این کتاب اولین جلد از سه گانه ی نیویورک، معروف ترین اثر پست مدرن پل استره. داستان با یه ظاهر معماگونه و کاراگاهی شروع میشه. اما زیربنای فلسفی و روانشناختی داره. 

دانیل کوئین یه نویسنده ی کتابای پلیسی و کاراگاهیه که توی چند نیمه شب پیاپی تلفن خونش زنگ میخوره و کسی به دنبال یه کاراگاه خصوصی به نام "پل استر" میگرده. بعد از چندبار تماس پیاپی طی چند شب، کوئین تصمیم میگیره خودش رو پل استر معرفی کنه و همین موضوع اونو درگیر مسائل متعددی می کنه. کتاب بیش از اونکه مرتبط با این پرونده باشه، تحولات شخصیتی کوئین رو بررسی می کنه.

کتاب خیلی خاص و متفاوتیه و احتمالا به سلیقه ی کسایی که داستان رو فقط برای فهمیدن اینکه اخرش چی میشه! میخونن چندان سازگار نیست. ازون کتاباییه که باید کتاب رو به خاطر تک تک کلمات و جملاتش و مفهوم درونی هرکدوم خوند. نمادایی که میشه از هرکدومشون تفاسیر متعددی داشت..

Paul Auster's City of Glass reads like Raymond Chandler on Derrida, that is, a hard-boiled detective novel seasoned with a healthy dose of postmodernist themes, a novel about main character Daniel Quinn as he walks the streets of uptown New York City.

I found the story and writing as compelling as Chandler's The Big Sleep or Hammett's The Maltese Falcon and as thought-provoking as reading an essay by Foucault or Barthes. By way of example, here are three quotes from the novel coupled with key concepts from the postmodern tradition along with my brief commentary.

On the first pages of the novel, the narrator conveys mystery writer Quinn's reflections on William Wilson, his literary pseudonym and Max Work, the detective in his novels. We read, "Over the years, Work had become very close to Quinn. Whereas William Wilson remained an abstract figure for him Work had increasingly come to life. In the triad of selves that Quinn had become, Wilson served as a kind of ventriloquist, Quinn himself was the dummy, and Work was the animated voice that gave purpose to the enterprise." ---------- Michel Foucault completely rejected the idea that a person has one fixed inner self or essence serving them as their individual personal identity. Rather, he saw personal identity as defined by a process of on-going, ever changing dialogue with oneself and others. ---------- And Quinn's interior dialogue with Work and Wilson is just the beginning. As the novels progresses, Quinn takes on a number of other identities.

In his role as hired detective (quite an ironic role since Quinn is a fiction writer and has zero experience as a detective), he goes to Grand Central Station to locate a man by the name of Peter Stillman, the man he will have to tail. This is what we read after Quinn spots his man, "At that moment Quinn allowed himself a glance to Stillman's right, surveying the rest of the crowd to make doubly sure he made no mistakes. What happened then defined explanation. Directly behind Stillman, heaving into view just inches behind his right shoulder, another man stopped . . . His face was the exact twin of Stillman's." ---------- The double, the original and the copy, occupies the postmodernists on a number of levels, including a double reading of any work of literature. Much technical language is employed, but the general idea is we should read a work of fiction the first time through in the conventional, traditional way, enjoying the characters and the story.

Our second reading should be more critical than the first reading we constructed; to be good postmodernists, we should `deconstruct' the text to observe and critically evaluate such things as cultural and social biases and underlying philosophic assumptions. And such a second reading should not only be applied to works of literature but to all our encounters with facets of contemporary mass-duplicated society.

"As for Quinn, it is impossible for me to say where he is now. I have followed the red notebook as closely as I could, and any inaccuracies in the story should be blamed on me." ---------- One key postmodern idea is that a book isn't so much about the world as it is about joining the conversation with other books. ---------- Turns out, the entire story here is a construction/deconstruction/reconstruction of a book: Quinn's red notebook. Life and literature living at the intersection of an ongoing conversation - Quinn's red notebook contains references to many, many other books, including the Diary of Marco Polo, Robinson Caruso, the Bible, Don Quixote and Baudelaire. And the story the narrator relates from Quinn's red notebook is City of Glass by Paul Auster. Again, Raymond Chandler on Derrida.

One final observation. Although no details are given, Quinn tells us right at the outset he has lost his wife and son. Quinn's tragedy coats every page like a kind of film. No matter what form a story takes, modern or postmodern or anything else, tragedy is tragedy and if we empathize with Quinn at all, we feel his pain. Some things never change.


New York City author Paul Auster, Born 1947

“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? To any extent. For the proof is that we still read the book. It remains highly amusing to us. And that’s finally all anyone wants out of a book—to be amused.”
― Paul Auster, City of Glass

Auster bey hep kafamda soru işaretleri ile bırakıyorsun beni

O tal vez un 3. Quizá un 5. Qué importa. Libros que teletransportan (en dimensión y transoceánicamente) y un vez allí embelesan. Entonces, ya todo es verosímil, y los personajes una ternura. Es Auster y, dicen, el modelo de toda una autoría. "Te va a encantar, te va a encantar". Tal vez un 3, quizá un 5. Don Quijote se sentiría orgulloso de lo que sobre él tienen aún que decir.

Paul Auster, a guy who ushers you into the silky interior of his brand new Nissan Infiniti, makes sure you've got your seatbelt on, proffers bonbons, then drives you to distraction.

