City of Glass (The New York Trilogy, #1)

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City of Glass (New York Trilogy #1)

3.85 of 5 stars 3.85 · rating details · 5,420 ratings · 333 reviews

Nominated for an Edgar award for best mystery of the year, City of Glass inaugurates an intriguing New York Trilogy of novels that The Washington Post Book World has classified as "post-existentialist private eye... It's as if Kafka has gotten hooked on the gumshoe game and penned his own ever-spiraling version." As a result of a strange phone call in the middle of the nig...more

Paperback, 208 pages

Published April 7th 1987 by Penguin Books (first published 1985)

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Aug 24, 2011 Nikki rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery

I find that I don't know what on earth to say about City of Glass. Perhaps that will resolve itself as I read the rest of this trilogy. I was intrigued by it, at times confused; I found it easy to read, but very quiet, muted. It doesn't spark off the page and leap about, at all. It sounds as if it's going to be very strange and dramatic, and yet it quietly slims down -- in the way the main character does -- to something else entirely. And what that thing is, I haven't figured out.

Like I said, pe...more

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Jun 02, 2010 Rauf rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fans of Don Quixote ?

Shelves: 2010-list, fiction, fromthepit, trilogy, literature

Not a real review. Just some random selection from my notes. Hope I can clarify some things for myself 'cause the book stymied me. Stymied, I says!
May contain spoilers. Probably. I have no idea, man. Just to be safe, though, I don't think anyone oughta be reading this.

1. Our main character, Daniel Quinn, wrote a series of detective novels using the moniker William Wilson. The detective's name was Max Work. When Quinn went to see Peter Stillman, he said his name was Paul Auster.
(Just a vessel for...more

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Jan 20, 2010 Bob Redmond rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In my review of Paul Karasik and David Mazuchelli's graphic novel version of CITY OF GLASS, I wrote: "The graphic artists give it so much dimension that the text-only version seems (in my memory) to be no more than a screenplay to this version's fully-realized presentation."

My memory was wrong. I re-read the original and found it as multi-dimensional as the graphic novel version. Or perhaps the two versions together compounded the book into something greater. Or perhaps they cancelled each other...more

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May 31, 2010 Paul rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

Paul Auster, a guy who ushers you into the silky interior of his brand new Nissan Infiniti, makes sure you've got your seatbelt on, proffers bonbons, then drives you to distraction.

This book is in contravention of TWO of PB's commandments:

- Thou shalt not have a character in thy book with thy own name

- Thou shalt not portray the writing of a novel within thy novel such that the novel within the novel turns out to be the novel the reader is reading

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Apr 13, 2013 F.X. Altomare rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: postmodernist-literature

I had mixed feelings going into this novel given Auster's ambiguous relationship with critics; but he pulls a rabbit out of a hat here, weaving a metaphysical "detective" novel that might be considered a primer for postmodernism. All the elements are here: the author appearing as a character, questions about what is real, works-within-the-work, etc. Auster asks the big questions and gives us a relentless work that never quite answers any of them. Auster writes a tough lean prose that reminds one...more

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Jan 24, 2011 Tim Lepczyk rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: not-as-good-as-everyone-says, postmodern, rather-be-waterboarded, mysteries, two-and-a-half-stars, contemporary-fiction

I picked City of Glass off the bookcase because I heard Paul Auster interviewed on Radiolab. In the interview he described getting a phone call, after the novel was published, by a man asking for Quinn (the character in City of Glass who takes on the identity of Paul Auster). It sounded like an intriguing novel, and I decided to give it a chance.

It's no secret that I'm not a Paul Auster fan. At times, it seems like he is more interested in exploring identity, whether it is that of his characters...more I picked City of Glass off the bookcase because I heard Paul Auster interviewed on Radiolab. In the interview he described getting a phone call, after the novel was published, by a man asking for Quinn (the character in City of Glass who takes on the identity of Paul Auster). It sounded like an intriguing novel, and I decided to give it a chance.

It's no secret that I'm not a Paul Auster fan. At times, it seems like he is more interested in exploring identity, whether it is that of his characters or overtly himself, instead of telling a complete story. Plot is sacrificed for style, and postmodernism and metafiction shape the writing.

