Last Few Pages

Okay so the book ends on page 130. On page 119, we find out that the case is over because Stillman is dead and anyway, the check bounced so Quinn has no money to continue. Auster tells him this. Is Auster telling the truth? Does that even matter? Stillman jumped off a bridge and died in the air. Did he? We don't really know. Quinn absorbs this. He can't decide how he feels. He returns to his apartment after several months living in the alley waiting for a Stillman who would never show. His apartment has been leased to a girl. He wonders later if it's the same girl from earlier in the book who was reading one of his novels on the train. He wonders if that would matter. (It wouldn't.) With nowhere else to go, he walks to the apartment Stillman had occupied and goes inside. It's empty, but he doesn't care. He falls asleep on the floor and when he wakes up there's a tray of food near him. He eats it, not questioning its origins. Of course the food was placed by Auster and the narrator (other Auster?). They talk about Quinn. Is Stillman really dead? I'm still wondering. Quinn has clearly lost his senses. He sits in the dark room all day, sleeping mostly. When he wakes up he writes in his notebook until it's dark out. Sometimes he eats. He's running out of pages in the book, and for some reason the reader gets the impression that this means Quinn is running out of time to live. "Little by little, Quinn was coming to an end" (128). So not that strange a feeling. He reflects on his life, his loves, and his existence. Will there be hope for him after all? "The last sentence of the red notebook reads: What will happen when there are no more pages in the red notebook" (129). The red notebook ends up in the possession of the narrator since Auster doesn't feel like keeping it. The narrator feels for Quinn but has no idea what happened to him. But at least now we know how the narrator knew so much about the case. Interestingly, the end of Quinn's perspective in the book reminds me of the end of Kafka's Metamorphosis. As Quinn lies in the darkened room, filling the last pages of the book, he remembers all the people's he's loved and those who loved him. He thinks of "the infinite kindnesses of the world" and regrets that he can't writer more about them. In fact it "pained him to know" that he could write no more. He wonders if he "could learn to speak instead, filling the darkness with his voice, speaking the words into the air, into the walls, into the city, even if the light never came back" (129). Gregor has similar thoughts as he dies. He remembers fondly his family, the beauty of the outdoors, and how nice things once were. He doesn't resent the people who wronged him, and neither does Quinn. It's kind of pretty and kind of sad.

Word Count: 517

Film

Just kidding about watching it. I couldn't find it on the internet and I refuse to buy movies on DVD unless I've already seen and enjoyed them. So. I guess this mystery will remain unsolved.

Film and Pretension and Stuff

It has the guy who played Lupin in Harry Potter so really how bad could it be!?

In 2007, Paul Auster directed a film, you know, a movie but more pretentious. Anyway. It's called The Inner Life of Martin Frost and a lot of people hated it. I have yet to watch it, but I will watch it and then I will report back. It's about a man who falls in love with a girl and the man is a writer and the girl is strange and the whole thing has been largely mocked by critics and laymen alike so I'm a bit wary about the whole thing. I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes and one of the reviews said this: "Paul Auster's suffocating romance makes you feel as if you're helplessly stuck inside the head of the most pretentious person you know."
That critic was not impressed. Neither was a regular person who reviewed this and said "Gimmicky failed mindfuck makes P. Auster look like a pretentious fool who has nothing to say or show. No idea of his intent." 

He smoked a cigarette, and then another, and then another... Then he went to the kitchen, ate a bowl of cornflakes, and smoked another cigarette.

By the end of City of Glass, Quinn is exhausted. He has no idea what's going on with the case or with himself. He walks home, trying to cling to the knowledge that even if the case is a failure, his life will continue. For 100 pages he has taken careful notes, watched his target, and made sure to call Virginia Stillman every night. But by this point in the story none of that is working out for him and he feels compelled to give up. Everything he thought he knew turns out to be incorrect, or at least irrelevant, and his drive is significantly diminished. He reminds himself that he could blow all of this off and write another book (102). He's clearly not in a good state of mind...
 "Quinn was nowhere now. He had nothing, he knew nothing, he knew that he knew nothing. Not only had he been sent back to the beginning, he was now before the beginning, and so far before the beginning that it was worse than any end he could imagine" (102). Poor Quinn is an author, not a detective. And even the man he thought could help, Auster, turned out to be an author and not a detective, though Quinn won't learn that for several pages. Quinn wanted closure, as all authors probably do when they write. But Auster isn't a detective, he's just a writer like Quinn, and so he can't help Quinn reach a conclusion. Quinn is realizing that being a literary detective is not as great as it always seemed when he was writing about Work. He reflects on how gray he feels. His case isn't going well; his life is kind of a bummer. Even his walls are gray. He decides in the end to blow the whole thing off, but he also feels it's important to tell V. Stillman first. "As long as you tell people what you're going to do, he reasoned, it doesn't matter. Then you are free to do what you want" (103). Clearly, he feels like nothing good can come from continuing the case.
So he calls the lady Stillman and she doesn't pick up. The operators tell him the line is busy. He tries again and again; no luck. After another day of this, he decides that it must be a sign. "The fates had not allowed it" (108). Then he doubts that for a few pages in typical Quinn style.
Chapter 12 begins with an account from the narrator, referring to himself as the author of an entirely true account of Quinn's foray into private detective-hood. The direct account of Quinn's thoughts and feelings shifts here and the narrator's voice is more clear. Quinn becomes a faux drifter, living in an alley and trying to sleep as infrequently as possible so as not to miss anything important. We don't hear anything about Stillman, Virginia, or anyone else during these pages.
These 25 or so pages are very disorganized, story wise. I think this might be the saddest part of the book. At least at the beginning it seemed as if Quinn might solve the case and everything might turn out fine for him. But by this point, there aren't enough pages for the book to wrap up conveniently and the reader is left with a sad feeling, both for Quinn and for the unexplained characters like Virginia since she will obviously never get closure for her case and we will never get closure about her.

