Neon Lit: Paul Auster's City of Glass

this is an adaptation of a paul auster novel by the same name. the novel is very good and the comic might be even awesomer but in a different way. it's kind of amazing actually how well done the comic is considering how totally verbal and cerebral the novel is. it's not a story that easily lends itself to a graphic rendering. but render it they did!

Art Spiegelman set out to hire some serious novelists to write a comic to help with the graphic novel boom of the 90s. Basically unsuccessful as his only callback came from Paul Auster who told him to adapt one of his existing books! Somehow they got the great David Mazzucchelli on board. He does a fantastic job. It's an excellent book, the only issue being that its adaptation and doesn't add much to Paul Auster's original tale.

It does somehow in just 120 comic pages tell the complete tale. It misses a lot of the internal monologue and descriptive language of course, but it does demonstrate the efficiency of the medium.

Mazzucchelli uses a lot of interesting symbology and visuals to drive home the narrative. I enjoyed the opening of a phone call, but the phone we see is simply a symbol on a phone book when the panel zooms out. I didn't really like his approach when the young Peter Stillman is talking the speech bubbles point to a bunch of random items, it's an interesting attempt to make a talking head more interesting but a tad confusing. Later when Quinn is watching the Stillman's apartment the figure starts to visually merge with the wall which illustrates perfectly that the character has been there for so long no one will notice a bum in an alleyway.

I still wish this was an original story, but it's a cool artifact. Mazzucchelli doesn't have a ton of pages so this is essential reading for fans of his work. I liked how the old Stillman looks similar to the titular character in Asterios Polyp.

Adaptación de la famosa primer parte de la trilogía de New York.
El escritor no se caracteriza por escribir cómics y el artista es un afamado dibujante de superhéroes.
Esta adaptación expande la complejidad del libro al punto que veo difícil entenderlo sin haber leído la novela.
Interesante experimento narrativo que juega con los planos y la metafísica de forma muy original.

"Todo empezó con un número equivocado"
Así es como arranca el universo que #PaulAuster te plantea.

Quinn, bajo el seudónimo de William Wilson escribia novelas policíacas, un día recibe una llamada de auxilio donde suponían que él era un detective, la trama inicia cuando Quinn decide fingir ser dicho detective.

La historia es un tumulto de eventos fortuitos, el juego de identidades me confundió un poco al inicio, pero luego caí de que es lo propio en la narrativa del autor, la psicología de cada uno de los personajes es lo que me quemó el coco, emociones como la angustia y la soledad prevalecen en una constante que logra convencerte en cómo una persona fácilmente puede perder la razón.
#LaCiudadDeCristal es una de las lecturas más extrañas que he leído, sinceramente ese efecto me gusta.
Y esta adaptación gráfica es maravillosa, muy bien lograda para mi, viniendo de una naturaleza bastante rara.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ De 5

I was a little surprised to see this on the "Graphic Novel" bookcase at the library--because I'm still not convinced it needed to be re-writeen in comic form--but as thin as it is, I decided to check it out. I liked Auster's original City of Glass, but looking back that may have been because I was reading it for a class on Post-Modernism and was going to have to discuss it for 3 weeks anyway so I figured I might as well try and enjoy it.

This book was a fine read; my only reservation is that it didn't need to exist in the first place. Having read both works, I just don't see how the story benfits from being told via comic book--ahem--"graphic novel". City of Glass doesn't rely on much visual imagery, so the art falls a little flat. Many of the drawings are lackluster and unimpressive. Far too many of the panels are just a string of zoom-ins on incidental objects like a telephone, sewer grate, or a discarded yo-yo.

The adapters do a good job condensing Auster's novel into 130 pages of comic book panels, but their only real accomplishment is abridging the story into a quick 30 minute read. They retain most of the low-key metaphysical mystery elements while skimming over some of Auster's self-important post-modern musings. Ultimately, though, this book fails just the way the original novel did. Auster runs out of steam and doesn't know how to close the book, so he has the protagonist go crazy and vanish. The interesting issues about identity, language, and religion that he brought up during the novel were thrown to the wayside without any further discussion. I'm sure Auster and his supporters would say that the ending was "post-modern" and that I just don't "get it", but the emptiness in that argument is matched only by the laziness of the conclusion.

Here comes my ego in its magnitude- but more importantly a journal entry for myself to come across later: My selection in books these days has made it impossible to rate the ***** with those below and had already made me give up reviewing (more-so diagnosing critically) them completely or at all since it would take so much time that I could not justify it without being hired to do so.