The novel starts with Daniel Quinn receiving a phone call asking for Paul Auster, the detective. Daniel Quinn is a writer whose wife and son died, which has caused him to distance himself from his friends and career. Quinn writes under a pseudonym, William Wilson, about a detective named Max Work. Quinn identifies with Max Work, but only through the separate identity of Wilson, his pseudonym. Without Wilson, he would be unable to Work. After getting the call again, Quinn takes on the case and becomes Paul Auster.

What layer does it add that Paul Auster has written himself into the novel? I like it when Charlie Kaufman wrote himself into Adaptation, so why am I less thrilled when Auster does it? Part of the reason is that it seems like Auster's motives seem less about fiction and story, and more about ego. He does bring up interesting questions like what is the relationship between the writer and his characters? In the end, that's what City of Glass is interested in exploring. How we create language, how we tell stories, and who forms whom. Do the characters in Auster's head define Auster, or does he define the characters?

The other point where I diverge with Auster is how I view the universe. I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in magical coincidences being anything other than the play of statistics. I do believe in chance, but I don't put any extra importance on chance. Someone could win the lottery and their life would change. Is there special meaning in that, or is just that random events happen? A world where events and possibilities are linked by something unseen is a much safer world, but it's one that ultimately is a false world, another fiction which has been created.

As City of Glass continues, the writer who is many people slowly disintegrates and loses himself in his own fiction. He believes he is the detective and the case is real. He trusts in the circumstances and doesn't check his facts. Another key question is who is telling the story? Actually, that's not a question, because we all know that Paul Auster is telling the story, but there's another narrator toward the end of the novel, a friend of Quinn's who speaks in the first person. Here we add another layer in the identities of the author.

Lastly, Auster tries to mirror Don Quixote, which is fine, but he explains it all to the reader. Why not let that be present, and if the reader notices the similarities then it adds texture to the story. If the reader doesn't notice it, there's no harm done. Instead, it's spooned into the reader's mouth through a few pages of clunky exposition.

Overall, I appreciate Auster's exploration of writing and the relationships between characters and the writer, but feel that some elements that drive a story our sacrificed for style and ego.(less)

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Dec 30, 2007 Sean Duffy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Something about a guy following an old guy and Humpty Dumpty being profound and then the Tower of Babel and stuff. I guess I'm too dumb. Incomprehensible. Either I have been stricken with the curse of Babel, or this is a pretentious mess. You be the judge. Also, the artwork may have been ahead of its time, but after so many great graphic novels, it looks rather pedestrian. SORRY!

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Sep 22, 2008 Daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars

A very intriguing exploration of the power of language to make (and unmake) the borders of our existence and the reality we experience.

The main character, Quinn, is a writer of detective stories. One day, he decides to take on a serious detective job. His decision to do so, prompted by a mere phone call, seemingly represents the enthralling power of suggestion.

Quinn's willing engagement with the caller, and the events that unfold from there, convey a heavily slanted view of language-experience...more

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Jun 04, 2008 Esther rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Just goes to show how good of a writer Paul Auster is. Writers like him and Cormac McCarthy get away with writing stories that I can't imagine writing, let alone understanding how to keep the momentum. The protagonist, Daniel Quinn (mistaken for Paul Auster), even in his most unbelievable moments, stays believable. The metafictional aspect of this book combined with the mystery novel nature was an intriguing cerebral mind fuck that kept me reading frantically. Not a book for plot cravers (not at...more

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May 15, 2013 Robin rated it 2 of 5 stars

I am...unsure. There were elements I really liked, and therebwere many aspects that left me confused and wondering why I wasted my time. I loved, for onstance, the relationship set up between Quinn, his pseudonym, and the makin character of this novel and how it parallels the relationship between this book's "real" author, Quinn, the character of the "author's" same name (Paul Auster), and the unnamed author of the book "revealed" in the final chapter. I love how this gets me to question what we...more

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May 15, 2013 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found this book to be a remarkably inventive work of fiction. Auster is a tremendously intelligent, and surprising writer who seems to create an almost continuous suspense in part by creating new mysteries and questions as he goes along. We wait and watch with the former writer Wilson Wilson now become the detective Daniel Quinn who is known to his client Shipman and his wife Virginia by the name Daniel Auster as Quinn tries to keep track of Shipman's father just released from prison who he fe...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Sarah Horn rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was told this was the "post-existentialist private eye" novel with some Kafka influences. In other words, my jam. And I must say, FANTASTIC. I really am looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.