Word Count: 585

So far no mention has been made of Judaism

So, Paul Auster is Jewish. That has been established. But his book is not necessarily a "Jewish text" though of course it's way more Jewish than anything by Ayn Rand... Anyway, Auster was raised in a Jewish family, and although that doesn't necessarily make someone Jewish or mean that their work has that classification, people's upbringings always influence their work. Just look at Auslander. He's written entire books about his past, disguised as short stories and vaguely fictionalized biographical vignettes. But Auster does broach topics that often come up in Jewish lit, or topics that have at least come up in class, anyway. The whole trilogy focuses heavily on identity, and City of Glass especially deals with this. Quinn pretends to be Auster, a detective, and someone whose past doesn't haunt him as much as his does. We learn early in the book that Quinn had a family and that the family is now dead. This is sad for Quinn, but it helps explain his lonely life and his almost apathetic approach. He pretends to be Auster hoping that will lead to a more interesting life, or at least an interesting diversion from his subdued life. So Auster acts like a different person and then totally expects that other persona to live a different life than he does. He thinks he'll get special treatment from Mrs. Stillman because he's now a detective and that's what happens. Identity has been a recurring theme in the class. Horrible Cannibal Galaxy even incorporated it when the main character whose name I've forgotten because the book sucked so much (Brill? never mind, I remembered accidentally) can't pick between two halves, being Jewish and being French, and then kind of being American. Brill also has to figure out who he is when his kids are somewhat disappointing, he hates his poor, innocent wife, his crappy school abandons him, and it turns out that the only person who ever loved him is an equally insignificant, crazy, pretentious woman who has completely disappeared from his life. Auslander's entire Beware of God is about meshing his weird childhood with his new life of relative secular existence. So yeah, identity.
Death is something that comes up a lot in Ghosts, the second book in the trilogy. The character is also confronted with a very strange mystery and lets himself muse on suicide and murder. Page 146 includes a rather detailed description of a man jumping from a bridge. And I believe it's in that book where the main character is oddly focussed on the unsolved death of a small boy, but that could have been The Locked Room. Death has been something basically everything we read in class has incorporated. In the Metamorphosis, Gregor dies to be less of a burden, but also they kind of want him to die. In that story about the giant book about everyone, the entire life and death of the narrator's dad is chronicled in creepy detail. People died in Cannibal Galaxy. In Beward of God, many people (and animals!) die- that guy who kept not dying and God had to hit him with his car, the dog who kept judging the boy for masturbating, a lot of pets in the story about the guy who God was speaking to, and actually a few other people in that story, etc. So death is kind of a big thing. I'm sure there are good reasons for this that can't entirely be chalked up to survivor's guilt, but not being particularly knowledgeable about Judeo-Christian beliefs, I would feel weird speculating. But basically, this book totally applies to this assignment and anyone who says otherwise is just being mean.

See? Pretty sure Jewish people don't say things like that. 

I should say, it definitely, definitely, definitely applies more than Ayn Rand, because seriously that bitch was crazy and aside from the fact that her philosophy was bogus, she abandoned her heritage to the point where she changed her name and advocated ignoring organized religion. So there.

Word Count: 660

We will never know the agonies he suffered at having to leave his spot...

