With The Locked Room I have finished Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. These were his first published novellas and put him on the literary map. Throughout the trilogy he builds psychological and mysterious tension. The Locked Room was the best of three truly great stories.

Quinn, the main character from the first book, City of Glass, returns. He is searching for his boyhood friend Ranshawe, who has disappeared. His abandoned wife asks Quinn to find this prolific writer. What happens next I will not say. But it is as full of suspense, twisted incidents and mystery as anything I have ever read. I could go as far as to say that all these authors of psychological thrillers who have been having bestsellers for the last couple decades must have read The New York Trilogy.

I still feel bad that I had not read Paul Auster before he died this year but feel thrilled to have made his acquaintance. I plan to go on and read every book he wrote.

“Every life is inexplicable, I kept telling myself. No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling.” This should be my favorite sort of thing: an forensic investigation into the mystery of another human being. Fanshawe, a man of unusual integrity and unpredictability, disappears. He leaves behind a wife, an unborn child, and a set of brilliant manuscripts. What happened?

Spoiler: We never really find out. And that never finding out is the point: in case we were to miss it, Auster has his novel's narrator consciously tear up the very message that would explain it, afterwards declaring, “In the end, each life is irreducible to anything other than itself.”

Well, if you say so Mr. Auster. But this sort of easy uncertainty makes me uneasy, and it is the reason I went from loving the novel (I still love the beginning, the premise of the thing) to being rather meh about it. In the final chapter, in that last meeting with Fanshawe, we see in Fanshawe’s rhetoric a kind of faithlessness, a despair, a giving up on connection, coupled with the contradictory, hopeful act of giving the narrator the book that would explain his actions. The roots of this ambivalence, I think, go right down to the novel’s author. There is some indication that Paul Auster’s self-conscious lack of a “key” to existence makes him vulnerable to nihilism-light. His novels seem to scattered with statements like, “Lives make no sense… A man lives and then he dies, and what happens in between makes no sense.” And at points like these I wonder if his carefulness in “guarding of the mystery of another” doesn’t slip into a careless of a more metaphysical but just as consequential kind. To quote Richard Rohr, mystery isn't something that cannot be known, but something can be endlessly known. At the end of the day, I'm not all that compelled by Auster's idea of the particular kind of mystery that is a person.

n  These three stories are finally the same story, but each one represents a different stage in my awareness of what it is about.n

It's tempting to seek the solution to the literal mystery of this trilogy. Perhaps it's possible to find it. There are eulogies to the detective fiction genre in City of Glass which are so lovely that they make clear that Mr Auster adores it. If these books are pastiche, they can nevertheless compete with the best 'straight' detective fiction as far as jazz-like detachment goes, and that is the principal appeal of the genre for me. So perhaps there is a correct way to arrange the persons and personas of Quinn, Wilson, Work, Auster, Stillman, Blue, Black, Fanshawe, and the rest.

I think it's better to focus on the emotional mystery. The characters may be separable into two or three persons. However, the books' strength is their sense of things blurring into one, in the way they do if you shake your head to music or squint while looking out from a car on a motorway. The narrators blur into each other. The men who consume the narrators' lives blur into each other. The boundaries blur between points in time and between people in general and between the data from our different senses. The blurring is not a political statement or a narrative device. it is just the write-up of the probing of an impression. I greatly value such writing. Whether the blurring is cause for refined literary pleasure or for mortal panic is for the reader's intuitions to decide. So too is the question of what causes the blurring. Too much work? Too much reading? Too much sex? Human nature? Childhood experience? Obsession? Modern life? Marxian alienation? Poverty? Lack of structure? New York?

