City made of glass

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The novel Stadt aus Glas (original title: City of Glass) from 1985 is the first part of the New York trilogy by the American writer Paul Auster (* 1947). The other two parts are Drop Shadow ( Ghosts, 1986) and Behind Closed Doors ( The Locked Room, 1987).

Ostensibly a detective novel , city ​​made of glass plays with names, identities and designations and finally questions the actual existence of those involved.

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Paul Auster tells the story of the run-down crime writer Daniel Quinn, who, after losing his wife and child, retired to his New York apartment and lives from the fact that he publishes a detective novel annually under the pseudonym William Wilson in which he is his private investigator Max Work clears up a “complicated set of crimes”: “In the trinity of people that Quinn had become, Wilson served as a kind of ventriloquist, Quinn himself was the puppet, and Work was the animated voice that gave the company its purpose awarded. "

In his seclusion, Quinn is disturbed by nightly calls from a person who does not allow himself to be dissuaded that he is really the private detective Paul Auster. This person, who calls himself Peter Stillman, but emphasizes that it is not the right name with almost every mention of his name, is a kind of modern Kaspar Hauser , that of his father, a theology professor who is also called Peter Stillman, nine years in the dark without Attention and language was locked up. Stillman senior spent years in psychiatry for this. Shortly before his release, he wrote his son a letter calling him a devil and threatening revenge. After the letter went to the police, old Stillman had to spend more years in a mental hospital - but now he is being released and his son and his wife fear for their lives.

Quinn / Auster takes on the task of shadowing Stillman senior. The next day he visits the university library to find out about the theologian's work and learns that Stillman's actions had religious reasons connected with the Fall , John Milton 's Paradise Lost and the Tower of Babel , as well as his prophecy of a repetition of the Processes in the once paradisiacal America.

Quinn expected Stillman to arrive at the station, followed him for days, began on the fifth day with detailed records of Stillman's activities and the paths he took in the same district, but only noticed by chance on the thirteenth day that the routes were not random, but rather result in a pattern of giant letters that he lines up to form OWEROFBAB and complements the The Tower of Babel .

Quinn speaks to Stillman several times, notices that Stillman does not recognize him during the repetitions ( Lewis Carroll's book Alice Behind the Mirrors plays a role here), but also realizes that Stillman went into hiding after the conversations, without his "work" to end. He turns to the only lead he has left, the name of Paul Auster, which he looks up in the phone book, which leads him to a writer who, however, cannot help him. Only: Paul Auster deals with Cervantes ' Don Quixote and the confusion that is played with identities in this book. Daniel Quinn notes that he has the same initials as Don Quixote.

Quinn tries again and again to call Stillman Jr. unsuccessfully. He sits down across from his apartment, watches the house for more than two months, becomes homeless without going a step further. He contacts Paul Auster again and learns that Stillman senior has committed suicide after going into hiding. Quinn returns to his apartment, which has since been rented out due to his long absence, and finally goes to the apartment he has been observing for so long, only to find that Stillman Jr. and his wife have apparently also been missing for months. He stays in the apartment.

Months later, the writer Paul Auster and his friend, the author of the book, go in search of Quinn, and they finally come to the Stillmans' apartment, where they find Quinn's notepad, but no trace of himself.

expenditure

  • City made of glass. Hamburg 1987, translation by Joachim A. Frank.
  • New York trilogy. Reinbek 1989.
  • City made of glass. Translation, radio play adaptation and direction: Alfred Behrens , with u. a. Nina Hoger , Rufus Beck , Christian Brückner , Rüdiger Vogler . WDR / BR 1997, Hörverlag 1997.
  • In 1994 the novel was adapted as a comic. Art Spiegelman wrote the foreword to the current edition. City of Glass - The Graphic Novel was named one of The Comics Journal's Top 100 Comics of the Century list.
  • Paul Auster's City of Glass. Comic adaptation by Paul Karasik (text) and David Mazzucchelli (illustration). Reinbek 1999, new edition Berlin 2006.