"We will never know the agonies he suffered at having to leave his spot" (Auster 116). Near the end of the first book in the trilogy, Quinn is out of money. He suspects there is a check waiting for him in his p.o. box but to go check it he'll have to leave the post from which he has been observing Stillman for weeks. He struggles with the decision and eventually decides to leave. Lacking money for a bus ticket, he walks. Weak, confused, and honestly somewhat crazed, he makes his way to the post office very slowly. He sees a mirror, "and for the first time since he had begun his vigil, Quinn saw himself... he did not recognize the person he saw there as himself... He had turned into a bum" (117). Quinn's entire existence to this point has been based around figuring out the Stillman case, and now he's broke and failing. Stillman is still a mystery and the entire thing is seeming less like an adventure and increasingly like a poor decision on his part. But as Quinn has very little, he keeps at it. Honestly it's weird that more mystery novels don't end up like this. Most of them just have small dips followed by major breakthroughs. This novel starts off in a relatively depressing way and then really only gets worse, since even the breakthroughs Quinn makes are confusing and lead to very little. This can be seen as well when Quinn meets the real Auster. Quinn goes into the hotel where Stillman has been staying and has a short discussion in which he establishes that Stillman has left the premises. The man he's talking to is Paul Auster the character, allegedly a detective. However Quinn asks about this and Auster insists that he's actually a writer. Quinn explains his story to Auster hoping that he can help, but instead Auster just offers to cash the check for Quinn since the check is in Auster's name. For the life of me I can't remember what page that's from but it definitely happened. The whole book is like that.

Word Count: 348

Page 63 and Classic Noir

The New York Trilogy is a meta-mystery; a mystery book about writing mystery books. Some say this is in poor taste. Page 63 of City of Glass makes the reader realize why, in fact, Auster is a genius and his book is great, taste be damned. It references the things that make mysteries mysteries: the mystery itself, the sometimes clueless but nonetheless intrepid detective, and, of course, The Woman.

You know, the woman. Maybe she's the wife of the missing person, or the lover of the guy who did it. It doesn't matter so much who she is as long as she's there. And she's always there, walking through the door dressed in clothes a little nicer than you would expect a random woman to go walking around in. She's young, almost always under 40. Her hair is pinned back in a hat with a veil on the front. She's wearing stockings, obviously. Think Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon.

There they are, experiencing classic chemistry in front of
his classic private-eye style office door with
classic frosted glass with lettering over it.

Because obviously the detective himself is Humphrey Bogart. And obviously they have chemistry. And obviously it's a little bit wrong since she's usually linked to another character. Basically, it's quite steamy. In my mind though it's always Lauren Bacall. Anyway, so the girl walks in, reports the crime. Or maybe she committed the crime. Or whatever. It really doesn't matter. What does matter is that she's pretty and the detective and the girl have a thing.

I guess the hat doesn't have to have a veil. 

City of Glass references that, with Quinn "expecting something to happen" (63). He refers to an earlier kiss that the two shared. Again, classic lady-in-a-mystery-novel/film. He "felt certain that he would eventually find Mrs. Stillman in his arms" (63).

Usually the lady is up to no good (cough, Barbara Stanwyck's character in Double Indemnity).
Just look at her. Clearly up to no good.  And MacMurray wasn't even a gumshoe, just a "smart insurance man".

It would be impossible to look more guilty

Virginia Stillman may be no good, we don't know. The reader doesn't know a lot about Quinn's mystery. Stillman walks around, does he know he's being followed? Does he not? Who's that other guy? What does Virginia know?

Quinn doesn't know much either. He knows that Virginia is pretty and as the detective he should get to kiss her more. As Quinn isn't a real detective but an author of detective novels, he is familiar with such tropes. His character, Max Work, apparently "never failed to profit from such situations," and Quinn worries that he's getting real life and fiction mixed up again. Poor Quinn remained undaunted: "nor did her current lack of encouragement prevent him from continuing to imagine her naked. Lascivious pictures marched through Quinn's head each night" (63). Can't blame a guy for wanting poontang, especially since clearly our society tells private detectives that they can expect such compensation from beautiful, taken women in need. Honestly, that's probably why most of them get into that line of work. To judge from film, really the only group that has on average more sex (excluding prostitutes for obvious reasons) are people who start out hating each other, people stuck in bad or inescapable situations together, and college professors.

Word Count: 558

Paul Auster on Coincidence (+other people on other stuff)

Auster is clearly interested in coincidence. This is an interesting discussion about that and some other stuff.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/108770-universe-knows-my-name/

The New York Trilogy

Why wouldn't you want to read this? Such a cool cover.

Quinn, Auster, Quinn-Auster, and Identity

The main character in City of Glass is a man named Quinn; an author of mystery novels who has a tragic past and leads a kind of non-life. His wife and kid have died, although that isn't super relevant to the plot, and he lives alone, preferring to be ignored and forgotten. He takes on the personality of his fictional detective character, called Work, and allows himself to sort of drift around in the city without interacting very much with anyone. He enjoys taking walks, and says "On his best walks, he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally, was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere" (4). He goes on to discuss his lack of interest in leading a meaningful life. Interestingly, he mentions that he had once been more ambitious and had written plays, poems, etc., before giving up and writing mystery novels to make a living. This is the first indication to the reader that Quinn might be one of those characters designed to reflect the author in a more direct way than characters usually do, kind of like Philip Roth's Nathan Zuckerman. Auster makes this connection blatantly clear later when he introduces another character; a man calls Quinn in the middle of the night and mistakes him for Paul Auster the private eye. The narrator (Real life Auster? Fake Auster? No one? The novel is presented as a history almost, and several references are made that make it seem like a case report. The closest thing I can compare it to is the Series of Unfortunate Events...) has just described Quinn's alter-ego, his pseudonym William Wilson. So the reader is familiar with Quinn's ability to become other people, perhaps at the cost of really being himself. Quinn is sometimes Wilson, sometimes Work, really not ever Quinn, but he seems fine with that. Even from the first chapter or two it's pretty easy to see how important identity is as a theme for Auster the writer. His whole novel is about a man who lacks a real identity and so takes on others, but since that character is such a reflection of who Auster is, it's not hard to determine that the book is a sort of investigation of Auster himself. Anyway, someone calls and asks for Paul Auster the detective. In real life, Paul Auster the writer talks about this on an episode of Radiolab. Apparently someone called him once in the night asking for Quinn. In the novel, Quinn tells the caller they have the wrong number and regrets it, realizing that the call was intriguing and he would like to know what it had been about. He eventually decides to pretend to be Auster and talk to the man on the phone. This conversation leads to a meeting set for the next morning. This meeting is so that the man can tell "Auster" about some problem he's having, and as a P.I., Auster is supposed to solve it. Quinn agrees to meet but never intends to actually go. The next morning, though, he gets up, gets dressed, and takes a bus to the agreed upon address. It's almost surreal, because the narrator expresses the fact that Quinn never intends to go and then describes his thought process as he finds himself preparing to go anyway: "As time wore on, he found himself doing a good imitation of a man preparing to go out" (12). So Quinn is just sort of drifting around, doing things that seem appropriate, without giving them that much thought. Once he begins working as Paul Auster the detective, he discovers that the man he is following also seems to be drifting aimlessly. It turns out that the man has an aim, but then it turns out he doesn't... and then it turns out that he might. Which brings me to internet people. I looked the book up to see if I could find any essays about it to read before starting this project and there were a lot of mixed reviews for it. Some people were saying that they found it to be frustrating and hated the seeming lack of resolution. Other people were quick to defend the novella, but there seems to be a fairly large faction of readers who really disliked this trilogy. I think that's a shame because I at least really enjoy it. Some people also thought it was in poor taste to mention one's own name in a book and there was some talk of how it's inappropriate to write a novel about writing the novel that the novel is. I think that's kind of an unfair rule to hold people to. I mean any novel about itself would be better than The Cannibal Galaxy. Whatever.

Word Count: 769

Paul Auster Intro-ish

Pretty sexy, especially compared to
Philip Roth who isn't hot at all 

Paul Auster was born in Newark in 1947. I've only read one book by him so far so I wouldn't feel right making sweeping statements about his style or genre, but some Wikipedia writer apparently felt okay about that and described his writings as "[blending] absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction, and the search for identity and personal meaning." And obviously the fact that it's on Wikipedia makes it true, so let's just go with that. He is probably best known for The New York Trilogy, which is sold in one volume although it is technically three separate novels. The three stories comprising the trilogy (City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room) are loosely connected through vague topics like coincidence, mystery, and death, but for the most part they are entirely unrelated. Or at least that's what I've come to assume based on the fact that I read exactly one novel and a half so far. Maybe the third one is super related to the first one and it'll turn out everything I just typed is wrong. He is still alive, which is always comforting. Maybe it's just me but if I know the person who made something is dead, it changes the way I perceive whatever it is. The creator being dead doesn't ruin it, it just makes it a completely different experience, I think. Like it totally bums me out that Elliott Smith is dead whenever I hear one of his songs, but that doesn't make the music any less excellent. Or maybe it's just that it's sad if someone's dead but they should be alive, like if they died young or whatever. Because it isn't really sad to read something by, say, Jane Austen, because if she were still alive she'd be 240. But then again maybe it is still sad because she did actually die kind of young. I dunno. Anyway, it's cool that Paul Auster is still alive. I'm sure he would agree with me on that point. He has been married twice, once to Lydia Davis (from 1974-77) and then currently to Siri Hustvedt (1981-present). He has one kid from each marriage. I would assume neither kid is still an actual kid. Probably they're both at least 30. Maybe 30 still counts as being a kid. That probably isn't relevant. Anyway, Paul Auster is super awesome and City of Glass is one of the most interesting detective-type stories I've read. Also he's Jewish so this totally counts. 

Word Count: 412