01 December 2007

Archival Review: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

Trade paperback, 400 pages
Published 2006 (content: 1985-86)
Acquired January 2007
Read November 2007
The New York Trilogy
by Paul Auster

After a number of quick and easy reads, it was time for something more substantial-- and substantial is what this book has in spades. In a class I took last fall, we read the comic book adaptation of Paul Auster's City of Glass by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchellil, and having thoroughly enjoyed it, I picked up a (extraordinarily handsome) omnibus edition of the original novel and the other two installments in the series.  There's something about Auster's prose that keeps you reading, even though you have no idea what's happening at times.  Well, that's not fair-- I always knew what was happening, but rarely why, as some pretty dang bizarre things happened.  But I suspect that's not the point.  What links these three pseudo-detective stories together far more than their setting is their ideas-- about identity and about language, primarily, but a lot else, too. (As a side note, I was astounded at how accurate an adaptation the comic book was, despite its length.  Very rarely did I come across anything in the novel that I didn't remember from the comic, and if anything, the excellent art in the comic only added to the effect of the story.)

No comments:

Post a Comment