva di barriere che anneghiamo nelle vite degli altri, o perdere la coscienza del proprio ruolo e da inseguitori scoprire d’essere inseguiti (perché anche i ruoli diventano interscambiabili con facilità). Ed infine cercare la salvezza nei legami che ci distinguono, come l’amore per un amico, un figlio o una moglie, ma solo per scoprire che tali relazioni sono il risultato della casualità, perché i legami che ci uniscono agli altri avrebbero potuto metterci in relazione con tutt’altre persone e la nostra vita sentimentale avrebbe potuto benissimo essere quella di un altro. Auster esplora questi tre livelli di perdita di coscienza di sé, o meglio di rivelazione della propria mancanza d’identità, facendosi portatore dello spaesamento e della frustrazione degli esseri umani prigionieri d’un mondo privo di barriere, e quindi privo di forme.

Жила-була й переклала, чи то пак, переклала ще бозна коли, а потім сто років копирсалася з вичиткою, бо це шалено заморочний текст, весь вибудуваний саме на тих дієсловах, які ти зазвичай у перекладі сяк-так оминаєш во ім’я притомної української стилістики (бути, говорити, думати, здаватися – оцей весь блок). Скажімо, перше ж речення: “It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not”. Стилістично адекватний переклад: “А почалося все з невірно набраного номера, трьох телефонних гудків глупої ночі й голосу по той бік слухавки, який звернувся не до нього”. На жаль, сюжетно адекватний переклад звучить таки як гуглтранслейт (“звернувся до того, ким він не був”) - ясно, що вся моя тестова група забанила цю версію з дикими криками, тестова група права, але по суті голос звертається до детектива, оповідач у той момент не був детективом, але стане по ходу внаслідок оцих адресованих не йому слів, і всі його колізії з ідентичністю лежать в основі сюжету. Себто не переклад, суцільна історія втрат і скрежету зубовного.

Це такі галюцинаторні американські витоки постмодерного детектива (де, як пам’ятаємо, питання не в тому, хто вбивця, а в тому, хто детектив) з високої полиці, дуже семіотичні – про дистанцію між знаком і означуваним, себто словом і предметом, який те описує, а також про співвідношення між актом споглядання/спостереження й ідентичністю (і того, хто споглядає, і того, кого споглядають), про нелегкий баланс між зовнішнім і внутрішнім і про все на світі. Читач також довідається чимало про мізки й какашки Волта Вітмена, історію Бруклінського мосту, ранні етапи розвитку американського роману й інтерпретації міфу про Вавилонську вежу через віки. Не можу сказати, що це мій улюблений жанр, країна чи епоха – хоча призма останньої повісті у трилогії таки робить перші дві повісті ретроспективно кумеднішими – але було цікаво.

Вийде в Основах, ну, або не вийде, враховуючи їхній track record. Одне із двох.

I quite enjoyed this trilogy. Originally published as three separate volumes - City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986) are separate stories, though linked by events and characters.

City of Glass is about Daniel Quinn, a writer of mystery novels, which he publishes under a pseudonym. In the middle of the night Quinn receives a phone call. The caller asks for Paul Auster, of Auster Detective Agencies; though he rightly states that he's not Auster and hungs up, the call intrigues him. When some time passes and the telephone rings again, again asking for Auster, Quinn doesn't hesitate, and names himself as the detective, and takes up an intriguing case. Thus begins a dreamlike story of identity and consciousness, where the borders between reality and fiction are slim, if any.

Ghosts is about a private detective named Blue, who's tailing a character named Black, though who really might be watching who is never revealed. A bit dragging and confusing after a pretty straightforward City of Glass, it's the Two Towers of this trilogy, though thankfully it reads much faster.

The Locked Room, the concluding installment, might be the best of the lot. A man called Fanshawe disappears, leaving behind his pregnant wife and a whole stack of papers, and a message to his childhood friend to take care of it. The friend is a writer who suffers from a writer's block; he decides to publish the manuscripts under Fanshawe's name, and soon after marries his wife and replaces Fanshawe in the family. But that's just the beginning, as his life is slowly completely changing in ways he never thought it would.

