Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy - Pt 2 09/12/08

The New York Trilogy – City of Glass becomes more and more fascinating as one draws near the end of it. This is because the plot continues to twist and turn which is unlike any classic fictional book. It becomes difficult to try to make heads or tail about the story.

Due to the fact that readers are trained to find structure in writing, it becomes very challenging to follow the story. This is because, Auster leaves the reader clueless. He does not explain what happens to some of the characters in the end. For instance, it is very hard to explain what happened to Quinn because it said “Little by little, Quinn was coming to an end. At a certain point, he realized the more he wrote, the sooner time would come when he could no longer write any thing”. (Auster 128).

Another interesting aspect of the story is how chance plays into everything. One definitely wonders whether Quinn followed the right Stillman Sr. at the train station. What if he followed the other Stillman, then what? It is something that Auster never address and readers try to rationalize that whole incident.

In the end we realize that everything is left to chance and we should not try to rationalize everything because we never know what might happen in the next moment. Everything is indeed left to chance.