Term Paper - City of Glass

I must say that out of the seven books we read in class, one of my favorites was Paul Auster’s City of Glass. This text was very interesting to me because it moved from the normal structure of fictional stories. That is, throughout the text, Auster dabbles with reality and fiction. As a reader, I had an uneasy time trying to figure what exactly the Author Paul Auster was trying to get across to me. However, this is precisely what kept me interested in the story.
Auster’s Story “City of Glass” is a very appealing one. It is very different from any story I have ever read. This is because it contains quite a number of twists and turns that are totally unexpected. The novel starts off with a mysterious phone call. That alone I found intriguing me and I wanted to know what was to come. As I read the story, I was introduced to multiple characters, including Peter Stillman, Quinn, Wilson, Stillman Sr., Max Work, Auster, etc., some of whom were one person playing different roles. This clearly represents Metafiction, indicating that nothing is really what it seems.
In addition to that, Quinn, the main character of the story, has a very strong inclination to fit the role of a detective when he embodies the various characters. He starts off by pretending to be a detective, “And who do you want to speak to? Always the same man. Auster. The one who calls himself Paul Auster.’ ‘…Speaking he said. This is Auster Speaking.’”(Auster 10 – 11). As time goes on, Quinn eventually becomes Auster, the detective and starts to live his life as the detective. He then tries to solve the mystery of Stillman Sr. and why he is in town.
Another interesting part of the story is that Paul Auster, who is the author of the book, writes about a Paul Auster in the book who is a detective. It becomes extremely fascinating when the main character of the story, Quinn, in addition to the many roles he plays, also pretends to be Auster, the detective. This also shows metafiction, that is, a detective story about a detective story.
When engaging in his investigative duties, Quinn acts in the manner in which he thinks his detective, Max Work in his novels would behave in certain situations and acts accordingly. For instance when he was at the Stillman house, “he thought about what Max Work might have been thinking had he been there. He decided to light a cigarette” (Auster 14). He transitions easily into the role of a detective. He knows exactly what to ask, how to behave and basically how to present himself.
As the story progressed, Quinn goes out to seek Stillman Sr., however, when he gets to the train station (Grand Central), he encounters a bit of an issue and this is where the plot gets interesting. There are two guys who look exactly alike and resemble Stillman Sr. This bring a bit of confusion to Quinn. “What happened then defied explanation. Directly behind Stillman, heaving into view just inches behind his right shoulder, another man stopped … His face was the exact twin of Stillman’s.” (Auster 55). This brings about the issue of chance and how everything in life happens unexpectedly.
After Quinn loses track of Stillman, Sr., he pretends as though he knows what to do to find him in order to calm Mrs. Stillman’s nerves. Even though he has no clue as to how to find him, playing detective Auster gives him this confidence and assurance that something can be done or so Mrs. Stillman believes.
The story makes you wonder how in life things happen unexpectedly and also the fact that events are hard to predict. A positive facet of the story is how Paul Auster, the author of the book, manages to intrigue the reader and keeps him/her reading till the end.
The New York Trilogy – City of Glass became more and more fascinating as the end drew close. This is because the plot continues to twist and turn which is unlike any classic fictional book. It became difficult to try to make heads or tail about the story.
This story is the epitome of what Postmodernism writing is. This is because, readers are trained to find structure in writing, thus, becomes very challenging to follow the story. Postmodernism writing is basically a deconstruction accepted ideas. That is, straying away from the stereotypical structure of writing. In the story, 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).
Also, as mentioned earlier, there is the intriguing facet of how chance plays into everything in the story. I definitely wondered 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. It is very evident that the story is very untraditional, not what a typical story structure is and therefore, not what most people would go for considering the multitude number of twists and turns and not actually knowing what happens in the end. However, in my view, I believe this is the best form of writing since the author gives the reader creative freedom as how to perceive the story and its characters. You are not forced to like a character just because the author does. They way you may interpret it might be different from another and that’s what make it intriguing.

Although, there was not a specific literary theorist used to elaborate Paul Auster’s City of Glass, I believe John Barth’s short story Lost in the Funhouse can be used to interpret Auster’s City of Glass.
Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse is a classic example of Metafiction because all throughout the story, he goes in and out of reality. That is, he causes the reader to walk with him in the journey of writing the story. Paul Auster does a similar thing with all the different roles that Quinn plays. Sometimes it becomes difficult for the reader to stay straight as to who is playing what. In addition to that, Quinn conditions himself such that in his mind he is Auster and tries to rid himself of all things Quinn.