These three losely connected short novels are genuinely disquiteting and delightful in their loose connections; characters appear and disappear, and more is lost than found. It's never clear who is the watcher and who the watched. The closest comparison I can think up is a David Lynch film where more questions are unanswered than not. Still, the experience of reading is satysfying; full of broodings about the nature of art and existence, with ubiquitous tropes. The writing style is not confining and especially pretentious; might revisit this in the future.

This maybe a love letter to the city of New York, and where Auster takes classic American detective writers like Chandler and gives them a postmodern twist, but The New York Trilogy, his three early metaphysical mystery novellas, are equally fuelled by a European sensibility. There is a stark and ghostly existential tone running through the stories, through confused character identities and their reflections of one another, and where fact and fiction become progressively more difficult to isolate. Just like reading this book for the first time more than ten years ago, I was completely transfixed by these three tales again, with the obvious comparisons to both Beckett & Kafka. It's no surprise really that Auster has been more popular in Europe than in America, and I knew from my time in Paris that he is much admired there. What I loved about the trilogy is that Auster isn't really in it for the whodunnit or end result - open-ending endings here, but rather takes the unconventional approach to the classic detective set-up, by adopting the act of detecting to try and find oneself having lost oneself after keeping a close eye on somebody else. Auster really does a great job of putting the reader in the shoes of his protagonists, as they venture towards the edge of an existential abyss: we experience as they experience: the bewilderment; the feeling of despair being trapped in a maze of one's own mind; the creepy claustrophobic presence of being watched. A quite brilliant piece of work.

(Book 219 from 1001 books) - The New York Trilogy (New York Trilogy #1-3), Paul Auster

The New York Trilogy is a series of novels by Paul Auster. Originally published sequentially as City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986), it has since been collected into a single volume.

The first story, City of Glass, features a detective-fiction writer become private investigator who descends into madness as he becomes embroiled in a case. It explores layers of identity and reality, from Paul Auster the writer of the novel to the unnamed "author" who reports the events as reality to "Paul Auster the writer", a character in the story, to "Paul Auster the detective", who may or may not exist in the novel, to Peter Stillman the younger, to Peter Stillman the elder and, finally, to Daniel Quinn, protagonist. "City of Glass" has an intertextual relationship with Cervantes' Don Quixote. Not only does the protagonist Daniel Quinn share his initials with the knight, but when Quinn finds "Paul Auster the writer," Auster is in the midst of writing an article about the authorship of Don Quixote. Auster calls his article an "imaginative reading," and in it he examines possible identities of Cide Hamete Benengeli, the narrator of the Quixote.

The second story, Ghosts, is about a private eye called Blue, trained by Brown, who is investigating a man named Black on Orange Street for a client named White. Blue writes written reports to White who in turn pays him for his work. Blue becomes frustrated and loses himself as he becomes immersed in the life of Black.

The Locked Room is the story of a writer who lacks the creativity to produce fiction. Fanshawe, his childhood friend, has produced creative work, and when he disappears the writer publishes his work and replaces him in his family. The title is a reference to a "locked room mystery", a popular form of early detective fiction.

سه گانه نیویورک - پل استر (افق) ادبیات؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: اول اکتبر سال 2010میلادی

عنوان: سه گانه نیویورک: سه رمان پست مدرن: شهرِ شیشه ای؛ ارواح؛ اتاق دربسته؛ نویسنده: پل آستر؛ مترجم: شهرزاد لولاچی؛ خجسته کیهان؛ تهران، نشر افق؛ 1384؛ در 455ص؛ شابک 9643691578؛ چاپ دوم 1386؛ چاپ سوم 1387؛ چاپ ششم 1392؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

