Ich mag diese Literatur , diesen Existanzialismus. Vielleicht mag ich diese Geschichten auch, weil mir die Figuren so fern sind.

¿Que harías si el teléfono sonara en tu casa, al contestar, buscan a una persona que no conoces?

La mayoría de nosotros, diría número equivocado y se acabó.

Con esta anécdota inicia Ciudad de cristal, primer libro de la trilogía sobre la ciudad de Nueva York que hace el escritor Paul Auster.

Quinn fue un escritor de cierto renombre, su esposa e hijo pequeño murieron, cambio de rumbo y se volvió escritor de novelas policiacas, bajo el seudónimo de William Wilson y su detective se llama Max Work, ha perdido a todos sus amigos, vive solo, en un modesto departamento, no interactúa con nadie, ni siquiera con su agente literario, para el que usa un apartado postal que le sirve de puente de comunicación.

En estas condiciones recibe una llamada

ugh

Fourteeners in a Flowerpot

Poor Auster died two weeks ago so I thought I would read
A book he wrote when he was young and fame a little seed
(The seedling grew and soon enough a forest did ensue
Extending over everything including me and you)
Right now we’re in the Eighties though and Paul's still an unknown
Slender Brooklyn sapling poet without a telephone
Who’d figured out you can’t survive by writing poetry
Cuz verses will not make you rich however hard you try
A flower pot will do just fine if you wish to grow flowers
But what if you want to deploy your formidable powers?
For this the Novel gives you all the breadth and space you need
To bring to full fruition the potential of your seed
So was Paul's seed-potential met in this book made of glass?
As much as I’d like to say Yes my answer’s No Alas
It started off a mystery and quickly drew me in
But somehow my attention dwindled and my eyes grew dim
And about forty pages in I found I’d yawned so much
That my entire jawline smarted at the merest touch
I’m not averse to cleverness or emptiness per se
So long as it’s all written in a funny sort of way
To love a door I think I could if hung on words of wood
If verbs that made it open made it open as it should
Or give me just one character of real flesh and blood
He doesn’t even necessarily have to be a stud
But Quinn left me indifferent and Peter Stillman too
They could have jumped off Brooklyn Bridge for all I cared boo hoo
At just one hundred thirty pages Lord this felt so long
Perhaps it could have been condensed into a single song?

Das war wie ein Rausch! Phantastisch!

No sé ni por dónde empezar a explicar cuánto me gusta esta novelita. No sólo el juego del autor en el que el lector se obsesiona con la historia logrando borrar las líneas de la realidad y la ficción, pero la parodia de lo detectivesco que nos desconcierta con el vaivén del caso al ejercicio de escritura. El autor, con el artificio intertextual que va de Poe a Carroll a Hawthorne y Cervantes, nos confunde al colocar espejos y meternos en el laberinto y en la misma angustia de los personajes. Sin embargo, lo más destacado y lo más memorable de este libro es lo quijotesco y la parodia de la novela caballeresca que convierten al protagonista en un doble de Don Quijote.

Al final nos damos cuenta de que la ficción es una ciudad de cristal y la ciudad de cristal es nada mas un ejercicio de ficción.

La ciudad de cristal traza, a través de las calles de Nueva York, un laberinto de juegos intelectuales, de referencias intertextuales y de trucos de ilusionismo en la identidad de los personajes. Como un Quijote contemporáneo, el escritor de novelas policiacas se convierte en detective para perderse en las calles de una ciudad muy familiar, pero también en las profundidades de un uno mismo desconocido.

More Kafka than Kafka himself!

I know it probably wasn’t even intentional but, to me, City of Glass felt like Auster's exploration of Camus’s absurd hero, wandering through a labyrinth of existential uncertainty and finding meaning in the act of searching itself.

Quinn's internal disorientation and search for purpose, which he ultimately found amidst the absurdity of his circumstances, brought with it a sense of paranoia. Having discovered what he was meant to do, who he was meant to be, and where he was supposed to go, he knew he couldn't afford to waste a single minute. Not him.