Detective Quinn gets a weird phone call asking for Paul Auster (author's name...not weird to anyone else? Um ok) and finds himself in the most difficult case yet. As Quinn struggles with the frustrations of figuring out this case, and perhaps descends into insanity, the reader is taken on a jo...more

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Nov 04, 2012 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars

A few pages into Paul Auster’s City of Glass I realized I’d read the book before. Except this realization proved false, as I soon worked out that I’d read the first few chapters before, but never the whole thing. From this uncanny beginning of recognizing what I thought ought to be unfamiliar, the book proceeded to confirm my initial suspicions: this is a book I’ve read before, but forgotten, as all books are those we have read before, but forgotten - as all people are those we’ve already met. A...more A few pages into Paul Auster’s City of Glass I realized I’d read the book before. Except this realization proved false, as I soon worked out that I’d read the first few chapters before, but never the whole thing. From this uncanny beginning of recognizing what I thought ought to be unfamiliar, the book proceeded to confirm my initial suspicions: this is a book I’ve read before, but forgotten, as all books are those we have read before, but forgotten - as all people are those we’ve already met. And ourselves? We are perhaps people of convenience, decision makers of circumstance, individuals without a tether: kite strings caught in a hurricane.

The narrative follows Daniel Quinn Paul Auster William Wilson Henry Dark Paul Stillman a character as he wanders the city trying to work out the mystery - or the potential for a mystery - of who is (or might be) (or will be) out to harm Stillman and moreover who is (or might be) (or will be) Daniel Quinn. The plot itself is brief and focused, principally the actions of Quinn, but peppered with thoughtful conversations with other characters that meditate on authorship, credibility and the continuity of self.

A passage to clarify this kind of embedded musing (that masterfully does not annoy as some quasi-philosophical ramblings do, but does not go unnoticed as a passage on Who We Are): “Was ‘fate’ really the word he wanted to use? It seemed like such a ponderous and old-fashioned choice. And yet, as he probed more deeply into it, he discovered that was precisely what he meant to say. Or, if not precisely, it came closer than any other term he could think of. Fate in the sense of what was, of what happened to be. It was something like the word ‘it’ in the phrase ‘it is raining’ or ‘it is night.’ What that ‘it’ referred to Quinn had never known. A generalized condition of things as they were, perhaps; the state of is-ness that was the ground on which the happenings of the world took place” (207-8).

This passage well captures the tone of the book - somewhere between detached third person omniscient (a suitable choice given the premise that the events are being reported by a third person who has stumbled on Quinn’s account recorded in a red notebook) and minimalist. The passage also highlights the preoccupation in the narrative with the parallel opacity of language and selves. In this sense Auster (reasonably we might think) connects the post-structuralist boo-ra-ha-ha about the permanence of language, the (supposed) crisis in epistemology and extends this to the condition of individuals as patchwork pieces continually reconstituted.

The book was written in 1985. An important date only if you’re concerned that these ideas are old hat. Not so, I think. I’m sure there too many narratives written that ask the same questions: who are we? why do stories matter? how can we know anything? anything about ourselves? But Auster’s text is simply masterful in asking these questions as genuine concerns. The narrative wants no answers, it argues against the possibility of answers, instead it contents itself with being as the New York Times Book Review says on the back cover “for all those who seek the truth behind the fictions they read and the fictions they live.” And why shouldn’t I end with the NYTimes? Their words are mine, too.(less)

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Aug 02, 2012 Akira rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone who want a nice reading experience

This is an amazing book. I have read a LOT of (valid) opinions about this text that put it as "pretentious", or "only for PhD Philosophy Students" (that it seems to be a synonym of pretentious).