مجموعه ای از سه رمان نویسنده ی «پست‌ مدرن» «آمریکایی»، «پل استر» است؛ این سه رمان که هر یک داستان جنایی و شخصیت‌های داستانی مجزایی از هم دارند، تنها به سبب مکان مشترک، سه گانه را تشکیل داده اند؛ عنوانهای این سه رمان، «شهر شیشه ای»، «ارواح» و «اتاق دربسته» هستند

رمان «شهر شیشه ای» نوشته ی «پل استر» یکی از رمانهای «سه گانه ی نیویورک» است؛ در این داستان: «پس از یک تلفن عجیب در نیمه شب، دانیل کویین نویسنده داستانهای پلیسی درگیر پرونده ای میشود که از تمام کتابهایی که تا به حال نوشته است پیچیده تر است؛ دانیل که درگیر پرونده استیلمن شده، تا به آنجا پیش میرود که گذشته ی خویش را فراموش، و تمام هستی خویش را وقف نگهبانی از استیلمن میکند؛

نقل نمونه متن: «شب بود؛ روی تخت دراز کشیده بود، به صدای باران بر پنجره گوش میداد و سیگار میکشید، در فکر بود که باران کی بند میآید و صبح به پیاده روی طولانی خواهد رفت؛ کتاب باز شده ی سفرهای مارکوپولو روی بالش کنارش بود؛ از وقتی که دو هفته پیش آخرین رمان ویلیام ویلسون را تمام کرده بود، وقت گذرانی میکرد؛ راوی و کارآگاه داستانش، «ماکس ورک» معمای جنایات مفصلی را حل کرده، بارها کتک خورده و در لحظه ی آخر جان سالم به در برده بود، و انگار «کوئین» هم از تلاشهای او حسابی خسته شده بود؛ «ورک» در طی سالها به «کوئین» خیلی نزدیک میشد؛ برخلاف «ویلیام ویلسون» که هنوز نامی بیش نبوده، «ورک» بیش از پیش به حقیقت نزدیک میشد؛ در شخصیتهای سه گانه ای که «کوئین» پیدا کرده بود، «ویلسونِ» یاوه گو، «کوئینِ» آلت دست، و «ورک» صدای جانداری بود، که به تمام قضایا معنی میبخشید؛ «ویلسون» حتی اگر توهم هم بود، حیات آن دو دیگر را توجیه میکرد.»؛ پایان نقل

رمان «ارواح» نوشته ی «پل استر»، دومین رمان کوتاه، از مجموعه ی سه گانه ی ایشان است، که بین سالهای 1985میلادی تا سال 1987میلادی منتشر شده است؛ «پل استر» نویسنده ی پست مدرن «آمریکایی» بار دیگر، ماجرایی پلیسی میآفریند که در بستر نگاهی فلسفی تحقق مییابد؛ «استر» موقعیتهای خلاقانه ای را، در روند داستان پیش میگیرد؛ او نه تنها، مشابه دیگر داستانهای کارگاهی-پلیسی، کارآگاه خصوصی را، به عنوان مغز متفکر مطرح نمیکند تا معمای داستان را کشف کند، بلکه از آن شخصیتی میآفریند، که همزمان، باهوش، و با درایت است، خود او نیز صرفا به جزئی از ماجرای معما بدل شده، و در آن حل میشود و اینگونه تراژدی داستان را رقم میزند؛ در این داستان فلسفی؛ با «آبی (کاراگاه خصوصی)» ماهری مواجهیم، که از سوی «سفید» مامور میشود، شخصی به نام «سیاه» را تحت نظر بگیرد، و هر هفته گزارشی از کارهای او تنظیم کند، و برای «سفید» بفرستد؛ «آبی» در روند ماموریت خود، رفته رفته درمییابد با پرونده ای راکد، و غیرعادی مواجه است، که در آن هیچ رویدادی رخ نمیدهد؛ «سیاه» هر روز پشت میزش مینشیند، و میخواند و مینویسد؛ ماهها میگذرند و «آبی» آنقدر «سیاه» را زیر نظر گرفته، که دیگر رفتارش شبیه او شده، و نیازی به مراقبت از او، در خود نمیبیند؛ گزارشها را طبق نظم همیشگی مینویسد، و برای «آبی» میفرستد، و در ذهنش، خیالپردازیهایی درباره ی «سیاه» میکند؛ «سفید» گزارشها را میخواند و دستمزد «آبی» را بدون هیچ توضیح، یا صحبتی برایش پست میکند؛

