Faber Firsts The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster In brief

First published in the UK 1987, The New York Trilogy was originally published as three books: City of Glass (1985) which sees a crime novelist being driven mad by having to assume various identities as part of a reallife case; Ghosts (1986), which sees a private eye named Blue (trained by a man named Brown) taking on a case from a client named White which requires him to spy on a man named Black, on Orange Street. And The Locked Room (1986), which sees an author researching the biography of his missing childhood friend a talented writer - in order to publish his writing, but gradually taking the mans identity himself. In each case, the conventions of the traditional detective novel are being overthrown. Auster uses the traditional narrative structures of the detective novel to explore questions of identity, reality and fat, rather than to simply solve a case. Auster has created a series of detective stories where it is the readers themselves who are the real detectives: the ultimate post-modern page-turners.

Faber Book Club: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

Background
Such is the nature of The New York Trilogy that any notion of guiding the reader plays into Paul Austers hands immediately. Each of the three stories is exploring and experimenting with the structure and traditions of the detective story, as well as the roles of the author, protagonists and the reader. The literary community has invested considerable effort in trying to find the most appropriate identity for these uncategorizable stories: they have been variously described as a metaphysical mystery tour, a seamless little detective story and exquisitely bleak literary games. In essence, Austers protagonists in these stories are modern approximations of the heroes of the early twentieth century novels of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Philip Marlowe. Chance meetings and drunken coincidences, wealthy feuding families in need of a private investigator and solitary detectives all features. The bewildering bleakness of the modern urban sprawl be it Los Angeles or New York features is also a key feature, as is the question of identity. However, whereas classic detectives are always confident in their environment and are ultimately successful with their case, Austers protagonists are confused, not even real detectives and sometimes going insane and nothing is solved in The New York Trilogy. As Auster himself has said in interview, mystery novels give answers, my work is about asking questions. In this respect, his stories are nothing like the classic novels he appears to be aping. City of Glass sees a detective fiction writer and private investigator who has published poetry, translations and critical essays adopt a pseudonym and turn his hand to mystery novels. Of course, much of this biography echoes that of Auster himself, who is, with City of Glass, turning his hand to the detective novel. To further add to the intricacies and post-modernism of the plot, a character named Paul Auster appears in the story but not as the narrator. Similarly, the title of the third story The Locked Room refers to the sub-genre of detective fiction in which the crime is committed under what appear to be utterly impossible circumstances. Classically, it has taken place in a room that no perpetrator could have got into or out of: a locked room. In this instance, there is no actual locked room, but instead the book, which is seemingly impossible for the protagonist to get out of.

Faber Book Club: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

For discussion
The plots of Austers novels often resemble each other: there are interchangeable private detectives and characters vanishing and changing their names, as part of exploring the nature of identity. Do you think that this is done effectively in The New York Trilogy? Austers novels are often written in the first person. Do you trust him as a narrator? Do you think there is a difference between Paul Auster: the author, and the Paul Auster who appears in his work? Much of the plot in The New York trilogy hinges on fate, or coincidence, but Auster has said in interview: I really dont know why critics call them coincidences. Theyre the mechanics of reality, and thats what Im interested in tracking. Thats how the world works. Do you agree with him? What are the differences between the New York that Auster writes about and the New York that he lives in and exists today. Do you recognise the city in The New York trilogy or do you think it could be anywhere? The characters in The New York trilogy are often interested in writing in order to connect with others, but end up cutting themselves off more. Do you think that is true of reading Austers work as well? Were you distracted while reading The New York Trilogy? Having read these stories, do you think that Auster writes in order to enagage with the world or in order to escape from it? And what is the reason that you read them: to escape or engage? Many of the issues that the characters in The New York Trilogy are dealing with are also those confronted by literary critics. Did you enjoy being involved in that through Austers characters? Do you think that these stories work equally well as pot-boilers as they do explorations of post-modern writing or existential novels? If not, which do you think is the stronger element? The endings to the stories are ambiguous and open ended. Did you find this frustrating, or did you enjoy being given the freedom to take on the stories in your own imagination?

Faber Book Club: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

About the author

Paul Auster was born in New Jersey in 1947. After attending Columbia High School and Columbia University he lived in France for four years where he worked translating French literature. Since 1974 he has published poems, essays, novels, screenplays and translations. His debut work was a memoir entitled The Invention of Solitude, but it was The New York Trilogy that brought him international acclaim and attention. In 1995, Auster wrote and co-directed the films Smoke (which won him the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay) and Blue in the Face. He lives in Brooklyn, New York and is married to the novelist Siri Hustvedt. They have one daughter.

Resources
http://www.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/a/auster21.htm American literature on the web, Auster site http://www.paulauster.co.uk/ Authors fan website

Suggested further reading Fiction

The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler The Maltese Falcom Dashiell Hammett Underworld - Don DeLillo Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace Double Indemnity James M Cain Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov What I Loved - Siri Hustvedt

Non-Fiction
Paul Auster (Contemporary American and Canadian Novelists) Mark Brown Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster (Pennsylvania Studies in Contemporary American Fiction) Dennis Barone (Editor)
Faber Book Club: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

Other books by Paul Auster Fiction

In the Country of Last Things (1987) Moon Palace (1989) The Music of Chance (1990) Leviathan (1992) Mr. Vertigo (1994) Timbuktu (1999) The Book of Illusions (2002) Oracle Night (2004) The Brooklyn Follies (2005) Travels in the Scriptorium (2007) Man in the Dark (2008)

Poetry

Disappearances: Selected Poems (1988) Screenplays he Music of Chance (1993) Smoke (1995) Blue in the Face (1995) Lulu on the Bridge (1998) The Inner Life of Martin Frost (2007)

Essays, memoirs, and autobiographies

The Invention of Solitude (1982) The Art of Hunger (1992) The Red Notebook (1995) Hand to Mouth (1997)

The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry (1982) True Tales of American Life (First published under the title I Thoug ht My Father Was God, and Other True Tales from NPRs National Story Project) (2001)

Edited collections

Translations

The Uninhabited: Selected Poems of Andre du Bouchet (1976) Life/Situations, by Jean-Paul Sartre,1977 (in collaboration with Ly dia Davis) A Tomb for Anatole, by Stephane Mallarm (1983)

Faber Book Club: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster