case may be solved. The “story […] always proceeds forward in time” ⁴ and neither Blue, as a story world character, nor the reader know what will happen on the next pages. The fact that all action has already been composed by Paul Auster at the time we read the text is shown right at the beginning of the narration:

Little does Blue know, of course, that the case will go on for years. But the present is no less dark than the past, and its mystery is equal to anything the future might hold. Such is the way of the world: one step at a time, one word and then the next. (NYT 138)

Between Fiction and Reality

In the beginning, Blue receives the assignment to watch Black and send reports about his observations to White. But he soon learns that Black does not do anything suspicious and asks himself what the case is all about. By watching Black doing nothing, Blue feels to become a mirror image of Black. He becomes bored and frustrated and starts to believe that the case will last for the rest of his life: They have trapped Blue into doing nothing, into being so inactive as to reduce his life to almost no life at all. He feels like a man who has been condemned to sit in a room and go on reading a book for the rest of his life. (NYT 171)

The case as a fictional construct created by Black or Auster himself ⁵ stands in direct contrast to the former real life of Blue. As soon as Blue recognizes the case as a maze of dead ends and “when it is clear to Blue that Black will not be going anywhere” (NYT 161), he goes to a baseball match, a bar and a movie theatre to regain some of his former life. But when he finds his future Mrs Blue meeting another man, “he realizes that he has thrown away his life” (NYT 167) and “that this is truly the beginning of the end”. (NYT 167) The future Mrs Blue is symbolic of Blue’s social relationship to reality. After the incident with her, he realizes that there is no way out of the case anymore and that “it’s time to turn the page” (NYT 167).

Masks and Camouflage

Blue realizes that the case cannot continue forever and he decides to become actively involved in the case (NYT 167). He chooses to find out who receives his reports and finds a man with a mask to be the addressee. The fact that the man wears a mask to hide his identity shows that he knew that Blue would try to plot against him. After the incident at the post office, Blue concludes that Black and White might even be the same person and that there is a conspiracy against him (NYT 171). Blue realizes that Black is

⁴ Abbott 41.

⁵ Chris Pace, Escaping from the Locked Room: Overthrowing the Tyranny of Artifice in Paul

Auster's New York Trilogy, 30. April 1993, available at “Stillman’s Maze”:

[Accessed March 07, 2010].