نویسنده در آخرین کتاب از سری «سه گانه نیویورک» خویش، با وارونه کردن داستانهای معمایی، نوع تازه ای از هنر روایت را آفریده است؛ ایشان در رمان «اتاق در بسته»، کنجکاوی خوانشگر اندیشمند خویش را، برمیانگیزد، و جستجوی پلیسی، و کارآگاهی، برای یافتن حقیقت را به جستجوی نابتر و فلسفیتر کاوش در هویت، بدل میسازد؛ «فنشاو» ناپدید شده است، و از او همسر، فرزند و مجموعه ای داستان، و شعر نمایشنامه بر جای مانده است؛ اما چرا راوی چنین وسواس آمیز، زندگی «فنشاو» صمیمی ترین دوست دوران کودکی خویش را میکاود؟ در «اتاق دربسته»، داستان از زبان اول شخص (نویسنده) روایت میشود؛ «فان شاو» که از دوستان قدیمی راوی کتاب است، به شکل عجیبی ناپدید شده؛ همسر «شاو» که از پیدا شدن او ناامید شده، و میپندارد که شوهرش مرده است، از راوی داستان، که او نیز نویسنده است، میخواهد تا دست نوشته ها، و آثار بر جای مانده از همسر مفقود شده را منتشر کند؛ ادامه ی آشنایی نویسنده با همسر «فن شاو»، به ازدواج آن دو میانجامد، اما با روشن شدن این حقیقت، که «فن شاو» زنده است، داستان مسیر دیگری پیدا میکند؛ راوی تلاش خود را برای یافتن وی آغاز میکند، و در آن مسیر، با زوایای شخصیتی، و زندگی او بیشتر آشنا میشود؛ روندی که به یک پایان نسبتا غیرمنتظره میانجامد. در آثار استر، ترکیبی از تفکرات روانشناختی و رگه هایی از پوچ گرایی و بدبینی دیده می شود؛ با اینحال وی در این زمینه راه افراط را نپیموده، و خوانشگر با خواندن «اتاق دربسته» دچار آشفتگی و دلزدگی نمیشود، اگرچه ممکن است در بخشهایی از داستان و در مواجه با برخی پیچیدگیها اندکی سردرگم شود؛ «اتاق دربسته» داستان سوم سه گانه نیویورک بشمار میآید؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 20/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 21/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

أعتقد أن الميزة السحرية في أوستر ، أنه يكتب ليكتشف ذاته ، يكتب وكأن أحدا لن يقرأه

I knew going in that The New York Trilogy offered three very untraditional takes on the detective story.  Given Auster's reputation, this seemed like an interesting ride to take.  It wasn't.  I have never before read a collection where every entry was so uniformly disappointing.  The three stories--all variations on a theme--start fairly well.  But, then each becomes progressively stranger and, even worse, pointless.  I truly wish I could have back the hours I wasted on this book.

Очевидно аз и Пол Остър имаме класическа love/hate връзка.
Не е ясно дали ще последва трета среща.

Но тези няколко любими фрази от "Нюйоркска трилогия" все пак дълбаят в сърцето ми:

We always talk about trying to get inside a writer to understand his work better. But when you get right down to it there is not much to find in there - at least not much different from what you`d find in anyone else.

I am fairly certain now that the things that followed had as much to do with the past as with the present. A number of ancient feelings finally caught up with me that afternoon.

True marriages never make sense.