Rating: 
Summary: Auster is Magic
Review: City of Glass is an incredible novel. Auster's prose is graceful, and elastic enough to express virtually any idea. It will carry you through the story even if you would rather not go. Auster employs as much subtltety as anyone could stand to impart the profound (and confusing) message of this novel. By the last page, I felt invigorated, perplexed, and grateful. Don't be put off by the ending, the message will be there if you only look for it. City of Glass is a rare book , worth absorbing, and one that will certainly be read and appreciated for many years to come.
Rating:
Summary: city of glass, poem of loneliness
Review: CITY OF GLASS OR CITY OF LONELINESS ARE TWO FACES OF VIRTUAL DETECTIVE QUINN. ACTUALLY, HE DOESN'T LIVE AND OPERATE IN THE SUBURBIAN ENVIRONMENT: HE LIVES AND OPERATE INSIDE HIS OWN SOUL, IN THAT LONELY UNIVERSE WHERE TIME IS...BUT SOMETIMES IT IS NOT. THE OLD STILMAN, THE YOUNG PETER, THE DOUBLE AUSTER AND QUINN HIMSELF ARE INDEED FOUR SIDES OF THE SAME ENTITY; PETER CRUMBLES THE WORLD, STILMAN PICKS THE FRAGMENTS UP, QUINN TRIES TO REORDER IT, THE OLD AUSTER DESTROY IT AGAIN. IN THE VAGUENESS OF THE CINESE BOXES PLOT, QUINN REVEALS REFLECTED PICTURES OF A MODERN POEM....WHERE LINES ARE STREETS WITH NO ACCENT AND NO RHYME, NO APPARENT LIFE... A POEM OF GLASS, WHOSE FRAGMENTS ARE PIECES OF LONELINESS.
Rating:
Summary: It's the Process, Not the Ending
Review: From the first page, you're just sucked into the world of the main character, the detective Quinn. One of the best American writer today, Paul Auster's works are mainly based on his real life's experience. That is why his characters are so real. I disagree with the reader who said that his endings tend to be weak. It is very clear that Auster intended to avoid any closure in the endings of his stories. If you've read his other books, you'll realise that most of the time, his characters would just disappear or go on to lead another life, just like the character in Knut Hamsun's Hunger, who just decided to leave on a ship at the end of the novel without giving us any reason.
Rating:
Summary: What write ?...
Review: Having relished in the reading of these reviews and desperately not being able to resist the temptation to share my feelings towards Paul Auster's works, all I can say is that his work is simply TOO GOOD for anyone to comment about it in just a few lines...We could but say too little and even if we tried to say more it would never reach any kind of truth since, as he himself wrote at the end of In The Country Of Last Things, you can never reach the end, it is only a myth for you to make you go on. So I guess 'the best I've ever read and utterly vertigo provoking' could do for now to express my feelings towards his work in general. I've already said much more than I intended to in the beginning but maybe this is where the creation starts escaping its creator. (But that's no reason why we should stop writing about him, though ; we'll never reach perfection anyways...)
Rating: 
Summary: A tale of Two Stories
Review: I am by far what you would call an acomplished reader. A good book to me is one I can finish, but I am taking a Contemporary Literature class over the summer and was forced to read "City of Glass" by Paul Auster. I must say, Auster has a unique way of not letting the reader understand what the heck is going on. For the first half of the book, I was under the assumption that this was a mystery/detective novel. By the 203 page, it had turned into a book of morals. Auster was addressing how screwed up the world is and how we all play a part in it. It turned into a book about a man that was so out of the norm, the character should not even be allowed to comment on what he thinks is right or wrong. The Daniel Quinn from the beginning of the book is a different person by the end, which can only make the reader wonder, what was Auster trying to convey to the reader? Or was this just something I, as a young student of literature, have missed...
Rating:
Summary: author : reader --- criminal : detective
Review: I just did some searching on the 'net after reading City of Glass and found this little gem from some website re: Auster's works:author : reader criminal : detective It's an analogy that seems to hold for all detective stories that I'm accustomed to...except this one. In this one, the author is the criminal is the reader is the detective. So there you have it. Yeah, Auster's pulling triple-duty. I had no idea that Auster was such a literary dude -- this thing is rather deep, lots of specific references (to Don Quixote, John Milton, etc.). Not for the faint-hearted, I'm afraid. The ending left me kinda cold, though. It's a Borges-like ending; in fact, unless my memory fails me (which it does rather frequently nowadays), it's reminiscent of the ending of "The Garden of Forking Paths." Don't expect a knockout punch, for Auster subscribes to T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Man": This is the way the book ends This is the way the book ends This is the way the book ends Not with a bang but a whimper. Also, Auster is obviously a big Mets fan, which is always a good thing. :)
Rating:
Summary: ANOTHER FICTIONAL RORSCHACH TEST
Review: I place this item on a none-too-tiny list of literary Rorschach tests. Unconvinced? Please sample any ten of my fellow reviewer's estimates of the "meaning" of this book.
The best parts of this book are the hero's various meetings with the two Peter Stillmans, father & son. The dialogs between Quinn and these two grotesques are very amusing.
Interesting use of the author as character in his own fiction -- though not as entertaining as other still-living masters of this specialty: Roth (P.), Vidal, Mailer.
Rating:
Summary: ANOTHER FICTIONAL RORSCHACH TEST
Review: I place this item on a none-too-tiny list of literary Rorschach tests. Unconvinced? Please sample any ten of my fellow reviewer's estimates of the "meaning" of this book.
The best parts of this book are the hero's various meetings with the two Peter Stillmans, father & son. The dialogs between Quinn and these two grotesques are very amusing.
Interesting use of the author as character in his own fiction -- though not as entertaining as other still-living masters of this specialty: Roth (P.), Vidal, Mailer.
Rating: 
Summary: I didn't get it at first
Review: I put the book down and had thought well of it, but not worthy of a review let alone a good one, but as I went to sleep that night, it hit me. At the point that I understood what the main character represented, which was a Campbellian march through the four phases of life, I became quite impressed with what Auster had done. I need to read it again to see all the details that I missed not understanding the parallels with life, but look for this as you read it: from his birth as Auster, to understanding language with Stillman, the identity crisis with the father, the mid-life crisis after meeting his namesake, the question of paths during this, the isolation of late life and finally the fading away. On this level, the story is absolutely stunning. I think there are other levels that smarter people than myself have figured out and maybe with the next reading I will see some of them.
Rating:
Summary: I didn't get it at first
Review: I put the book down and had thought well of it, but not worthy of a review let alone a good one, but as I went to sleep that night, it hit me. At the point that I understood what the main character represented, which was a Campbellian march through the four phases of life, I became quite impressed with what Auster had done. I need to read it again to see all the details that I missed not understanding the parallels with life, but look for this as you read it: from his birth as Auster, to understanding language with Stillman, the identity crisis with the father, the mid-life crisis after meeting his namesake, the question of paths during this, the isolation of late life and finally the fading away. On this level, the story is absolutely stunning. I think there are other levels that smarter people than myself have figured out and maybe with the next reading I will see some of them.
|
