The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, the Locked Room (Contemporary American Fiction Series)

Rating:
Summary: The apparently simple complexity of life
Review: When reading the three stories that configurate the book, one seems to detects a great lack of documentary working. This is what has atracted me to Auster's literature. He is a hard disk writer, he uses subtility and intelligence to create certain atmospheres. I've been personally shocked by his portraits of solitude and human desparation. The important conclusion is that information "per se" is nothing, and a big amount of documentation guarantees nothing but hours of non sleeping. The best hard disk a writer owns is his own life experience or his sensibility to process other's. Let's get impressed by creativity

Rating:
Summary: An investigation into self
Review: The moment you step into Auster's world (and also your own), prepare yourself to do an investigation just as Quinn, Blue and 'Paul Auster' do. This maybe the most exhausting and complicated investigation you will ever carry out. You basically have to answer the most impossible question of all : who am I

Rating:
Summary: amazing.
Review: the ny trilogy is a beautiful book, woven together delicately, with each story within narrated by a character, exhaustive in his obsession over an entity who may or may not exist. the book skillfully explores the relationship between people who would never meet but do. in conclusion, my gushing ramble of a review means to say this is one of my favorite books

Rating:
Summary: A highly original and brilliant post-modern thriller
Review: Paul Auster's "New York Trilogy" consists of three seemingly unconnected novellas which though complete in themselves should be read as integral parts of a total literary experience. Unlike a conventional mystery thriller which focuses on the "who done what to whom" aspect of the storyline, Auster turns the table on the reader by taking him on a journey of self discovery past a hall of mirrors which reflect and expose by stages the psyche of the pursuer, not the pursued. The effect is so spooky you want to scream in your head as you encounter the next slice of reality about yourself. Readers familiar with the music of rock star David Bowie will find the reading experience similar to that of listening to his 1977 album "Low", a dark and creepy introspective piece of work. All three vignettes deal with questions of identity, reality and illusion, the meaning of words and language and explores the fine line between commitment and obsession. Both Quinn in "City of Glass" and the anonymous narrator in "Ghosts" are trapped in their own circumstances and forced to make human choices which lead to their mental breakdown. There is also a noir-like cinematic feel about the trilogy that just begs for this masterful piece of work to be brought to the screen. Auster has produced a highly original post-modern thriller that will mesmerise and enthrall readers for years to come. It is simply superb and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Rating:
Summary: a Columbia degree gone postmodern
Review: Auster's work can be divided into two periods: his novels and meditations before "Timbuktu" and his novels after "Timbuktu". Personally, i think that Auster's later works don't live up to the ambitions and brilliance exhibited in his earlier novels.
"The New York Trilogy" is Auster's first published novel. Its content reflects a literary mind that is to be reckoned with. Auster weaves together various genres (particularly, elements of the detective novel) with complex narrative techniques and postmodern formulas.
The three novellas becomes a literary search for a lost object, a person, the self. We constantly encounter the cracks and voids consistent with our culture. mostly, we end up with nothing substantial, but we can't let go of the feeling that we have gained something.
Although Auster draws from American and non-American classics the "New York Trilogy" remains a postmodern work. there are echoes of Cervantes, Hawthorne, the 'Bible', Freudian doubleness, Oedipus, etc...
This book contains so much. It is as if Auster put in the entire repertoire of a Columbia education in literature into this novel. It will not go away for a long time afetr you have finished it.

Rating:
Summary: Incredible Meta-fiction!!!!!
Review: Taken cumulatively, Paul Auster's "New York Trilogy" is one of the most amazing books I've read in a long time. No matter how much of a seasoned reader you are, these three novellas make you look at the very act of reading in a completely new light.

Perhaps the most incredible feat accomplished here is how the thematic material echoes throughout each page and between novellas. Everything from detective conventions to names to literary authors to images weave and flow throughout these works changing and gaining in import each time like a Bachian theme and variations.

Even when things don't seem to go as smoothly, the results are thought-provoking. For instance, I was a bit put off by the end of "City of Glass." However, this feeling of dissatisfaction in light of such a metafictional text made me question myself - why was I dissatisfied? I discovered that I expect some sort of minimal optimism at the conclusion of texts - even if it's a tragedy, at least it should in its negation show something life-affirming. This is eventually accomplished even for the end of "Glass" once one views it in context of the whole trilogy, but even if it hadn't been, forcing me to confront my own expectations has been invaluable!

These are works in which every word has been carefully judged yet nothing seems ponderous or overstated. The language is simple, direct and incredibly clear and concise. One comes across a book like this rarely - do yourself a favor and devour it!


Rating:
Summary: The best place to start with Auster...
Review: Auster is a word detective -- clever, sometimes too clever -- but he's at his most witty and inventive in this early trilogy. This is the set of books that turned me on to Auster, and led me to Book of Illusions, Oracle Night and In the Country of Last Things. Challenging reading in a highly entertaining manner. His writings reinforce my belief in the power of words, and bring to mind -- for various reasons -- writers such as Nabakov, Fowles and Jack O'Connell. A genuine original. The fact that I can't recall the specifics of this trilogy hardly matters. What I remember is the feeling of reading something new, or rather something old written in a new way. Hearing Auster's name always brings to mind the term "linguistics," which to me is the shortest yet most descriptive term for characterizing both Auster the writer and his collective body of work.