The only thing I can say is: Pretentious people is exactly THAT one who don´t give any chance to a complex book. Paul Auster is not making a stupidity test, he is writing a story about the relationship between humans and language, about human nature, about the most epic adventures in literature, he is in...more

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Dec 29, 2011 Daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars

I told the guy in the bookstore (whose name is also Daniel) that I wanted a book that would open my brain up. He didn't think too long before he pointed me towards this short weird book.

Imagine that David Lynch and Haruki Murakami got punchy one night and decided to write a noir detective novel together. And Samuel Beckett stopped by to contribute a chapter or two? I recognize this sounds crazy, but it's hard to imagine that this book was written by a single person. There are so many thoughts cr...more I told the guy in the bookstore (whose name is also Daniel) that I wanted a book that would open my brain up. He didn't think too long before he pointed me towards this short weird book.

Imagine that David Lynch and Haruki Murakami got punchy one night and decided to write a noir detective novel together. And Samuel Beckett stopped by to contribute a chapter or two? I recognize this sounds crazy, but it's hard to imagine that this book was written by a single person. There are so many thoughts crammed into every page, and they're typically surprising and convoluted and odd.

Let's start at the very beginning. Quinn writes pulpy detective novels under the pseudonym William Wilson. But really, he feels some significant connection to the protagonist of those novels, Max Work. And then one night, with nothing in particular going on, somebody calls him asking for Paul Auster, who is apparently a private detective. The caller desperately needs the help of Auster in order to prevent a murder. And Quinn at first is all like "I'm not Paul Auster", but then a little later he's all like "yeah, sure, I'm Paul Auster" and he jumps head first into doing some detective stuff.

Then the book kind of gets odd.

I feel pretty good about feeling confused, which means I tend to enjoy weird books and movies. And I will tell you right now that this book is confusing. Not in the same way that a Tolstoy novel is confusing, with everybody having like 3 names, or the way the first chapter of "Infinite Jest" is just totally opaque. The plot is crystal clear and it's very easy to tell what's happening, the above paragraph notwithstanding. "City of Glass" is confusing because Auster gives you so many things to think about on basically every page. He had a lot of ideas in his brain and wanted to share all of them with you. Sometimes this made the book feel disjointed, but most of the time it just felt rich.

You should read this book if you like weirdo detective stories. And you should probably avoid this book if you really need to be able to decide on the significance of every literary curve ball Auster throws. It's a pretty short book, but it will support a lot of pondering. Just don't expect a lot of resolution.(less)

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Nov 29, 2011 Drew rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: postmodern-toasties, boulder-public-library, so-hip-i-cant-see-past-my-pelvis

What a disaster. This is like a vastly inferior The Crying of Lot 49. People who like it presumably call it a brilliant subversion of traditional mystery-genre expectations. I call it bullshit.

Basically there's this writer, Quinn, who gets a mysterious call looking for a detective called Paul Auster (Auster, the author, is apparently the sort of author who includes himself as a character in his books...sigh). Quinn of course takes on both the case and Auster's identity. The only good parts of th...more What a disaster. This is like a vastly inferior The Crying of Lot 49. People who like it presumably call it a brilliant subversion of traditional mystery-genre expectations. I call it bullshit.

Basically there's this writer, Quinn, who gets a mysterious call looking for a detective called Paul Auster (Auster, the author, is apparently the sort of author who includes himself as a character in his books...sigh). Quinn of course takes on both the case and Auster's identity. The only good parts of the book, I think, are when Quinn tries to act hard-boiled with the stereotypical femme, which works because he's read so many hard-boiled mystery novels. Haha.

This quickly gets old as he follows a senile old man aimlessly around New York. But is this old man's wandering aimless? No! It turns out if you plot his movements on a map, they spell letters, which in turn spell words! But then those words turn out to have no bearing on the plot of this shitshow of a book. Auster abandons the heretofore somewhat interesting case, getting rid of all its characters in singularly unspectacular fashion, in favor of an identity crisis for the narrator. Quinn/Auster is so confused about his identities that he is driven insane. I've seen this before, this idea that a man with two identities or secret lives will inevitably go crazy. Whence this ridiculous notion? Actors do it with no problem, for the most part. Writers can do it, too. Clearly Auster does it himself, to no detrimental psychic effect. The whole conceit seems not only flawed but pointless, especially since the execution of the identity crisis itself is so lackluster. It's less like watching someone lose their mind and more like watching someone's grocery bag slowly rip.

