The New York Trilogy
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The New York Trilogy is a series of novels or long stories by Paul Auster. Originally published sequentially as City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986), it has since also been collected and published as a single volume.
Overview
Ostensibly presented as detective fiction, the stories of The New York Trilogy have been described as "metaanti-detective-fiction"; "mysteries about mysteries"; a "strangely humorous working of the detective novel"; "very soft-boiled"; a "metamystery"; "glassy little jigsaws"; a "mixture between the detective story and the nouveau roman". This classifies Paul Auster as a postmodern writer whose writing have been influenced by the 'classical literary movement' of American postmodernism through the 60s and 70s. However, there are "a certain coherence in the narrative discourse, a neo-realistic approach and showing a responsibility for social and moral aspects going beyond mere metafictional and subversive elements", which distinguish him from a 'traditional' postmodern writer. The New York Trilogy is a particular form of postmodern detective fiction which still uses well-known elements of the detective novel (e.g. the classical and the hard-boiled detective novel), but also creates a new form that links "the traditional features of the genre with the experimental, metafictional and ironic features of postmodernism".
Summary
The first story, City of Glass, features a writer turned private detective descending into madness. It explores layers of identity and reality: Paul Auster the writer of the novel; "the author" who reports the events as reality; "Paul Auster the writer", a character in the story; "Paul Auster the detective", who may or may not exist in the novel; Daniel Quinn, a writer of detective novels who undertakes a case himself; William Wilson, his nom de plume; and Max Work, the hero of Quinn's novels. The main character also pretends to be Henry Dark and then Peter Stillman (other characters of the novel). William Wilson is also the title of an Edgar Allan Poe story about doppelgängers, while Quinn shares his initials with Don Quixote and Henry Dark's initials are a reference to Humpty Dumpty from Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (Through the Looking-Glass more precisely). Whereas the last reference is explicit and further discussed in the novel, Don Quixote is discussed, but not in connection with Quinn's initails.
City of Glass was adapted in 1994 into a critically acclaimed experimental graphic novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli.
The second story, Ghosts, is about a private eye called Blue who is investigating a man named Black for a client named White. Black and White turn out to be the same person, a writer who is writing a story about Blue watching him.
The Locked Room is the story of a writer who lacks the creativity to produce fiction. His childhood friend has produced creative work, and when he disappears the writer publishes his work and replaces him in his family. While trying to deal with their relationship, he discovers his creative gift, and it emerges that he is the author of the three stories of the trilogy. The title is a reference to a "locked room mystery", a popular form of early detective fiction.