Hunger, chance, disappearance and solitude are the central themes of Auster’s fiction.1 Sometimes these themes are easy to detect but in their core more complex as they seem to be on first sight.
With the New York Trilogy Paul Auster has created a powerful and deep going tripartite work which made him popular all over the world. In 1989, he received the Prix France Culture de Littérature Étrangère for this, his first novella and many other prices followed for other works he has published until now.
City of Glass2 deals with reality and coincidence – failure and identity in the frame of a detective story. “It was a wrong number that started it”3 is the first sentence the reader detects when one begins to read the novel. A story about a writer named Quinn that used to be a quite talented writer. After he had lost his wife and son, he publishes detective stories under the pseudonym William Wilson. Isolated from his fellow humans Quinn gets involved into a sequence of events marked by chance and solitude. He accepts to work on a case as a detective after he had received a strange phone call asking for Paul Auster the famous detective. Quinn accepts the case and from now on works under the name of Paul Auster. Him and the caller Peter Stillman meet and Quinn gets to know the details of his work – he is to protect Peter from his father Mr. Stillman senior who as Peter’s wife thinks is planning to kill his son. This marks the beginning of Quinn’s long journey through New York City.
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1 Dennis Barone: Beyond the Red Notebook,University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1995, S.2
2 Auster, Paul: The New York Trilogy, Faber and Faber Limited, London 1987
3 Zit. Auster, Paul: The New York Trilogy, Faber and Faber Limited, London 1987 S.3
At a glance
- Grade: 2.0 (1.0 is the best grade)
- Compares City of Glass with Edgar Allen Poe’s classical detective fiction
- Examines Stillman’s language project using Saussure’s theory of the sign
- 11 sources in the bibliography
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Short information about Paul Auster and his work
3. ‘Reading the City’ - urban spaces and their readability in Paul Auster’s City of Glass
3.1 Getting lost in the labyrinth New York – the concept of urban space and its impact on the main character
3.2 Urban space as a text
4. City of Glass as a detective story and the concept of language
4.1 City of Glass a classical detective story?
4.2 Language: Tool of the detective. Role and function of language in the novel
5. Conclusion
Objectives and Themes
This paper examines how Paul Auster’s City of Glass represents New York as a space to be read and how language operates within the framework of detective fiction. Its central question is whether language serves the same function in Auster’s novel as it does in a classical detective story.
- Paul Auster’s life and literary work
- New York as a labyrinth and an urban text
- Quinn’s observation and interpretation of the city
- Classical detective fiction and its conventions
- Language, signs and Stillman’s search for an original language
Excerpt from the Book
3.1Getting lost in the labyrinth New York – the concept of urban space and its impact on the main character
In Paul Auster’s City of Glass the city - urban space functions in different ways. On the one hand, Quinn’s home – his apartment is a part of the city and on the other hand, the city scares him in a way. In other words, in Quinn’s life two separated spaces play a very important role. The first one is the inner space – his home which gives him shelter and the outer space – the city – standing for chaos.14 Quinn describes the city as following: “New York was an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps”15. The city as a labyrinth is a very interesting motif that I want to look closer at. What do we understand by a labyrinth?
When we look into a dictionary, we often find two definitions. One describes the physical labyrinth, a place that is made up of complicated series of paths or passages through which it is difficult to find your way16 or a literary one, a situation, process, or area of knowledge that is very complicated.17 The labyrinth Quinn faces has to be seen as a literary one; he always has to take new decision leading to new situations. This is somehow the essence of the literary motif of the labyrinth: “Zum einen bezieht sich das literarische Motiv als ein eher fiktiver Ort auf ein Irrgartensystem, das die Möglichkeit des Verlaufens bietet, da es Kreuzungen, Sackgassen aufweist, als auch die Möglichkeit der Entscheidung zwischen verschiedenen Wegen ins Zentrum – gesetzt den Fall, dass es überhaupt eines gibt. Der Benutzer/Gefangene ist daher gezwungen, die Situation immer wieder neu zu beurteilen, sich ständig aufs neue zu orientieren und kontinuierlich die Zielvorgaben zu überprüfen“18 Quinn is somehow not able to do just that. He doesn’t know how to deal with the world around him when he leaves his inner space.
From a psychological perspective, we could say that he doesn’t readjust his ‘filters’. Every person has developed such ‘filters’ in order to be able to deal with the immense sum of information which our brain has to deal with in order to classify information and decide whether something is important or not. Exactly this missing ability is the reason why he looses himself and the connection to reality.
Chapter Summaries
1. Introduction: The paper introduces City of Glass, outlines its plot and sets out questions about urban space, detective fiction and language.
2. Short information about Paul Auster and his work: This chapter sketches Auster’s life and literary career, including experiences the author connects to his writing.
3. ‘Reading the City’ - urban spaces and their readability in Paul Auster’s City of Glass: This chapter considers New York as a labyrinth and examines Quinn’s attempts to interpret urban space as a text.
4. City of Glass as a detective story and the concept of language: This chapter compares the novel with classical detective fiction and considers language, signification and Stillman’s linguistic project.
5. Conclusion: The paper brings together its discussion of chance, language and the city, and reflects on the relationship between Auster’s experiences and his fiction.
Keywords
Paul Auster, City of Glass, New York, urban space, labyrinth, detective fiction, language, signification, literary analysis, chance, identity, authorship, Tower of Babel
Frequently Asked Questions
What is this paper about?
It is a literary analysis of urban space, detective fiction and language in Paul Auster’s City of Glass.
What are its central themes?
The paper focuses on New York as a labyrinth, the interpretation of urban space, detective-story conventions and the relationship between words and meaning.
What is the main research question?
The paper asks what role language plays in Auster’s detective fiction and whether it functions as it does in a classical detective story.
What method does the author use?
The author interprets the novel through literary analysis, compares it with conventions of classical detective fiction and draws on published criticism and theories of language.
What does the main body cover?
It discusses Auster’s life and work, Quinn’s experience of New York, the city’s readability, detective fiction and the novel’s treatment of language.
Which keywords characterize the paper?
Key terms include urban space, labyrinth, detective fiction, language, signification, chance and identity.
How does the paper approach New York as a labyrinth?
It considers the contrast between Quinn’s apartment and the city outside, and relates his movements through New York to the literary motif of the labyrinth.
What role does Stillman’s language project play in the analysis?
The paper examines his attempt to invent a language and relates it to questions about signs, naming and the detective’s reliance on language.
- Quote paper
- Sebastian Bohl (Author), 2008, “Reading the City”: The concept of language in Paul Auster’s "City of Glass", Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/213383
