Customer Reviews

City of Glass

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After reading several of the reviews on City of Glass, I felt a need to give my own opinion. This is a book of perception. One person could perceive it as some sort of [messed] up mystery novel, though if they read it expecting a detective story they will be sorely dissapointed. Another could perceive it as a book about morality, but even that seems cheap and weak. I believe that this is a book about perception and identity.

The main character is Daniel Quinn, who writes under the name William Wilson, about the charcter Max Work. At the beggining of the novel he identifies more with Max that with either of the other aspects of himself. Quinn receives a phone call from Peter Stillman for Detective Paul Auster (look familiar?) and chooses to claim his identity as well.

Then he interacts with Peter Stillman , son of Peter Stillman (who coincidently(?) has the name of Quinn's dead son). This is the gentleman whose case he is supposed to be working on, under the name of Paul Auster. Damaged as a result of a freakish childhood Peter Stillman is an anomolous character. He refers to himself as Peter Nobody, Anything, and Not Here. He claims that he is learning how to be Peter Stillman. Another case of identity confusion.

Quinn is sent on a mission to track Peter Stillman, father of Peter Stillman, an old man who, regardless of the number of times he meets Quinn can never recognize him. Thus Quinn pretends to be a different person each time they encounter eachother.

City of Glass is strange and disturbing and thought provoking. I haven't even meantioned Daniel Quinn the writer, pretending to be Paul Auster the detective, meeting Paul Auster the writer, and his son Daniel. Or how Don Quixote and Cervantes and Quinn and Paul Auster are all the same person!

So if your ready for something to screw with your mind, and make you wonder about the nature of life and literature, read the City of Glass. If you want to read a mystery novel pick up something by Sue Grafton.

I put the book down and had thought well of it, but not worthy of a review let alone a good one, but as I went to sleep that night, it hit me. At the point that I understood what the main character represented, which was a Campbellian march through the four phases of life, I became quite impressed with what Auster had done. I need to read it again to see all the details that I missed not understanding the parallels with life, but look for this as you read it: from his birth as Auster, to understanding language with Stillman, the identity crisis with the father, the mid-life crisis after meeting his namesake, the question of paths during this, the isolation of late life and finally the fading away. On this level, the story is absolutely stunning.

I think there are other levels that smarter people than myself have figured out and maybe with the next reading I will see some of them.

I place this item on a none-too-tiny list of literary Rorschach tests. Unconvinced? Please sample any ten of my fellow reviewer's estimates of the "meaning" of this book.
The best parts of this book are the hero's various meetings with the two Peter Stillmans, father & son. The dialogs between Quinn and these two grotesques are very amusing.
Interesting use of the author as character in his own fiction -- though not as entertaining as other still-living masters of this specialty: Roth (P.), Vidal, Mailer.

Before you get too excited from reading the other reviews, I will offer some words of caution.

The ending is weak. It is that simple. (Ending defined as the last chapter or two.)

Auster offers beautiful prose and the book reads quickly. It is intriguing, but when I finished it was as though Auster had written himself into a corner. All his brilliant questions could not be solved.

A novel does not need to answer everything. Leaving the reader to think is good, but Auster at second glance seems to lead the reader on knowing he cannot fulfil the experience with a proper ending. Yet, in some ways that is his point.

The book is worth reading if you have never encountered Auster before or read any existentialistic novels because then the book will be unique. Yes, unlike anything you have ever read before.

I have read of all of Auster's novels - except Timuktu which is just out - and they all seem to have this problem except for Mr. Vertigo.

Go to Auster for fancy prose. He is great at it, but do not expect a fulfilling ending.

Some years ago, I burned myself out on Auster. I read one book, Moon Palace and then I started reading his work compulsively-- ripping through everything that I could find. It was sort of like eating nothing but peanut butter sandwiches for three months. Very satisfying, but quite difficult to look at the jar after that. And then I left him alone. I ignored newly released books. I wanted nothing more to do with the man.

Then this year I picked up and read a copy of his Collected Prose. And I was doomed. I've started reading everything that I can get my hands on. And re-reading.

The New York Trilogy was one of the first things that I read by Auster, and one of the most dearly beloved. Rereading City of Glass was an interesting experience. I wondered whether I would find the same things moving, whether I would still like it as much. I knew that my reading experience would be affected by Auster discussing why he had written the book in his collected prose.

In the end, I found that my own experience of grief/tragedy deepened my connection with Quinn. His need to find threads in the seemingly random is something that I understand better now-- it added some holdfasts to the text that I had lacked before.

It remains a great book.

Why read it if you haven't already? Detectives, writers, identities, loss, intrigue, mistakes, death, sex and consequences. (Putting these things in a line gives the wrong impression, but read it all the same.)

I'm curious whether I'll burn myself out again on Auster a second time.

In all the reviews I am surprised no one has mentioned Poe's short story "William Wilson," the very definition of doppleganger in literary prose. Here in "City of Glass' we have the same thing, even Auster uses the name William Wilson. This novel brings back true literature in a culture devoid of anything that smacks of indepth thinking on the part of the reader. Allusions, allegory, symbol, puns, linguistic twists, irony, shifting narrators...it's all here. The play on initials between Don Quixote and Danial Quinn is exquisite; the continual movement of Stillman and the paradox of his name speaks volumes about the craft of the author; the quick syntax of detective fiction when Quinn is Auster is beautifully reminiscent of Phillip Roth; the Socratic philosophical dialogue between Stillman and Auster makes me smile with joy that an author encapsulated the form so subtlely and let the audience 'get it' on their own. As a reader, the beauty of the style and form shines through without me having to be told by the author what he is doing. That is priceless in a contemporary literary world where stunted, choppy, rough prose has eclipsed mastery. I am so glad I have a copy of City of Glass; it is the best book I have read in years.

To start this is NOT a detective story. This is NOT a standard fiction novel. This is NOT a nouveau roman in the style of Alain Robbe-Grillet's "The Erasers". What this is, IS a stylized version of a man's endeavor to encounter himself and survive. OK, this sounds almost as ambiguous as the book itself.

To my feelings (and IMHO), Auster is trying to look into the 'soul' of a character in a novel and bring him into our own thought processes. It may just be a way for him to tell us about himself and how he has searched for himself, in a very unorthodox way. His search is the story itself, and the wanderings of Auster/Quinn is his own anabasis. His time in the alley and dark room, would then be his exploration of what is the minimum we truly need to survive, and not what we want in the ways of creature comforts.

He tells us what he IS trying to do in the book in his discussion of the Auster character's essay of Cervantes "Don Quixote". He explicitly states the proposition there are questions as to who is the author of DQ. Whether Cervantes is really DQ, and the whole story of finding the book in a bookstall and translating it into spanish from arabic is Cervantes way of giving up ownership to see how it will be perceived.

I don't think that the naming of the wandering character "Daniel Quinn" (DQ) is anything but a direction by Auster to this idea. That DQ uses his name, as Don Quixote represented Cervantes seem straight forward.

The next two volumes should make this clearer as the follow-ups are supposed to do in a trilogy.

"City of Glass" is Austers first book of his "New York Trilogy". He keeps his themes so it is also about poverty, hunger and chance. "City of Glass" is about the writer Daniel Quinn who pretends to be the detective Paul Auster. Quinn observes a man who locked in his son for years in the dark in order to teach him god's language. Quinns client fears his father who will be set free from jail. Daniel Quinn is like the other protagonists by Paul Auster. At the beginning "City of Glass" is a very trilling novel. If you read something else by Auster before you read this book you may know what will happen. In the end your expectations won't be fullfilled. For me it is too strange because I don't like Austers theories of chance.

This book is not as well written as other Auster books I've read, but it's message is powerful nonetheless. "Paul Auster" actually appears in this book as a charachter who sometimes pays attention to his higher self. Consequently "Auster" is able to write a few decent books and essays. One level down from Auster is the detective, capable of better work, who for years has only written mystery books, as an expediency. But what happens if one is distracted (by any chance of life) from achieving even that lowly level of artistic integrity? In such a case the artist invoves himself in meaningless pursuit of his own invention. Unfortunately, that's what most of us do with our lives, perhaps not to the extreme of the detective, but at least to some major extent. This book is about the many possible selves that one could potentially employ, and it is also about the self most of us ultimately tend toward enacting in our life dramas.

I'm not too sure about this one. I tried to go into it with an open mind, especially after being warned that it was a "little strange." Having enjoyed books such as Ishiguro's "Unconsoled" and other Kafka-esque novels, I was ready for anything. However, unfortunately, this book didn't seem to go anywhere. The story was interesting, as was the transformation of Quinn . . . but unfortunately, "interesting" doesn't make a good novel. Perhaps if the author had gone a bit deeper in his explanations and descriptions, and didn't limit himself to a mere 200 pages, something would have come of it. Unfortunately, i feel like the nights i spent reading this book were wasted time. I kept telling myself to go on . . . . that in the end it would be worth it. Finally, as I turned the last page, I realized i was wrong . . .