I briefly had hopes that some of the threads Auster so unceremoniously dropped would be picked up in the rest of the New York Trilogy, but it looks like the novels are only linked thematically, which means I certainly will not be reading them. Seriously, fuck Paul Auster.(less)

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Oct 28, 2011 Bill Johnson rated it 5 of 5 stars

What makes a storyteller an artist? My answer is that an artist is concerned not just with a story's movement and how it transports and affects an audience -- creating an action story that thrills, for example -- but with why an audience desires particular story experiences. The artistic storyteller uses a story to create an experience that illuminates some aspect of the artist's world.

A question I'm asked is, are the principles that an artist uses to create a story the same as those that apply...more

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Jan 10, 2011 Sophie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, fiction, kept

If I wanted to be simplistic, I would call this a weird book. Also pretentious. It's the sort of book that I feel has been written to be dissected (for example, for people to work out which bits he's intended as homage to other writers, who has influenced him etc). Daniel Quinn (same initials as Don Quixote) is a writer of detective stories (the hero of his books is called William Wilson - referencing Edgar Allan Poe's short story about doppelgangers) who is mistaken for a real detective called...more

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Mar 23, 2010 john Adams rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

City of Glass Paul Auster

Another one in the series of 'people who aren't dead yet.' The book 'came to me' as gift, so despite little interest I started reading it. Plus it's short. I remember one of my Literature professor back at the University of Michigan telling me, “this is one of the most important short stories of all times.” He was referring to a Kafka story that was literally 200 words long, which is about a paragraph and a half. The story went something like—if A left the station before...more City of Glass Paul Auster

Another one in the series of 'people who aren't dead yet.' The book 'came to me' as gift, so despite little interest I started reading it. Plus it's short. I remember one of my Literature professor back at the University of Michigan telling me, “this is one of the most important short stories of all times.” He was referring to a Kafka story that was literally 200 words long, which is about a paragraph and a half. The story went something like—if A left the station before B and C, but if A stopped to get a bagel while C traveled at the speed for red, I think that B would be there first—some bullshit like that. The short story was making the point that words and their meanings are constructed and therefore literally refer to nothing. It philosophically puts a damper on all “objectivity” (those of you who have faith that 1+1=2 are literally wrong, 1+1=2 literally means that you understand the human construct of adding and nothing about the “objective” world). According to my professor the Kafka story was the launching point literary postmodernism—as simplified in the previously mentioned concept of word construction. A bunch of big words and high-faulting concepts, but they are what I believe City of Glass to be about. A writer whose identity is mistaken, inadvertently gets a phone call meant for another writer. The phone call leads him on an investigation that hints that he is in a story. Confusion, talking writers, and the possibility of insanity follow. For example, the main character assumes the identity of the writer Paul Auster, that is of course until he meets the 'real' Paul Auster, who isn't in fact the “right” Paul Auster, but a different one. It doesn't really work, hence the low ratting. It is sort of like being inside a Charley Kaufman movie (Being John Malcovitch). This kind of writing, I tend to put in the category of Andy Warhol. It is brilliant statement the first time it is done. It encapsulates all the changes of the time period. And since the first time it is done, the entire world seems to understand the concept, say “no shit, that's great,” and move on from there. This is not the first time this is done (and I didn't concentrate on it enough to know if he is trying to make some other more elaborate yet brilliant point.) Imagine painting a Wolfgang Puck soup can and calling it art. We all look at it and say...”that's been done before, boring, do something cool, crafted, or new.” City of Glass is to Kafka as Wolfgang Puck soup can is to Andy Warhol. Auster is a good writer and his command of prose allowed me to read the whole book without being annoyed the entire way through. But the story is boring and I can't imagine anyone loving this book, except perhaps a bunch of PhD Philosophy students who are toking it up on the weekend. It is the first of the New York Trilogy and I don't really plan on reading the other two. (less)

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Jun 14, 2009 WaiThain added it