I'll give this some credit but may stop reviewing for awhile. Maybe just dictate and forgot editing, ordering of thought or formatting.

This adaptation was so good that I could review the book it came from without reading it. Not ideally but well enough to make anyone want to read it. Definitely strong-arm some into its pages.

Original Book: BRILLIANT and beyond the reach of the mass of fiction in its scope. The careful reader will, by the way its written, become ALL characters which is the greatest compliment of writing that I have. While picking apart the inexperience of the new detective you gain appreciation of the writers' ability to write against reason for the bigger picture which swells proportionately until roller-coaster ride stops abruptly and you realize that he is writing a book within a book just as his characters had diagnosed within the story. The hardest thing for a sane writer to do well is to write incrementally blossoming insanity directly from the consequences of a characters' actions when that subject begin categorically sane. Even more-so when the insanity is borne from interaction with other characters. He writes the inner-workings of a characters' genius as well as any without straying from the sanity which resides within the individual's insanity. That also has to take into acount the fact that those catagorized as sane (not me by my personal definitions!) are intrinsicall insane living within our established parameters. The challenge, that Auster may have met flawlessly, is correctly detaching the character from his beginning parameters of sanity- directly building pressure on and extrapolating the mental soft-spots which are well-defined in their introduction. He loses his mind in appropriate pace which takes vigilance- any good writer can have an event unhinge a character to proper and compelling effect. Mastering the hard way needs to be applauded by the reader that takes nothing for granted.

Those last seven words are the reason I have to cut this off now. I want to go back and add more examples and infuse more depth into all which would cause the review/diagnosis of the original book to expand until I had to edit for the readers (your) sake. The same would happen below:

n  BACK TO THIS ADAPTATION:n
You're not going to get a better introduction than Callahan's so read it and by keeping it in mind throughout you will enjoy the book and its depth even more. Specific knowledge of and/or good exposure to genre makes it brilliant and will bring the rest of you to the correct mindset and expectations forcing you, like a great teacher, to appreciate for its accomplishments within a sphere as icing on the delicious cake of the whole.

The written adaptation by Paul Karasik AND* David Mazzucchelli (always better every time that artist is a/the writer) gets the second and third highest compliments with the possibly of the Grand Prix:
3.) It makes made me feel like I read the whole book- specifically by making me have to think purposefully to decide where I was positive (incorrectly or not) that too much, importance-wise, was cut.
2.) Makes me feel that I got enough greatness out of the adaptation that I'll forego reading the original.
1.) I would bet significantly that the highest honor- being better than the original (pretending the art is stricken from the assessment)- is off-limits here IN WHICH CASE THIS DOES ACHIEVE THE PARAMOUNT PRIZE! In my experience, with great text-only books that are managed with appropriate economy from start to finish, the depth and details that are lost makes significant abridgements inferior. I believe Auster achieved that kind of quality as do most works that are put-to-pictures. BUT! When you factor in the art you have something that can't be fairly compared to the text-only father which, in my case, is superior when art and text are done well.

My fondness for Guy Davis ( A dropped at least a notch because of Mazzi's art in this book. Guy is what I term a "business artist" in his sequential work that I've enjoyed and I respect that as servant of capitalism but now cringe, the same way I did before I gained an appreciation of it, looking back at his work. The hands and feet, drawn like an every-man, did/does ALWAYS bother me. Mazzi draws with the same gravity of pen -I have absolutely no idea what that means to anybody but me- but does it EXCEPTIONALLY and cares about all the details in all parts of the panel. Don't include Sergio in this because his art is not for speed, it's just how his art is- at least I hope. Plus he fits so much fun in each panel that it can be excused no matter how sloppy.

Paul Karasik and David Mazzuchelli's adaptation of Auster's novella is 138 pages of pure gold. Working from a nine-panel grid, City of Glass tells the haunting, lonely tale of writer Daniel Quinn. Mistaken for a private detective, Quinn finds himself assigned to protect a man from his own father. In the course of the story, Quinn assumes more names and personae, eventually losing his own identity. The comic progressively reflects this deterioration: the panels tumble and shift, Mazzuchelli's brushstroke becomes wild, expressionist, filled with horror. City of Glass is a tour-de-force, in many ways a more eloquent primer on the form than Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics.

intense