I enjoyed reading the book very much, but i have a soft spot for books that can create a surreal, noir-like immersive experience, so i might be biased.

Onto the next entry!

Η κριτική μου βρίσκεται στο Fractal.
https://www.fractalart.gr/gyalini-poli/

احتمالا بحث‌ سلیقه مطرح هستش. نمیدانم. شاید وقتی «سانست پارک» و «اتاق دربسته» رو بخونم نظرم تغییر کنه. تا دو سه فصل مونده به آخرش امتیازم ۲ بود به زور، لکن فصل‌های آخر همه چیز به هم وصل شد و اوضاع خوب شد.
خوبه. می‌دونید. از نظر تکنیکی خوبه. همه چی داره.
علت اینکه حقیر ارتباط خاصی برقرار نکردم یا اینه که نفهمیدم یا این‌که جهان درونی نویسنده باهام سازگار نیست. نوشتن خیلی شجاعت می‌خواد. چیزهای توی ذهنتو میاری روی کاغذ و پخشش می‌کنی تو همه دنیا. همه می‌تونن بخوننش و به تصاویر توی ذهنت دسترسی داشته باشن. نویسنده‌ی صادقی بودن خیلی سخته و خیلی زیباست. بخاطر همین مهم نیست که از کتاب خوشم اومده یا نه. بهرحال از پل استر ممنونم.

Not a real review. Just some random selection from my notes. Hope I can clarify some things for myself 'cause the book stymied me. Stymied, I says!
May contain spoilers. Probably. I have no idea, man. Just to be safe, though, I don't think anyone oughta be reading this.


1.tOur main character, Daniel Quinn, wrote a series of detective novels using the moniker William Wilson. The detective's name was Max Work. When Quinn went to see Peter Stillman, he said his name was Paul Auster.
(Just a vessel for faux people. Like Peter Sellers.)
For your consideration (all from chapter 1, so not spoilers):
"Quinn was no longer that part of him that could write books, and although in many ways Quinn continued to exist, he no longer existed for anyone but himself."
--
"William Wilson, after all, was an invention, and even though he had been born within Quinn himself, he now led an independent life."
--
"He (Quinn) had, of course, long ago stopped thinking of himself as real. If he lived now in the world at all, it was only at one remove, through the imaginary person of Max Work. His detective necessarily had to be real. The nature of the books demanded it."
(Ergo... Daniel Quinn is Paul Auster?
Don't quote me on that.)

2. "In effect, the writer, and the detective are interchangeable."

3.t"The world of the book comes to life, seething with possibilities, with secrets and contradictions."
(Translation: migraine migraine migraine migraine)

4.tA quote from Baudelaire from the book: "Il me semble que je serais toujours bien là où je ne suis pas."
Auster translated this into: "it seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not."
Another translation: "wherever I am not, is the place where I am myself."
(Ergo...Daniel Quinn is Paul Auster is Paul Auster?
Yeah.
You can see how I suck at this game.
Another phrase for sucking at something is flashing sideways)


5. tFrom Chapter 10. Daniel Quinn talked with Paul Auster (the character, not the author...although he is a li'l bit of both. At the same time! Geeenius.) about Don Quixote.
Auster: "...Cervantes, if you remember, goes to great lengths to convince the reader that he is not the author. The book, he says, was written in Arabic by Cid Hamete Benengeli. Cervantes describes how he discovered the manuscript by chance one day in the market at Toledo..."

(Can we change "Cervantes" with "Paul Auster" and "Cid Hamete" with "Paul Auster"? Wait wait. Am I getting the order wrong?
Or "Cervantes" to "Quinn", "Cid Hamete" to "William Wilson"?)

Quinn: "And yet he goes on to say that Cid Hamete Benengeli's is the only true version of Don Quixote's story. All the other versions are frauds, written by imposters. He makes a great point of insisting that everything in the book really happened in the world."
Quinn: "...In some sense, Don Quixote was just a stand-in for himself (Cervantes)."
Auster: "What better portrait of a writer than to show a man who has been bewitched by books?"