The quote that strikes me the most is “He was alive, and the stubbornness of this fact had little by little begun to fascinate him” (6) because this description shows that Quinn is beginning to accept himself. In the beginning of the chapter, Quinn seems to be a lonely person and does not like to have company or have connection with the outside world. Also, when he writes a novel, he has to use a substituted name, and it shows that he does not have confident for himself. However, the quote that...more

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Jun 02, 2009 Indigo rated it 3 of 5 stars

I didn't like this book very much, because there was too much going on all at once. It's about a man named Quinn who is a writer under the pseudonym William Wilson. He considers Wilson to be sort of another person within himself, and there is also Max Work, yet another personality that he has. One day the phone rings and it is a man who refers to him as Paul Auster, a spy who is supposedly working on a case for him. Quinn decides to take on the role of being a spy and pretending to be Auster, an...more

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Jan 14, 2012 Jim Leckband rated it 4 of 5 stars

In the best tradition of detective mysteries, every word is a clue. However in Auster's hands, this is not a small matter, for he really means it. We are in the land of the postmodern detective novel, where the "author" is a character and the detective is an author who barely works at a detective series whose main character is called Max Work. Things are not what they seem, but sometimes a word means exactly what Auster wants it to mean, except when he doesn't. It's a Humpty Dumpty, Lewis Carrol...more

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Oct 20, 2010 Tea Time Blog rated it 5 of 5 stars

City of Glass by Paul Auster is another book I read because of the monthly book club meetings I am attending. I never read anything by Paul Auster before but I can honestly say that I really enjoyed it. I actually read it in just one afternoon. It is a short story and belongs to the New York Trilogy but even though I read only the first one, it was compelling and I couldn‘t stop reading until the last page. The story of of the book is about a writer who becomes a detective by accident and tries...more City of Glass by Paul Auster is another book I read because of the monthly book club meetings I am attending. I never read anything by Paul Auster before but I can honestly say that I really enjoyed it. I actually read it in just one afternoon. It is a short story and belongs to the New York Trilogy but even though I read only the first one, it was compelling and I couldn‘t stop reading until the last page. The story of of the book is about a writer who becomes a detective by accident and tries to protect his client from his father. He analyses the situation and the life of the client’s father. Since the novels he is writing, he knows a lot about the work of a detective and he uses this knowledge for his investigations.

What I enjoyed most about the novel is the language. Paul Auster has a way of describing everything in detail choosing exactly the right words which makes it a pleasure to read. It feels as if he has chosen every word carefully while writing the story. Everything seems to be well researched and analysed.

The story itself is not that compelling. It is more the way how Paul Auster plays with language and names and the way he makes the characters of the story think. Reading this book makes you think about things you‘ve never thought before. One great example is when he talks about the natural language of the human being. I have never thought about what would be the language of a child that has absolutely no contact to other human beings at all. Is there a sort of inherited language we all have in ourselves when we are born or is it just our surroundings that influence this? It shocked me to read that there have actually been testings with children in earlier days to find out about this issue.

Another interesting topic in the book is language and words itself: “What happens when a thing no longer performs its function? Is it still the thing or has it become something else?” Questions like that make the reader think about facts that were apparently obvious to the reader before but cannot be taken for granted anymore.

The playing with words within the novel made me think about how much of the real Paul Auster is in the story and in the characters. People in the story pretend to be someone else and one character is even called Paul Auster and is a writer himself. I asked myself if some parts of the story are talking about Paul Auster‘s real life and if he sees himself the way he describes the Paul Auster of the story. The main character itself uses several different names for himself: He obviously has a real name, then there are two different author names he is using for his publishings and on top of that, he starts to adopt the identity of the Paul Auster of the story. As you can see, the names play a quite important role in the story and I wouldn‘t be surprised if a certain amount of information came from the author’s life itself.

There are also certain things that I think are quite farfetched. Some conclusions the main character, Quinn, draws are unrealistic and I do not think that anybody else would come up with these conclusions. This might has to do with the fact that Quinn is developing kind of crazy characteristics. He does not seem to be thinking clearly in the end. My interpretation of this is that Quinn is still suffering from the death of his wife and son which are mentioned right in the beginning of the story. He lives by himself and is not involved with anybody else. He only minds his own business and that is exactly the way he starts to investigate and analyse the case he is working on.

