Plot
City of Glass
The first story, City of Glass, features an author of detective fiction who becomes a private investigator and descends into madness as he becomes embroiled in the investigation of a case. It explores layers of identity and reality, from Paul Auster the writer of the novel to the unnamed "author" who reports the events as reality, to "Paul Auster the writer", a character in the story, to "Paul Auster the detective", who may or may not exist in the novel, to Peter Stillman the younger, to Peter Stillman the elder and, finally, to Daniel Quinn, the protagonist.
City of Glass has an intertextual relationship with Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote . Not only does the protagonist Daniel Quinn share his initials with the knight, but when Quinn finds "Paul Auster the writer," Auster is in the midst of writing an article about the authorship of Don Quixote. Auster calls his article an "imaginative reading," and in it he examines possible identities of Cide Hamete Benengeli, the narrator of the Quixote.
Ghosts
The second story, Ghosts, is about a private eye called Blue, trained by Brown, who is investigating a man named Black on Orange Street for a client named White. Blue writes written reports to White who in turn pays him for his work. Blue becomes frustrated and loses himself as he becomes immersed in the life of Black.
The Locked Room
The Locked Room is the story of a writer who lacks the creativity to produce fiction. Fanshawe, [1] his childhood friend, has produced creative work, and when he disappears the writer publishes his work and replaces him in his family. "Paul Auster", the name, does not appear in this story as it does in City of Glass, but Auster breaks the 4th wall by writing about writing of the previous books in the trilogy "...I could not have started this book. The same holds for the two books that come before it, City of Glass and Ghosts." [2] He also references clearly autobiographical moments such as his encounter with composer Wyschnegradsky when Auster was a young man in Paris. [3] The title is a reference to a "locked-room mystery", a popular form of early detective fiction.
Adaptations
City of Glass was adapted in 1994 into a critically acclaimed experimental graphic novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. It was published as City of Glass: A Graphic Mystery in 2004.
In March 2006, published as text with illustrations by Art Spiegelman and an introduction by Lucy Sante - ISBN 9780143039839.
In 2009, Audible.com produced an audio version of The New York Trilogy, narrated by Joe Barrett, as part of its Modern Vanguard line of audiobooks.
In 2016, Edward Einhorn adapted City of Glass as a play Off-Broadway, at the New Ohio. [4] [5]
In 2017, Duncan Macmillan produced another adaptation as a play, which showed for a short period at HOME in Manchester, before transferring to the Lyric, Hammersmith. It was a co-production between HOME, the Lyric, and 59 Productions. [6] [7]
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
Paul Benjamin Auster was an American writer, novelist, memoirist, and filmmaker. His notable works include The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), Invisible (2009), Sunset Park (2010), Winter Journal (2012), and 4 3 2 1 (2017). His books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction or science fiction, but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has several subgenres, including detective fiction, courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction, and legal thrillers. Most crime drama focuses on crime investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre.
Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1928 by the American detective fiction writers Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred Bennington Lee (1905–1971). It is also the name of their main fictional detective, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murder cases. From 1929 to 1971, Dannay and Lee wrote around forty novels and short story collections in which Ellery Queen appears as a character.
John Dickson Carr was an American author of detective stories, who also published using the pseudonyms Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson, and Roger Fairbairn.
The "locked-room" or "impossible crime" mystery is a type of crime seen in crime and detective fiction. The crime in question, typically murder, is committed in circumstances under which it appeared impossible for the perpetrator to enter the crime scene, commit the crime, and leave undetected. The crime in question typically involves a situation whereby an intruder could not have left; for example the original literal "locked room": a murder victim found in a windowless room locked from the inside at the time of discovery. Following other conventions of classic detective fiction, the reader is normally presented with the puzzle and all of the clues, and is encouraged to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed in a dramatic climax.
Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective, who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.
Crime fiction is a typically 19th-, 20th- and 21st-century genre, dominated by British and American writers. This article explores its historical development as a genre.
Clayton Rawson was an American mystery writer, editor, and amateur magician. His four novels frequently invoke his great knowledge of stage magic and feature as their fictional detective The Great Merlini, a professional magician who runs a shop selling magic supplies. He also wrote four short stories in 1940 about a stage magician named Don Diavolo, who appears as a minor character in one of the novels featuring The Great Merlini. "Don Diavolo is a magician who perfects his tricks in a Greenwich Village basement where he is frequently visited by the harried Inspector Church of Homicide, either to arrest the Don for an impossible crime or to ask him to solve it."
Edward Dentinger Hoch was an American writer of detective fiction. Although he wrote several novels, he was primarily known for his vast output of over 950 short stories. He was one of the few America fiction writers of his generation who supported himself financially through short story publication, rather than novels or screenplays.
Postmodern literature is a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues. This style of experimental literature emerged strongly in the United States in the 1960s through the writings of authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Philip K. Dick, Kathy Acker, and John Barth. Postmodernists often challenge authorities, which has been seen as a symptom of the fact that this style of literature first emerged in the context of political tendencies in the 1960s. This inspiration is, among other things, seen through how postmodern literature is highly self-reflexive about the political issues it speaks to.
The Ruined Map is a novel by Japanese writer Kōbō Abe, translated into English by E. Dale Saunders for Knopf in 1969.
Otto Penzler is an American editor of mystery fiction, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.
City of Glass: The Graphic Novel, by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli, is a comics adaptation of American author Paul Auster's novella City of Glass.
Joseph Commings was an American writer of locked room mysteries. He wrote a series of soft-core sex novels, but is best known for his locked-room mystery/impossible crime short stories featuring Senator Brooks U. Banner."
Leviathan is American writer Paul Auster’s seventh novel, published by Viking Press in 1992. The novel follows the life and crimes of a man who decides to take action over words to deliver his message to the world, as told by his estranged best friend.
Paul Karasik is an American cartoonist, editor, and teacher, notable for his contributions to such works as City of Glass: The Graphic Novel, The Ride Together: A Memoir of Autism in the Family, and Turn Loose Our Death Rays and Kill Them All!. He is the coauthor, with Mark Newgarden, of How to Read Nancy, 2018 winner of the Eisner Award for "Best Comics-Related Book". His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and he is also an occasional cartoonist for The New Yorker.
The Mystery Writers of Japan Awards are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of Japan. They honor the best in crime fiction and critical/biographical work published in the previous year.
The metaphysical detective story is a literary genre of experimental fiction in the 20th century and has a complicated relationship with traditional detective stories. This literary genre raises in-depth issues about the characteristics of reality, interpretation, the limitations of knowledge, subjectivity, and narrative. In the history of modernist and postmodernist fictions, the metaphysical detective story plays a significant role in shaping the detective literary tradition, the literature in the 20th century, the postmodernist discourse, and the pop culture. The beginning of the metaphysical detective story is regarded as the mystery works written by Edgar Poe. Later writers such as Umberto Eco, Georges Perec, and Paul Auster are also typical authors of this genre. Meanwhile, this particular detective fiction genre has been criticized literarily in diverse approaches, though it keeps self-evolving.