(and yet he goes on to say that William Wilson's version is the only true version of Daniel Quinn's stoy.
In some sense, Daniel Quinn was just a stand-in for William Wilson? Or Paul Auster? No. 2, writer and detective is interchangeable...
Rauf is flashing sideways and he's flashing hard)

tFFWD --
Auster again: "...But Cid Hamete, the acknowledged author, never makes an appearance....The theory I present in the essay is that he is actually a combination of four different people...."
Auster again: "....The idea was to hold a mirror up to Don Quixote's madness, to record each of his absurd and ludicrous delusions, so that when he finally read the book himself, he would see the error of his ways."

(But William Wilson, the acknowledged author never makes an appearance...is actually a combination of 4 people?
To record each of Quinn's absurd and ludicrous delusions, etc.)

Auster again: "...Don Quixote, in my view, was not really mad. He only pretended to be. In fact, he orchestrated the whole thing himself. Remember: throughout the book Don Quixote is preoccupied by the question of posterity. Again and again he wonders how accurately his chronicler will record his adventures."

(Quinn was not really mad...he orchestrated the whole thing himself. Major hint or major misinterpretation???)

tFFWD again --
Auster's theory: "Cervantes hiring Don Quixote to decipher the story of Don Quixote."

(Auster using Quinn to decipher the story of Quinn?? That's a good idea for a sitcom.)

Quinn: "But you still haven't explained why a man like Don Quixote would disrupt his tranquil life to engage in such an elaborate hoax."
Auster: "That's the most interesting part of all. In my opinion, Don Quixote was conducting an experiment. He wanted to test the gullibility of his fellow men. Would it be possible, he wondered, to stand up before the world and with the utmost conviction spew out lies and nonsense? To say that windmills were knights, that a barber's basin was a helmet, that puppets were real people? Would it be possible to persuade others to agree with what he said, even though they did not believe him?
In other words, to what extent would people tolerate blasphemies if they gave them amusement?
The answer is obvious, isn't it?"

(Quinn wants to test the gullibility of men -- would it be possible to persuade others to agree with what he said, even though they did not believe him?)

I'm sure no one read this far. Now I can confess something embarassing. My favorite Godfather film is the third one!!! Phewf. Glad I got that out of my chest...


6.tAnother character, Peter Stillman, Sr. really believed in this theory:
"If the fall of man also entailed a fall of language, was it not logical to assume that it would be possible to undo the fall, to reverse its effects by undoing the fall of language, by striving to recreate the language that was spoken in Eden?
If man could learn to speak this original language of innocence, did it not follow that he would thereby recover a state of innocence within himself?"
IMPORTANT for the ending.

Number 7 is definitely a major spoiler. Unless I got it wrong. Then it's just a weird cherry on top of this weird sundae. You've been warned...






7.tAfter the long discussion about Quixote and Cervantes, Daniel Quinn met Daniel Auster, Paul's little boy. Daniel Auster would be the same age as Daniel Quinn's dead son -- DQ's wife and son died at the same time.
Then D.A. said: "Everybody's Daniel!"
Just some stupid thing a kid said or important to the story?
But looking back at my notes....I don't know. I'm still stymied.
Aren't I?

Quinn made it all up? No. Paul Auster made Quinn made it all up?? That's kinda M. Night Shyamalan-y.
In the end: Quinn kept writing and writing on his red notebook ("...something about it [the notebook:] seemed to call out to him -- as if its unique destiny in the world was to hold the words that came from his pen") and then he lost his Innocence...because he was no longer "in the dark."
Quinn suffered the Fall of Language. He wanted to write about "infinite kindnesses of the world and all the people he had ever loved. Nothing mattered now but the beauty of all this. He wanted to go on writing about it, and it pained him to know that this would not be possible."t

Plutôt que de vous philosopher au milieu d'un roman conventionnel, comme Kundera. Auster place ses personnages dans des situations philosophiques.
Une réflexion sur l'Identité, la place d'un individu en ce monde et ses différentes possibilités d'être qui il veux, de s'oublier totalement au point parfois de devenir un autre.
Bref pas évident à appréhender mais ULTRA COUP DE COEUR ! 5/5