Paul Auster's Paragon of Post-Modernism

Max Hatter considers City of Glass by Paul Auster

The controlled yet chaotic storyline of the first installment of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy follows writer Daniel Quinn and his entrance into the thrilling world of detection.

From the outset there is a sense of the surreal about the novel: Quinn becomes embroiled with a disturbed man named Peter Stillman through his answering of a phone call that was seemingly never meant for his ears. What ensues is a story that becomes increasingly twisted and metafictive, taking the conventional detective novel and subverting it at every corner. Auster’s engaging writing style means that the reader’s intrigue does not falter and he is constantly taunting his audience through the multi-layered narrative and the ever morphing identities of characters.

City of Glass is the postmodern novel at its best, perhaps now more relevant than ever as it explores ideas about truth, identity and the purpose of life. As we move into an era which has been described by some political commentators as a ‘post truth world’ it seems that City of Glass has become even more topical. What Auster does in his novel is question the very notion of certainty and that anything can be objectively ‘true’. Instead he explores the idea of an empiricist form of thinking, where the only things we can know are through our experience and that knowledge is tentative and subject to change over time. This is something which seems to have spread its way through society in recent times with people no longer putting much weight on objective facts but following beliefs and ideas which they have garnered through their experience.

If you are looking for a classical detective novel which carries the reader to a climactic piecing together of the puzzle than City of Glass is not that. What it is, however, is an incredibly intriguing work of postmodern fiction using aspects of the conventional detective style to explore certain fundamental questions more deeply. The plot of City of Glass is as much a quest for identity and self knowledge as it is to solve the case in question - the identity of Daniel Quinn takes several forms throughout the book and ultimately we are never certain who he is and what purpose he has. Auster leaves the reader with perhaps a sense of dissatisfaction but also intrigue as to what it all means and the truth behind this modern masterpiece.