I'll end with a quote I've loved rereading. It's from Ghosts, in which the main characters are Blue, White, and Black. It is a good example of Auster's blurring. It also reminds me of two things which move and fascinate me: the song 'Águas de março' and Susan Sontag's lists of her likes and dislikes.

n  Take blue for example, he says. There are bluebirds and blue jays and blue herons. There are cornflowers and periwinkles. There is noon over New York. There are blueberries, huckleberries, and the Pacific Ocean. There are blue devils and blue ribbons and blue bloods. There is a voice singing the blues. There is my father's police uniform. There are blue laws and blue movies. There are my eyes and my name. He pauses, suddenly at a loss for more blue things, and then moves on to white. There are seagulls, he says, and terns and storks and cockatoos. There are the walls of this room and the sheets on my bed. There are lilies-of-the-valley, carnations, and the petals of daisies. There is the flag of peace and Chinese death. There is mother's milk and semen. There are my teeth. There are the whites of my eyes. There are white bass and white pines and white ants. There is the President's house and white rot. There are white lies and white heat. Then, without hesitating, he moves on to black, beginning with black books, the black market, and the Black Hand. There is night over New York, he says. There are the Chicago Black Sox. There are blackberries and crows, blackouts and black marks, Black Tuesday and the Black Death. There is blackmail. There is my hair. There is the ink that comes out of a pine. There is the world a blind man sees. Then, finally growing tired of the game, he begins to drift, saying to himself that there is no end to it. He falls asleep, dreams of things that happened long ago, and then, in the middle of the night, wakes up suddenly and begins pacing the room again, thinking about what he will do next.n

De las tres historias esta fue la mejor.

El final de la trilogia de nueva york

Sin duda la prosa de Auster es muy buena, y me da ganas de leer mucho mas del autor. Le da cierta vuelta de tuerca al genero policial, donde la busqueda de uno mismo, los sentimientos y pensamiento toman un lugar importante en la trama y estan presente en las tres historias.

En el caso de esta novela corta me gustó mucho, es mas la leí mas rapido que las otras dos, mas alla de la prosa, crep que esta ultima es mas afable para leer, quizas porque ya estas acostumbrado a la forma de escribir del autor.

Si, deben leerlo,es super recomendable sin buscan leer algo un poco diferente a al narrativa estandar, por decirlo de algun modo.

it’s going to take me some effort to puzzle everything i read in the final part of the new york trilogy together with the details of the first two books, but even without having quite understood the meaning of everything this was extremely enjoyable.

سه‌گانه نیویورک
جلد سوم: اتاق در بسته
داستان کتاب سوم از سه‌گانه‌ی نیویورک جایی شروع میشه که همسر یکی از دوستان قدیمی راوی داستان بهش زنگ میزنه و اطلاع میده شوهرش فنشا مدت هاست که گم شده و البته احتمال میده که مرده باشه و درخواست می‌کنه که یک دیدار حضوری داشته باشند. در این دیدار حضوری راوی متوجه میشه که فنشا چند رمان و نمایشنامه و شعر نوشته و از همسرش خواسته چاپ شدن یا نشدن و کلا تصمیم در مورد این نوشته ها رو به راوی داستان محول کنه. خلاصه همه چیز طبق روال پیش میره تا جایی که راوی تصمیم میگیره زندگینامه‌ی فنشا رو بنویسه و این شروعی دوباره برای پیدا کردن و شناختن فنشا میشه. این کتاب از سه کتاب قبلی بهتر بود.ه

READ IN ENGLISH

I don't know what to say about this book. It is the same as the first two books. The same themes, the same kind of story, and for me the same kind of disappointments. I'm glad I've finished the trilogy now, so I can move on to a book that doesn't loose sight of the story in order to write stylistic books (which is fine by me, but not when it also implicates that there won't be a story...)