This book is in contravention of TWO of PB's commandments:

- Thou shalt not have a character in thy book with thy own name

- Thou shalt not portray the writing of a novel within thy novel such that the novel within the novel turns out to be the novel the reader is reading

Again, I read this in high-school and I don't remember any of it.

An odd book,
Not a style I am accustomed to reading, yet compelling and strangely enjoyable.
I'm looking forward to the next 2 in the trilogy.

"من هر روز تازه می شوم. وقتی صبح بیدار می شوم، به دنیا می آیم، طی روز رشد میکنم و وقتی در شب میخوابم، می‌میرم"
۲.۵
استر جایی از داستان گفت: "نمیشود آنقدر از چیزی متنفر بود مگر آنکه قسمتی از روحمان آن را بسیار دوست داشته باشد." شاید این جمله پل استر بتونه به نوعی توصیف احساس من نسبت به خودش باشه. به وضوح میدونم که قراره با خوندن کتاب هاش عصبی بشم اما هر بار با همون ذوق و شوق قبلی دوباره یه کتاب دیگه ازش انتخاب میکنم و امیدوارم که به سبک داستان قبلی تموم نشه.
اگر مثل من خودتون رو آنچنان درگیر نام ژانر و سبک اثر ها نمیکنید، پس احتمالا نظرتون درباره یک کتاب بر اساس احساسی هست که از تجربه خوانش اون به دست آوردید.
بعد از دوبار تجربهء خواندن کتاب های آستر، اینبار کمی مطمئن تر میتونم بگم که احساس من نسبت به خواندن کتاب هایش، دلتنگی، ذوق و علاقه زیاد و بعد، نا امیدی مثال نزدنی و ممتد است. نا امیدی ای که در این کتاب به مراتب بیشتر از مون پالاس احساس میشد. شاید حتی بهتر است بگویم شهر شیشه ای برای من نا امید کننده ترین کتابی بود ک در تمام عمرم خوانده ام.
استر استاد ساختن  پایه ای قوی برا ایده های جذابشه. با زیرکی در روح و روانتون لانه و شمارو متقاعد میکنه که به حرف هایش گوش بدید، بعد که مشتاقانه پای صحبت هایش نشستید و منتظر ماندید تا ببینید میخواهد چه طور داستان خود را تمام کند، هر چه که در طول داستان ساخته است را ناباورانه نابود میکند و به وضوح از کار خود لذت میبرد.
شخصیت های اصلی استر همیشه تمایل زیادی به رها کردن خودشون در مفلوک و عصبی کننده ترین موقعیت ممکن دارند. هیچ تلاشی برای بیرون کشیدن خودشون از منجلابی که کاملا بی دلیل برای خود تدارک دیدن نمیکنن و خواننده رو با این سوال رو به رو میکنن که کدوم آدم عاقلی ممکنه با زندگی خودش همچین کاری بکنه. شاید با ۸۰ درصد تصمیمات ام اس فاگ در مون پالاس همزادپنداری میکردم اما انتخاب های کویین در شهر شیشه ای هیچ رقمه تو کتم نرفت. از استفاده ناقصِ روح کاراگاهی در داستان خيلي خوشم اومد و ایده اولیه کتاب به نظرم واقعا خلاقانه بود اما استر طبق معمول همه چیز رو به فنا داد.
یک جمله از این کتاب هست که خیلی ذهن من رو به خودش مشغول کرد، استیلمن به کویین گفت: "زندگی نکردن نفرین است."؛
کِی، کی ما رو نفرین کرد؟ آیا نفرین از این بالاتر هم هست؟

It's pretty rare for a book that's essentially a philosophy/literature/history lecture to be this fun. Full of twists and turns the likes of which can only be found in the most engaging of thrillers; City of Glass kept me enthralled from the first page to the last. But it's not just an enjoyable read. This is a book that makes you think. It makes you think about the nature of stories, about the nature of people who write those stories and the nature of those who read them. This book has left a lasting impression on me.

Absolutely incredible book. To simply describe it as a NY detective story would be an epic understatement. Paul Auster has been one of the authors I've discovered this year and he continues to amaze me. The man is a natural storyteller and he weaves his stories with such cleverness and ease and warmth. His stories are interesting in the way that M.C. Escher's art is, particularly in this case it reminded me of the Drawing Hands, the way the author so cleverly wrote himself into the story, the multitude of layers this story holds and how it all comes together seamlessly. Very quick read. This is the first part of trilogy. So exciting. Highly recommended.

Es tan raro que no sé si es un policial, un ensayo o una novela. Un poco complicado pero se puede seguir mas o menos bien pese a que es terriblemente rebuscado todo.

Vamos a ver, sí me ha gustado y mucho. PERO. Hay momentos en que su pretendida “densidad” es puro esnobismo y eso casi me hace pillarle manía. Por otra parte hay muchas momentos que no interesan lo más mínimo, por ejemplo cuando el prota sigue a su objetivo y vemos su día a día de mierda. Y por ende se pasa todo el libro describiendo las calles sólo por su nombre, lo cual es una puta mierda para el que no vive en su ciudad (por ejemplo, es como si la novela se situara en Barcelona y en lugar de describir el ambiente o las calles me dedico a decir que fue por Rocafort y giró por Urgell TODO EL PUTO RATO Y DURANTE PÁGINAS). El sorprendente inicio, su brillante final y algunas cosas sueltas hacen que valga la pena.