The New York Trilogy, I: City of Glass

The New York Trilogy: City of Glass (2006 paperback)
by Paul Auster
USA, 1985
ISBN 0-14-303983-0

• "What interested him about the stories he wrote was not their relation to the world but their relation to other stories." (City of Glass, p. 7.)

I read this novella as my New York state selection for the Book around the States Challenge, but I'm not totally satisfied with the choice. Sort of a metaphysical detective story, City of Glass is at its best playing with genre and authorial identity. The plot, offering a few novel twists on the narrative front, is promising. An author named Quinn, a writer of detective fiction hiding behind the Poe-like pseudonym of William Wilson, becomes involved in a mystery of his own when he receives a late night telephone call from a stranger who mistakes him for a detective named Paul Auster. Deciding to impersonate this fellow named Auster (himself also later revealed to be an author within the claustrophobic recesses of the work in question), Quinn takes the case on and descends down deep into the abysses of an NYC labyrinth of alienation and anomie as he trails his suspect across the uncaring Manhattan streets. Allusions to Borges, Don Quixote, and other metafiction exemplars help enrich the writer/reader relationship here, but the deconstruction/reconstruction of Quinn's identity crisis that takes place in the latter half of the story is just not all that exciting compared to the Cervantes-inspired paradigms that came before it. Imaginative but a bit of a letdown. (http://www.penguinclassics.com/)

Book around the States Challenge

Dear Readers:

Although I'm still playing catch-up on the first reading challenge I joined this year, that's not going to stop me from joining another: the no-timetable, do it whenever you please Book around the States challenge hosted by Bonnie Jacobs. The goal as described by Bonnie is as follows: "The United States is a union of 50 states, and I want to find the best books about each state. The book should help us learn something ABOUT that state and not just be one written by somebody who lives there. Let's 'book around the states' and find at least one excellent book for each state of the union."

I actually spend more time with international history and literature than I do with domestic stuff these days, so this challenge may be a good way to incorporate some new authors/places from closer to home into my reading diet as it progresses. First up on the list (probably): Ned Sublette's 2008 The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square (my choice for the state of Louisiana). Other selections by state, both tentative ideas and actual review listings, will be posted below eventually. In the meantime, those interested can click here to learn how to join the challenge, which started last summer but is ongoing.

State by State Selections

NEW YORK: Paul Auster, City of Glass (review)