Frederick's Reviews > The New York Trilogy

THE NEW YORK TRILOGY contains three short works by Paul Auster: "City Of Glass" (written from 1981 to 1982), "Ghosts" (written in 1983), and "The Locked Room" (written in 1984.) "City Of Glass" was published as a standalone book in 1985, and "Ghosts" and "The Locked Room" were published, each by itself, in 1986. Then Penguin started publishing them in 1987. They were finally published in one volume in 1990. The edition I have, with an introduction by Luc Sante, came out in 2006. I don't know when Penguin put Art Spiegelman's wonderful cover art on it, but the flap - Yes! This paperback has flaps! - mentions Paul Auster's novel 4321, which came out in 2017, so it's obvious the TRILOGY has had at least two covers. This book was given to me by friends a month ago. I have always been meaning to read something by Paul Auster. This edition of this book is the best place to start.
I did cheat: I went to my library and borrowed a memoir by Paul Auster called THE RED NOTEBOOK. It gave me a good notion of the history of THE NEW YORK TRILOGY's publication. Auster had to shop "City Of Glass" around for some time. Note the three-year lapse between the completion of the book and the publication date. Then note the steamroller effect. His independent publisher, Sun & Moon, published all three books by 1986. Penguin, as major as a publisher gets, puts all three out between 1987 and 1988 and then puts them in one volume in 1990. The copyright page of my copy says it has been reprinted thirty times. (To be specific, it has a line which reads "27 29 30 28." If I've interpreted those numbers wrong, I will still say that Paul Auster is a writer as such. I've known what he looks like since the eighties. I've read articles he's written. I've seen him on PBS; heard him on NPR and have generally sensed he is a highly respected author.) But not until now, at the age of sixty-one, have I ever read a single book of his.
Strictly in terms of tone, THE NEW YORK TRILOGY is sturdy. Auster's cadence is more mid-century than present day. Even for someone writing in the early to mid-eighties, he has an unusually direct way with a sentence. If I'd had to guess, I'd have said this book was put together no later than 1958. I think the events in it go no later than 1977 or so, but I don't think it even mentions world events. There is nothing in here, except the mention of what year it is, every now and then, to indicate a world where Vietnam, Woodstock or Watergate have occurred. It seems mid-century because its surface resemblance is to Noir stories, which were so popular before 1960 and which rarely made reference to world events. The writers THE NEW YORK TRILOGY specifically refers to tend to be the major American writers of the nineteenth century, with Mark Twain left out. Hemingway once said American literature begins with Mark Twain. Auster refers to Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville and Emerson, all dead a good sixty years before Auster's stylistic models wrote. He writes like Nathanael West, Camus and Dashiell Hammett.
The question running through my mind as I read was whether or not the various doppelgängers haunting each other reflected a pattern. The answer, I think, is "No." Although there is at least one stunt (involving street directions which spell a phrase) and a few literary references which reward those in the know (one example being the moment a character says to another character, "Call me Redburn") the plot never requires the reader to notice these things. The fact that the walk one character takes actually spells a word is not underscored by Auster. I suspected a word or shape was being indicated by turns the character made, but I never felt Auster demanded I puzzle it out. I only learned it was, indeed, a spelling, when I read a review which gave away what was spelled.) I got the reference when a character said "Call me Redburn" because I've read all of Herman Melville. Melville wrote a book called REDBURN and the first line of his epic novel MOBY-DICK is "Call me Ishmael." Just before the character says "Call me Redburn" there is a passage about a sailor walking along a deck in a snowstorm. The passage itself reminded me of a passage in one of Melville's novels. THEN, Auster's character says "Call me Redburn." There is no plot point dependent on this. A reader who knows nothing of Melville can read this part and simply think it's part of the story. The reader may wonder who Redburn is, but, since people in this book take up pseudonyms, the larger point, that the world is made of people hiding behind various identities, is made. Auster's specific references are not meant as obstacles to the telling of these three loosely connected stories.
The larger theme is one of people deliberately isolating themselves and being perceived by others who, themselves, would rather not be seen.
The three stories have some interconnected characters, but Auster is not testing the reader. He himself crops up here and there, but he doesn't break the fourth wall. The fact that one character from one story turns up in the other does not mean that we're supposed to solve something. I ventire to say that these books were not intended to form a trilogy. It happened that Paul Auster put a few characters from each book into the other books, but only toward the end of the third book does the narrator hint that there is a commonality between the books. Kurt Vonnegut used to put characters from his novels into his other novels, but he usually did it with satirical fanfare. While there is a larger reason for Auster to cause a character from one book to appear in another, they appear offstage. It is an unusually subdued funhouse running through these books. The characters are haunted by sins of omission.
Briefly, "City Of Glass" describes someone undergoing a process of dissipation, "Ghosts" shows two people inspire paranoia in each other, and "The Locked Room" is about a person who so identifies with someone else that when he gains what he thought the other person would get, he becomes very distracted.
Drink lots of coffee.