In the end, the books leaves lots of questions open. Many things have not been explained and open for the reader‘s interpretation. Considering that City of Glass is the first part of a trilogy, these questions might still be answered by the two following stories. This first story definitely made me curious for the other two which I am planning to read as well.

Overall, it is a well written story with fantastic use of language. Even though the main story is not too important, in my opinion, the novel offers you to learn a lot about the main character and to start thinking in different, perhaps more abstract, ways. I can highly recommend the book and think that it was a fantastic choice for the book club since it offers so many interesting points to talk about.

Liked my review? Read more of my book reviews: http://booksaroundtheworld.wordpress....(less)

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Jan 03, 2011 Donnie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This was a neat little book that certainly has me interested in reading the entire New York Trilogy, of which it is the first novel. I think it is fair to say that many of the literary references were wasted on me; however, I was deeply engaged by the meta aspects of the book. "Who is following who?" was a question that often entered my mind while reading.

I believe that the main questions Auster asks us in this piece is about the act of creating worlds through writing. Who is the protagonist? T...more This was a neat little book that certainly has me interested in reading the entire New York Trilogy, of which it is the first novel. I think it is fair to say that many of the literary references were wasted on me; however, I was deeply engaged by the meta aspects of the book. "Who is following who?" was a question that often entered my mind while reading.

I believe that the main questions Auster asks us in this piece is about the act of creating worlds through writing. Who is the protagonist? The Author or the character? Where does the ultimate truth of the tale reside, and just how stable are worlds created in language for both the Author and the character? What are the implications of each answer? Auster is a character in the book, described erroneously as a detective, who is being impersonated by a mystery novelist who believes Auster is in fact a detective. On top of the that, the narrator, created by Auster the Author, is a friend of Auster the character. AND! the "protagonist," Quinn is following an author, while writing a journal of the these event; the journal, we learn, becomes the basis of "City of Glass," as the Narrator and and the Character Auster discover it late in the story. Phew!

Its hard to believe that all this meta-craziness occurred in such few pages.

So the title, "City of Glass" and the nature of the book speaks to the fragile existence of worlds created. From the novel, it becomes clear that Auster the Author is somewhat bothered by the chasm between life and fiction, the impossibility of language to describe this life accurately, precisely. I would imagine that is a very, very, very tragic thing for a writer to come to understand, particularly the level to which the Author Auster seems to grasp it. In the end, I think the protagonist is the character, though I will say that it does seem as if Authors come by their craft by way of hocus pocus. It seems almost supernatural, doesn't it? I mean some books evince all of the nuances of life, down to deep rooted sadness and up to lighthearted giddiness. How can he or she do that without ultimately being the star of any work he or she produces? I guess all art is both an inward and outward process, but with a narrative the commitment to these worlds is so much more devote. The investment is large, complex, and I would imagine often so layered and confusing that I almost expect that many writers often find their fictional lives and their real lives melding together. I am sure many of them have felt like characters in their own novels, or maybe in someone else's book.

It was interesting to say the least.

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May 04, 2012 Alicia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: my-favorites

The City of Glass is my favorite Auster novel. Daniel Quinn is a writer juggling his past, his present, and his characters on multiple planes of reality. It's deeply human, deeply moving, and very existential. The kind of book I would have dismissed as drivel ten years ago, but appreciate much more with life experience.

It also contains my favorite quote about mystery novels:

"In the good mystery there is nothing wasted, no sentence, no word that is not significant. And even if it is not significa...more

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Jan 23, 2012 Andrew McCarthy rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this for my family's book club (I feel weird saying that since my family are the only ones who will probably read this review) and I liked it much more than I expected to, but admittedly, I had no legitimate expectations. The only thing I had experienced of Paul Auster before this was the movie Smoke, about which I had mixed feelings.

The book touched on a lot of themes that related to philosophy that I have studied. Specifically, the problem of personal identity, the incongruity between l...more I read this for my family's book club (I feel weird saying that since my family are the only ones who will probably read this review) and I liked it much more than I expected to, but admittedly, I had no legitimate expectations. The only thing I had experienced of Paul Auster before this was the movie Smoke, about which I had mixed feelings.

