“The Locked Room” (1986)

The New York Trilogy
The third piece in Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy makes a strong case that it is indeed a trilogy, with shared themes and tone. Auster also distributed various details across it—a detective and/or writer named Quinn, a red notebook, a character named Stillman, and more—that give it a somewhat deceptive sense of unity. I’m not entirely convinced Auster is that good at endings, but he’s certainly good at most of the rest. This is an even better mystery story than the first piece in the trilogy, “City of Glass,” though both go similarly off the rails. It seems to promise a locked-room mystery, a staple of the mystery / detective genre, but it is not a locked-room mystery at all. A locked room only appears near the end. Instead, this is another staple of the genre I like even more, when done well, which is the missing-person case, a disappearance. As with the rest of this trilogy it turns all questions into existential mysteries we can only ponder, never solve. The pondering is the solution. Thus, Fanshawe, the narrator’s childhood friend (I don’t believe we get a name for this first-person narrator?). Fanshawe has disappeared, leaving behind a wife, a son, and manuscripts that fill two suitcases. It’s hard to say why he has vanished. We do learn it is his own decision, not some crime. His manuscripts are popular and launch him into some upper realm of literary regard. The narrator marries Fanshawe’s widow—the public story is that Fanshawe is missing, presumed dead—and essentially enjoys all the fruits of Fanshawe’s work, including substantial royalties. But when publishers want him to write a Fanshawe biography and he gets a big contract his life starts to fall apart. Auster does not succeed in steering the genre everywhere he wants to take it, but he’s such a good writer, and can work so acutely well with the conventions, that he is rarely less than a pleasure to read. All three pieces in The New York Trilogy are perfectly enjoyable, even if the endings seem a bit muddled. Auster takes the genre conventions and works them well, exaggerating certain points absurdly, such as the vigils of shadowing suspects, adding whole new dimensions to the mystery story. It’s all arch and ironic and deserves all the “scare quotes” you can muster up. But it’s fun too and the kind of thing you might be inclined to gobble up in one or two sittings.

Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy
Story not available online.

“Ghosts” (1986)

The New York Trilogy
“Ghosts” is the second piece in Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy, a meditation on or perhaps a novel about detective fiction and New York City. It’s the shortest in the so-called trilogy, too short to call a novel itself, at 60 pages even shorter than Animal Farm or Heart of Darkness. But it is dense, compulsively readable, and eventually almost haunting. It starts with some obscure riffing: “First of all there is Blue. Later there is White, and then there is Black, and before the beginning there is Brown.” Let me explain. All the characters in this story are named for colors. The action (such as it is) takes place on Orange St. I don’t think Auster was making fun of Travis McGee novels, but it’s possible. Anyway, the opening has it right. The main character is a detective named Blue. A man named White (who may be disguised, wearing pancake makeup) hires him to follow a man named Black. In fact, White has already rented an apartment across the street from Black, where Blue can keep an eye on him directly. But mostly all Black does it sit at a table and write or, less frequently, read Walden. Black leaves his place once in a while for groceries or on other errands. The vigil is much like the one that ends the first entry in the trilogy, “City of Glass,” although this one is more comfortable. It lasts more than a year, and along the way Blue abandons a girlfriend without meaning to. It’s nearly as confusing as one of the unusual episodes with Black, where Blue witnesses what appears to be a breakup scene. But we get no further information about that. Or about why Blue abandons his girlfriend, for that matter. The tail job is very boring for Blue, but somehow fascinating for us as readers, much like “City of Glass.” I kept waiting for Auster’s deadpan style to slip into open mockery, but the color scheme of the character names is about as close as he gets to treating it like a joke. He does get at a certain emptiness, not just in detective fiction but extensible to all life, which is a pretty neat trick for something that has many earmarks of arch po-mo business. But there’s also an unmistakable sincerity to what Auster is doing here that carries it off well (unless he has actually fooled me). Also, perhaps most importantly, Auster is a good writer, slightly obsessed but lucid, and a pleasure to read.

Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy
Story not available online.

“City of Glass” (1985)

The New York Trilogy
Under the Novels tab up there: For some years I have been working my way through a couple of lists of the 100 greatest English-language novels published in the 20th century. The first is the result of a 1998 survey of various literary hoity-toities by the Modern Library publishing empire. It’s somewhat predictable (Ulysses #1) but nonetheless has steered me to some great novels I might not have got to otherwise. The second is from Larry McCaffery, a literature professor now retired from San Diego University. I found his list on the internet early this century. McCaffery is more rooted in strains of the second half of the 20th century, unafraid of postmodernism and such, and he’s a little less predictable (Ulysses #2, after Pale Fire, the refreshing judgment that drew me to his list). These two lists share perhaps two dozen titles. Getting to the point, McCaffery’s list includes Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy, published in 1987, and lists the three titles separately (“City of Glass,” “Ghosts,” and “The Locked Room”) although really they are closer to novellas than novels. “City of Glass” and “The Locked Room” top out around 120 pages each and “Ghosts” is even shorter. But I am following McCaffery’s lead and treating them separately, though I think Auster may have intended the three together to be taken as a single novel. But what do I know? They were published separately originally and only have a certain playfully mordant noir wit and the New York City setting in common. Is a trilogy of mostly unconnected novellas any less valid? I’m not even sure how to answer that. I can say all three are fun and a pleasure to read, though somewhat arch with their conceits.

I actually encountered “City of Glass” first in the 1994 graphic novel treatment by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli, which I picked up on the strength of illustrator Mazzucchelli’s name. Mazzucchelli also provided his impressive work to some Batman and Daredevil comics written by Frank Miller. The “City of Glass” graphic novel is worth chasing down. I like the noirish tones of the story, but it is also very busy being literary and postmodern. There’s a character here named Paul Auster, for example. The narrator is a one-time rising literary star who turned to detective fiction for money and then to detective work for some kind of spiritual solace. His name is William Wilson. This ham-handed reach for an Edgar Allan Poe reference is somewhat mitigated when the narrator, a fan of the New York Mets, reminds us it’s also the proper name of centerfielder Mookie Wilson. “City of Glass” may be a bit of a lampoon of detective fiction, but it is affectionate about it even as it ropes in further literary references to Don Quixote, the biblical Tower of Babel, and more. I put up with the grandstanding because Auster is actually a beguiling and even engrossing writer. This is good stuff. The notes of absurdity are never far and the paragraphs are often big blocks of text. But Auster’s style is easy and lucid. In 2006 Lucy Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, wrote an introduction for The New York Trilogy. It’s not hard to see how it would appeal to her. “City of Glass” is based in a number of crucial ways on the geography of Manhattan. I don’t know it well myself so tended to glaze over the specific landmarks given. But “City of Glass” is an intriguing start to whatever Auster is up to here and the graphic novel is equally as good as this original text. Both are worth a shot.

Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy
Story not available online.