Published by Pantheon on April 8, 2025
I read Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy in an earlier century. Auster’s three novellas have been adapted into three graphic novels that appear in this volume. The first, City of Glass, was first published in 1994. I believe the other two appear here for the first time. City of Glass was adapted by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli.
City of Glass follows mystery writer Daniel Quinn, who writes stories under the pseudonym William Wilson about a private detective named Max Work. When someone calls on the telephone and asks for Paul Auster, Quinn thinks the caller reached a wrong number, but on the third redial Quinn tells the caller that he is Auster. The theme of identity confusion continues when Quinn meets the caller, who introduces himself as Peter Stillman before explaining that his real name is Mr. Sad, which is also Quinn’s name. Stillman’s wife explains that Stillman had a monstrous childhood and that his father is about to be released from an asylum. They hire Quinn to protect Stillman. Later in the story, Quinn introduces himself to Stillman’s father as Peter Stillman, leading the father to believe he is talking to his son despite Quinn’s appearance because, after all, people change. Still later, after weeks of barely moving during his ongoing surveillance, Quinn feels he has become someone else.
The story follows Quinn as he follows Stillman’s father around his New York City neighborhood. Drawing the old man’s walking paths through the city, Quinn notes that the drawings spell out The Tower of Babel. The reader soon understands that the story is exploring the impact of language on identity. The old man claims to be inventing a new language by giving new words to broken objects. His attempt to discover the language of God motivated his abusive experimentation with his son. To the old man, the future of human salvation lies in becoming masters of the words we speak.
When Quinn loses track of the elder Stillman, he decides to ask Auster for help. The story moves on from there. By the end, Stillman might have lost his mind, or at least his identity (which, Auster suggests, might be the same thing).
City of Glass is my favorite of the graphic stories. Small panels — needed to leave room for narration — give the art a cramped feeling. The artistic style reminded me of Krazy Kat, but innovative drawing adds to the story. Fingerprints turn into mazes that turn into hallways. The younger Stillman’s dialog balloons seem to be coming from deep inside his body, yet his body changes from panel to panel. Sometimes he’s a ferryman, sometimes a bird, or a child, or a turd. Usually his wife is wearing a dress but sometimes she’s nude. While surveilling the elder Stillman, Quinn feels himself becoming part of the landscape; in a series of panels, he merges with the wall he's leaning against.
The narrator of the second novella, Ghosts, is a man named Blue. He is hired by White to spy on a writer named Black who spends much of his time wandering about the city. Identity confusion again becomes a theme as Blue begins to wonder whether Black and White are the same person. Blue also begins to feel that he might be the same person as Black. Much of the story takes place inside Blue’s head.
I recall Ghosts as my favorite of Auster’s trilogy but it is my least favorite adaptation as a graphic novel. Rather than following a traditional graphic format, the top half (more or less) of most pages features a drawing, following by text taken from Auster’s novel. A small percentage of the pages include traditional panels and dialog balloons. Toward the end, the pages consist almost entirely of art that relies heavily on shadow. Lorenzo Mattotti’s artistic style I can only describe as blocky. It didn’t appeal to me.
The narrator of the third novella, The Locked Room, was a childhood friend of Fanshawe. Fanshawe has gone missing. Sophie, his pregnant wife, hired Quinn, the private detective, to find Fanshawe but he failed. Assuming he is dead, Sophie follows Fanshawe’s instructions and contacts the narrator to determine whether any of the writing Fanshawe left behind is publishable. The work is quite good and the narrator arranges its publication. The narrator plans to write Fanshawe’s biography but receives a letter that purports to be from Fanshawe. After falling in love with Sophie, the narrator decides their relationship cannot go forward until he determines Fanshawe’s fate. He plays detective and this time the identity confusion is between the narrator and Fanshawe.
The Locked Room tells the most straightforward story in the trilogy, although Auster writes at the end of the novella that the three stories “are finally the same story.” Paul Karasik illustrates the story in modern graphic art fashion: sometimes using panels, sometimes surrounding panels with a larger drawing, sometimes foregoing art to make more room for the text, sometimes foregoing the text and letting the art speak for itself. The art is appealing but the lettering is rather cramped, making the story difficult to read. I nevertheless enjoyed the arrangement of words to make the shape of a person as the story begins.
Baffling as it might sometimes be, I recommend The New York Trilogy for the beauty of its language and the intriguing nature of its themes of identity and language. The graphic version adds visual interest. I’m not sure this is a good introduction to the trilogy for people who haven’t read the text version, but it is a fun way to revisit the trilogy for those who are already familiar with it.
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