The New York Trilogy
 First edition | |
| Author | Paul Auster |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Mystery novel Postmodern fiction |
| Publisher | Faber & Faber |
Publication date | 1987 (hbk) 1988 (pbk) |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 478 pp. (hbk) 314 pp. (pbk) |
| ISBN | 9780571149254 (hbk) ISBN 9780571152230 |
| OCLC | 16683990 |
| Preceded by | The Invention of Solitude |
| Followed by | In the Country of Last Things |
The New York Trilogy is a series of novels by American writer 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 Trilogy is a postmodern interpretation of detective and mystery fiction, exploring various philosophical themes.
Plot
A 2006 reissue by Penguin Books is fronted by new pulp magazine-style covers by comic book illustrator Art Spiegelman.
City of Glass
The first story, City of Glass, features an author of detective fiction who becomes a private investigator and descends into madness as he becomes embroiled in the investigation of a case. It explores layers of identity and reality, from Paul Auster the writer of the novel to the unnamed "author" who reports the events as reality, to "Paul Auster the writer", a character in the story, to "Paul Auster the detective", who may or may not exist in the novel, to Peter Stillman the younger, to Peter Stillman the elder and, finally, to Daniel Quinn, the protagonist.
City of Glass has an intertextual relationship with Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. Not only does the protagonist Daniel Quinn share his initials with the knight, but when Quinn finds "Paul Auster the writer," Auster is in the midst of writing an article about the authorship of Don Quixote. Auster calls his article an "imaginative reading," and in it he examines possible identities of Cide Hamete Benengeli, the narrator of the Quixote.
Ghosts
The second story, Ghosts, is about a private eye called Blue, trained by Brown, who is investigating a man named Black on Orange Street for a client named White. Blue writes written reports to White who in turn pays him for his work. Blue becomes frustrated and loses himself as he becomes immersed in the life of Black.
The Locked Room
The Locked Room is the story of a writer who lacks the creativity to produce fiction. Fanshawe,[1] 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.
Adaptations
City of Glass was adapted in 1994 into a critically acclaimed experimental graphic novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. It was published as City of Glass: A Graphic Mystery in 2004.
In 2009, Audible.com produced an audio version of The New York Trilogy, narrated by Joe Barrett, as part of its Modern Vanguard line of audiobooks.
In 2016, Edward Einhorn adapted City of Glass as a play Off-Broadway, at the New Ohio [2][3]
In 2017, Duncan Macmillan produced another adaptation as a play, which showed for a short period at HOME in Manchester, before transferring to the Lyric, Hammersmith. It was a co-production between HOME, the Lyric, and 59 Productions.[4][5]
Bibliography
Editions
- Auster, Paul The New York Trilogy. (London: Faber and Faber, 1987) ISBN 9780571152230.
Criticism
- Books
- Barone, Dennis (ed.) Beyond the Red Notebook (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995) ISBN 0812215567 (paperback). Two essays on City of Glass and The Locked Room, respectively.
- Bloom, Harold (ed.) Bloom's Modern Critical Views: Paul Auster (Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publisher, 2004) ISBN 0791076628. Several essays on The New York Trilogy.
- Martin, Brendan Paul Auster's Postmodernity (Oxford: Routledge, 2008) ISBN 041596203X (hardback).
- Nicol, Bran The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) ISBN 9780521679572. Chapter 7, 'Two postmodern genres: cyberpunk and detective fiction', includes a section on City of Glass.
Notes
- ^ Reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel Fanshawe' – Heiko Jakubzik: Paul Auster und die Klassiker der American Renaissance. Dissertation, Universität Heidelberg 1999, p. 7 (online text Archived June 7, 2007, at the Wayback Machine)
- ^ [1] Carol Mann agency blog
- ^ [2] Untitled Theater Company No. 61 website
- ^ "Paul Auster's City of Glass".
- ^ "Paul Auster's City of Glass". HOME.