Barth also constantly engages the reader by making a conscious effort to remind the reader what is real and what is an imaginary tale. For instance, in the story, he continues to explain how stories were written in the nineteenth century in order to emphasize the falsehood of reality, “Nowadays (that is, in 19___, the year of our story) the journey is made by automobile – more comfortably …” (Barth 73). However, he does this while telling the story of Lost in the Funhouse. This takes the reader out of the story which perhaps can become very confusing in trying to decipher what is real and what is an illusion. In City of Glass, the narrator also become a character in the story, that is, the narrator voices his opinions sometimes which becomes a little confusing in regards to the multitude of characters mentioned in the book; including the fact that the author’s name is also Paul Auster.
In addition to that, Barth also suggests multiple endings of the story, identifies with the main character Ambrose and his struggle to find out who he truly is and also draw the reader in by giving him/her the chance to explore whether what was read was an illusion or reality. In City of Glass, Auster (the author) does a clever job of not really explaining what happened to Stillman Sr. or Quinn. This enables the reader to come up with multiple possibilities of an end to the characters and the story as a whole. This is very fascinating. A poem which lends itself similar to Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse and Auster’s City of Glass is The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. In the poem, Frost talks about the fact that having two different ways of doing things is always better and also the fact that we all do not have the same path. He says, “I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” (Frost 19 – 20). For Lost in the Funhouse due to the multiple endings it provides readers, it shows how not have one structured end is good. This is because, it allows the reader to adapt to the text in his or her own way. Similar to that is Auster’s City of Glass; literally speaking you could use the fact that Quinn chose to follow one Stillman Sr. and not the other and compare it to the two roads that Frost talks about in his poem. What would have happened if Quinn followed the other Stillman Sr.? I definitely wondered whether Quinn followed the right Stillman Sr. at the train station. Was that the right choice to make? Well we cannot make judgments of the unknown, but what we do know is that it definitely shaped the course of the story. Figuratively speaking, however, the poem lends itself to chance. We cannot determine what the next step in the story will be since it is full of twists and turns. However, we can make an assumption that it is all left to chance. The unexpected can and does happen. When Quinn decided to follow that Stillman Sr., we did not imagine that he would lose track of him and the mere purpose of his existence would become fruitless. However, it was a choice he made and it was left to chance. Frost does an excellent job of distinguishing between to ideals and the fact that it is ok to go the untraditional route. Paul Auster certainly wrote a detective story however, its structure is clearly different from the norm and the fact that there are not clear cut conclusions gives it a different take on what is out there. Similarly, we battle issues today that are based on reality and fiction. For instance with this year’s presidential candidates, one of them particularly stood out because out of nowhere he became the most popular guy on the ballot. Namely, President-elect Barack Obama. However, the question still remains do we as a society truly know who President-elect Barack Obama really is? Or we know who he is through the media. Senator John McCain allegedly claimed that Barack Obama was a celebrity and that he was only interested in fame. He compared Obama to the likes of Paris Hilton, etc. “Camp McCain likes Barack Obama’s global celebrity so much that they have launched a new ad juxtaposing footage of Obama’s massive Berlin rally last week with images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. The ad calls him “the biggest celebrity in the world… but is he ready to lead?” (Karl). Well from what we have been exposed to we can we blame the media for this phenomenon? Is what we see really who he is; reality or fiction? Obama, like any other person, has different roles he plays. He plays the role of a senator, a dad, a friend, a husband and an incredible orator. So do these different roles make him fake or does it mean that he is not who he says he is? Unlike Paul Auster’s numerous characters who claim to be people they are not (Quinn as Auster), Obama simply plays himself. The media does have a knack for sensationalizing politicians in the spot light so if that makes who we see in the media a fictional version of the real Obama, then how we can say we know who anyone truly is. We all have roles that we play in our daily lives but that does not mean that we are different individuals when we transition into these roles. It simply means that we adapt to our surroundings. Just like in Paul Auster’s City of Glass, everything in life is based on chance. Everything is unexpected and life is not a structured entity. Everyone has different paths and the leads to different discoveries and as Robert Frost said taking the road less travelled made all the difference.
All in all, I am convinced that not having structure in text lends itself to creativity. The reader or listener can engage in the creative process with the author. This is what Paul Auster did with the untraditional structure of his story. It is through concepts like metafiction that brings about enlightenment. With enlighten bring creativity and variety and who knows, years from now different genres would have evolved. I truly enjoyed Paul Auster’s City of Glass and would recommend it to readers who want to be taken on a journey unlike they have ever experienced before. Life is full of chance why not take a chance on City of Glass.
Work Cited:
Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy - City of Glass. Sun & Moon Press, 1985.
Barth, John. Lost in the Funhouse. 1968
Frost, Robert. The Road Not Taken. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15717. Visited 12/03/08Karl. http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=13066. Visited 12/04/08