The New York Trilogy
City of Glass (Novel, 1985)
Paul Auster’s first (or second) long novel and his major debut novel originally published in 1985. And the first volume of the New York Trilogy. A thirteen chaptered novel borrows the form of detective stories. And a snobbish postmodernist or avant-garde literature contains various elements, describes confusion, complexity and emptiness of the contemporary huge metropolitan city, New York, and deconstructs the grand narrative and the significance of traditional novels.
The trigger is a wrong number. A mystery writer in NY, Daniel Quinn accepted the case of Peter Stillman, as a private detective Paul Auster. Virginia Stillman, the wife of Peter Stillman, requested him to watch the same name father, Peter Stillman would discharge soon, the former professor of Columbia University wrote a book of extraordinary and occultist religious theory. He shut up his son in a room for nine years.
Quinn watched Stillman during two weeks, but he was wandering around a constant area of town only. Quinn tried to talk to Stillman but his talkings were incoherent. A day, Stillman suddenly checked out of the hotel he stayed and Quinn lost track of Stillman…
Ghosts (Novelette, 1986)
Paul Auster’s second novel and the second volume of the New York Trilogy. And the most symbolic and representative work of it.
A novelette uses the form and style of detective stories. But it’s a philosophical and psychological story describes the lack of human existence, the question for self, the emptiness of contemporary routine life and the impossibility of to write a novel.
A private detective, Blue took a riddle case by White. The request is to watch a mysterious man, Black. But, Black did not do anything. He just sat beside the window, write something, read Walden by Henry David Sorrow and took a brief stroll. To watch and to think about Black, Blue felt complex feelings mixed up friendship, calmness, worry and hostility, and a feeling to watch like a Doppelgänger. Blue searched Black by some measures, but the case didn’t make progress. About one year passed by, Black’s life didn’t vary. A summer day, Blue followed Black, Black took a seat at a lounge of a hotel, and Blue shared the table with Black. Then Black said “I’m a private detective. My current job is to watch someone. He doesn’t do anything…”
The Locked Room (Novel, 1987)
The third long novel of Paul Auster published in 1987, and the last book of the New York Trilogy. The description is written by the viewpoint of the first-person. Different to former two novels, City of Glass and Ghosts, this novel doesn’t borrow the form of detective stories. But this story sought Fanshawe’s whereabouts, solves the riddle of him and find his true intention. And true theme of this novel is questions about writing a novel, today’s people’s identity and the meaning of life.
My best friend, Fanshawe suddenly disappeared from his wife, Sophie, after three or four months he had promised he would publish the manuscripts within a year.
Sophie requested me to publish Fanshawe’s manuscripts. Then the Fanshawe’s books earned a great reputation and sold well. And I became a kind of agent of his books. I got the job to write a biography of Fanshawe, so I went to Paris and South France for searching the traces of him…
Moon Palace (Novel, 1989)
A story of young man, and it describes and traces his adolescence and its hard life by his first person viewpoint. And it includes many sub-episodes of sub-characters, then they connects finally. I think parts of this story might be based on Auster’s real experiences.
Marco Fogg was born in Boston. He lost his parents in his childhood. So his uncle Victor brought him up. He managed to graduate Columbia University in a very poor and harsh condition, to keep a promise to uncle Victor. Then he had stayed the Central Park as a homeless for a month, he was founded and helped by Kitty Wu and Zimmer, and he recovered.
Then he found an odd job at the student department office of Columbia. The job was to go with a strange blind old man, Thomas Effing a friend or a speaker, and to hear his life full of ups and downs and to write his autobiography. The autobiography had finished, Effing passed away on purpose. Marco sent a copy of the autobiography to an estranged son Solomon Barber, then he visited to New York to see Marco…
The Music of Chance (Novel, 1990)
Related Posts and Pages
Works of / Œuvres de / Werke von Haruki Murakami
Œuvre de / Works of / Werke von Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Literature / littérature / Literatur Page
YouTube Paul Auster Commentary Playlist
YouTube Literature & Philosophy Channel
Audiobooks by Paul Auster (US)
List of Poetry Translations
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