Boşuna en sevilen eseri değilmiş Paul’ün. Gerçekten muhteşem. Zaten bu kadar harika olduğunu tahmin ederek son sıralara atmıştım bunu; ve iyi ki de atmışım. Zira bakın ne oldu: Diğer birçok kitabını okudum bu herifin, ve bu üçlemede, bunların birçoğunun minik minik kırıntılarını bulmak, aldığım hazzı daha da artırdı. Ay Sarayı‘ndan Kırmızı Defter‘e (direkt isim olarak hem de), Yazı Odasında Yolculuklar‘dan -bundan önce yazılmış olsa da- Köşeye Kıstırmak‘a kadar. Hele de Cebi Delik... Zaten son romandaki Fanshawe, doğrudan doğruya kendi hayatını yaşamış; askerlik tecili, gemide çalışma, (hatta gemideki kavgalara kadar), Fransa seyahati, Güney Fransa’da bir evin bekçiliği… Sanki bir adet temel bir eser yazmış, sonra ondan türetmiş de türetmiş.

Üç romanın kurgusuna falan zaten girmiyorum. Temelde hepsi de birer polisiye olsa da, türe getirdiği müthiş yaratıcı bakış açısıyla, bizi bizden alıyor. Gerçi -yine- sonraki romanlara aşina olanlar için şaşırtıcı şeyler değil bunlar, nerede başlayıp nerede bitmeyen hikayeler anlattığını düşünürsek kendisinin.

Ayrıca son romandaki (Hayaletler) durum, fazlasıyla Tutunamayanlar’ı anımsatmıyor. Ortadan yok olan bir yazar, onun yazdıklarını yayınlayan bir başkası, zamanla o kişiye dönüşmesi/dönüşeyazması, kurgu içinde kurgu, vesaire. Ve yine son romandaki, dostluğa dair kelamlar, beni ciddi anlamda sarstı. Hem de spesifik olarak, belli bir dostumla ilgili. Ne diyeyim daha.

219.tThe Locked Room (The New York Trilogy, #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 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: شهرِ شیشه ای، ارواح، اتاق دربسته، نویسنده: پل استر (اوستر)، نشر (افق) ادبیات، تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه نوامبر سال 2010 میلادی
عنوان: اتاق در بسته؛ نویسنده: پل آستر؛ مترجم: شهرزاد لولاچی؛ تهران، افق، 1383؛ در 175 ص؛ شابک: ایکس - 964369156؛ چاپ دوم 1385؛ سوم 1387؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان امریکایی - سده 20 م
سه گانه ی نیویورک، سری سه رمان، از نویسنده ی پست مدرن آمریکایی: پل استر است. این سه رمان، که هر کدام داستان جنایی و شخصیت‌های داستانی مجزایی از هم دارند، تنها به سبب مکان مشترک رخدادها، سه گانه را تشکیل داده اند. عنوانهای این سه رمان: «شهر شیشه ای»، «ارواح»، و «اتاق دربسته» هستند. در اتاق در بسته: «فنشاو» ناپدید شده، و از ایشان چند داستان، شعر و نمایشنامه، بر جای مانده است. راوی داستان که دوست دیرین فنشاو است، بر اساس وصیت دوست پیشین خویش، باید دستنوشته های فنشاو را چاپ کند. ادامه را خود بخوانید. ا. شربیانی

Najbolji roman u trilogiji. Tek sam čitajući Zaključanu sobu shvatila koliko je drugim romanima nedostajalo mesa u pogledu radnje i likova. U njima su likovi bili puki dijelovi puzle ili duhovi, dok se ovdje napokon uspijevaju materijalizirati. Ali su isto tako, međusobno slični - usamljeni muškarci koji žele razriješiti nedokučive i zapravo besmislene zagonetke; muškarci kojima stvarnost neumorno dokazuje da nije stvarna. Ukratko, teški postmodernizam, ali na američki način.
Čitajte Newyoršku trilogiju zavaljeni u fotelju, s cigaretom u ustima i fedorom na glavi, ali si nikako nemojte dopustiti da se identitficirate s protagonistima - možda se nađete kako lutate ulicama i slijedite osobu za koju niste svjesni da je zapravo vaš dvojnik.

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