The New York Trilogy (1985, 1986) - Paul Auster

You hear the term “Postmodern” thrown around a lot, but it’s hard to find a definition of the term that you can carry around in your pocket. Even that bastion of knowledge Wikipedia claims “Unfortunately, there is no authoritative definition yet.” Maybe that’s the point. The best definition I can come up with is found in the entirely of Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy.

The book consists of three short novels (each originally published separately), City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room. In City of Glass, Quinn, a writer of detective novels, receives a call from a man who mistakes Quinn for a private detective named Paul Auster. (Don’t even think about getting confused yet, okay? Just bear with me.) The man wants to hire Quinn/Auster to find and follow a man named Stillman, whom the man believes is out to kill him. Quinn decides to play along, taking the case.

Ghosts, somewhat similar in plot to City of Glass focuses on Blue, a detective hired by a man named White to spy on a man named Black.

The book concludes with The Locked Room, something of a departure from the other two novels in that it involves more characters (some from the previous stories, including Auster), more settings and more to reflect upon, often referring to the other two stories. A man’s childhood friend named Fanshawe has disappeared, leaving behind a wife, a baby, and several unpublished manuscripts. But what happened to Fanshawe?

Again, all three stories are connected in many ways. They all include writers (including Auster, sort of), detectives, New York and the search for identity. They all examine the role and purpose of writing. What does writing do? Does it influence people? Can it and does it change the way the world works? Do writers lose their identities in the process of writing? When I’ve finished writing a novel, a story, a play, how can I be sure that I’m not actually a part of what I’ve just written and that I’ve somehow lost part of myself to the work I’ve just completed?

In most of the situations in these stories, we don’t meet real detectives, only writers who get wrapped up in acting like detectives, trying to be someone that they’re not. In the process, they segregate themselves from the normalcy of their day-to-day lives, sometimes with devastating consequences.

And what about Auster himself? Is he really writing himself into the stories or is this an unrelated Auster?

Is this life just an exercise in futility? Do we really know who we are and why we’re here or are we caught up in trying to be something or someone we’re not? What is reality? Who are we?

The New York Trilogy is very readable and succeeds in being a flat-out great story, but it also works on so many other levels, asking the reader to look at it from several different angles, each of which shine a different light on what’s going on. The fact that Auster (whomever he might be!) is able to pull this off is stunning. Highly recommended.