Pulling out the Red Notebook Again

The New York Trilogy

by Paul Auster

Trade paperback, 400 pages. Published 2006 (content: 1985-86). Acquired January 2007. Previously read November 2007. Reread October 2011.

The stories in here are, I think, increasingly less successful, but they're all very good. "City of Glass" is the first and the best: a riveting tale of a man losing identity with an ending that makes you think you can almost put the whole thing together, though you never quite manage it. (Thankfully.) "Ghosts" is also quite good, the tale of a private detective with a strange assignment to simply watch someone else, which leads to the disintegration of his own identity. This one is fun in a morose way, if that makes any sense. "The Locked Room" is the least interesting, perhaps because it's the most grounded, and consequently, it's not possible to project yourself onto the characters to the same extent as the others. Still, it has its moments-- and what moments they are.

It's easy to complain about Paul Auster that he doesn't make any sense, but that misses the point entirely: these are stories about a world that doesn't make any sense, and there's no other way to confront it.

Drawing in the Red Notebook

City of Glass

by Paul Auster
adaptation by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli

Comic trade paperback, 134 pages. Published 2004 (originally 1994). Acquired August 2006. Previously read October 2006. Reread October 2011.

This past spring, I taught my students Paul Auster's "City of Glass" (I forced them to apply Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics to it, defying all reason), instilling in me a desire to 1) reread the graphic novel adaptation and 2) reread the rest of The New York Trilogy. So, ages later, I finally did both.

I like Paul Auster, but I find his brilliance difficult to put into words; with this graphic adaptation of the first volume of The New York Trilogy, the problem is even more difficult. All of this is appropriate, of course, for a story where the main theme is the inability (or unreliability) of language to capture truth. When I first read this comic back in 2006, I hadn't yet read the prose novel; upon reading the prose novel some months later, I could not find anything in it that had been subtracted for the comic. Furthermore, the addition of a visual dimension meant that there was a whole new layer of meaning.

All I can do, then, is praise Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli's artwork; their simple, stark style suits the narrative perfectly, and their use of transitions between panels is astounding, showing a complete mastery of the comics medium. City of Glass is heavy with meaning in the best of ways.

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.)