The book touched on a lot of themes that related to philosophy that I have studied. Specifically, the problem of personal identity, the incongruity between language and phenomena, and the value of truth.

The way that Quinn conceives of himself as different people and eventually plunges into a state of being divorced from all conventional associations makes me wonder about how close we are to going off the deep end. This possibility of the plunge is especially acute in the wake of an emotionally catastrophic event, like the death of someone close. This I found relatable. For most of the story he toys around with the idea of being someone else, but in the end it is being no one that catches him. This drive in him is fed by the inability of language to describe even remotely what is happening in his heart and mind. Unable to go on being and becoming the person he was, he lives in a sort of purgatory for years until he finds a way to try to be someone else outside of his writing. Questions related to the value of truth allow the plot to twist and dislodge from the normal expectations of causal logic and linear plot. In the last 25 pages, he disconnects from the outside world under the pretense of pursuing the Stillman case, in the process trying to disconnect from the physical necessities of his body and the world, trying to become a purely metaphysical being (maybe just a psyche with emotions and thoughts). Apparently he succeeds, and this is symbolized by his coming to the end of the red notebook, which is the only physical link between his mind and the world. It persists, but he is gone. There is no talk of heaven and hell, no afterlife at all. He just ceases to exist. It doesn't matter how, physically speaking, he got there. He did it through his will, consciously or not.

The book leaves the reader with so many more questions than answers, but stepping back and thinking about the concepts that the events illustrate alleviate some of the frustration. An easy way to get over this is to ask yourself whether you ever cared about the ultimate fate of Peter Stillman, Jr. Did you ever really care whether he lived or died, let alone whether he was murdered by his father? He never really seemed human. He was more like a spectre.

Anyway, I am sure that there are many other aspects of this book that have been lost on me. As I said, I still have a lot of questions. But regardless of these I liked the way the story made me think about the fragility of my sense of self and the skepticism that we usually ignore about what things are real or true. Even things that are right before our eyes. (less)

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Mar 25, 2012 Fany rated it 2 of 5 stars

It was... interesting. I mean, Paul Auster's style is kind of weird. When I first read about the plot I felt intrigued, you know, a story about a writer trying to solve a case about the primitive language, it's kind of interesting. But I don't know, it wasn't what I was waiting for... I mean, in the end (I know this is the first one of three books) I was so confused and now I really don't have an idea for what the next book is going to be about. Doesn't make sense for me. I don't think I'll read...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Riona rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: author-as-character, crazies, mental-illness, new-york-new-york, detectives

This was my first Paul Auster novel, and I went into it not knowing quite what to expect. That was probably a good thing, since this first installment of The New York Trilogy mostly defies categorization. It's part classic detective noir, part postmodern metafiction, with lots of surreal bits all around. I found something about this story very compelling while reading it, though it's nowhere near as suspenseful as most thrillers or hard boiled mysteries. While there were lots of good parts, bot...more

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Sep 02, 2010 Seth Hahne rated it 4 of 5 stars

City of Glass was not what I expected. Which is not a bad thing.

I expected a well-crafted, pulpy detective fiction, perhaps borrowing liberally from Hammett, Chandler, and maybe Leonard. And it was to be fraught with New York-ish details and ambiance. I expected it to more or less follow the expectable twists, turns, and general direction of the genre I believed it to take part in.

What I got was something different. Not entirely so, of course. But different enough for me to not quite realize wha...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Louise rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

It started really well. Auster seemed to be saying something about identity with his writer character who seemed to have merged into his pen namesake who might have merged into his detective creation and is called to service under the name of Paul Auster.

The first 50 or so pages, despite Peter's overlong monologue, show that the writer has talent.

The story seems to get lost in a maze of literary/historical allusions and side bars such as the detail on the wanderings of Stillman senior.

There are...more

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About Paul Auster

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Sunset Park, Invisible, Man in the Dark, The Book of Illusions, The Brooklyn Follies, and The New York Triology, among many other works. His books have been translated into forty-three languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/paulau...

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Quotes from City of Glass

“Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within...By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere.” — 55 people liked it

“He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.” — 8 people liked it

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City of Glass (New York Trilogy #1)

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