49 pages • 1 hour read
Paul AusterThe New York Trilogy
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1985A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Paul Auster
Paul Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a Jewish American family. In the 1960s, he graduated from Columbia University with degrees in comparative literature. He is a novelist, essayist, poet, and screenwriter. He also co-created the films Smoke (1995) and Blue in the Face (1995) and wrote and directed the films Lulu on the Bridge (1998) and The Inner Life of Martin Frost (2007). Critics often characterize his writing style as cinematic.
Auster is one of the most prolific and acclaimed contemporary American authors, and is often linked to the postmodern tradition. During the 1970s, Auster lived in France, working as translator and book reviewer. His first major work, The Invention of Solitude (1982), was a memoir about his relationship with his father. The publication of his second work, The New York Trilogy, established him as a novelist. His writing often draws from life, referencing real literary and historical works and figures. Authors who have influenced his work include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Samuel Beckett. In The New York Trilogy, Auster refers to characters from Hawthorne’s and Poe’s works. The novels also reference films, particularly of the film noir genre. Auster has mentioned that City of Glass was partly inspired by an event from his own life: While living in New York, he received a call from somebody asking for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The New York Trilogy shares many themes with his other work, including the fragmentation of identity, the quest for meaning, the impossibility of understanding, intertextuality and the limitations of language and literature. His experimental narratives combine memoir and fictive elements to create a complex world characterized by ambiguity and philosophical inquiry.
Critical Context: Metafiction and the Deconstruction of the Detective Genre
Metafiction is a term that refers to fictional works that constantly highlight their status as fiction. Metafictional narratives explore the relationship between literature, reality, art and life. Metafiction is closely associated with the postmodern literary tradition that developed in the mid-to-late 20th century; the term derives from a 1970 essay by William H. Gass. Patricia Waugh relates the term to “fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality” (Waugh, Patricia. Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. Routledge, 1996). Metafiction became prominent in the 1960s, with works by authors including John Barth and Kurt Vonnegut. However, much earlier works of fiction also contain metafictional elements, such as Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605, 1615) and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1387). In The New York Trilogy Auster refers to several literary texts, including Don Quixote, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Marco Polo’s Travels.
In The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster uses metafiction to deconstruct the detective genre. His intention is to explore the boundaries between fiction and reality and the relationship between literature and life. While the detective novel is known for following a well-defined and formulaic narrative, Auster experiments with the genre’s rules, undermining its conventions by leaving the mysteries unsolved. The author questions the ways in which literature captures reality and the human condition with the interplay between the writer and the detective. Auster also interrogates the objectivity of historical knowledge by fictionalizing part of Milton’s life and work. In deconstructing the detective genre, Auster challenges common notions about knowledge and emphasizes the absurdity of life.
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