Post-modern confusion

Hey, guys!!

Like I said, I will be dipping into the material I had to read for school for material for my blog, so I thought it would be interesting to do a review for The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster.

The New York Trilogy is a collection of three short post-modern detective novels (a little over a hundred pages each). I had to read this book for Popular Literature since the theme for the semester was detective fiction.

When I say that the novels were post-modern detective stories, I mean that the stories have all the tropes of detective fiction and then defy them all. It's kind of like a satire of detective fiction in general. It also means that the characters in the book are self-aware, which basically means that they know that they are merely characters in a book. So you can imagine that the books would be pretty confusing.

Like Coraline, I had to write a paper on The New York Trilogy. Can you imagine writing a paper on a book that made you feel stupid because you couldn't get it? Well, thank God for in-class discussions. Otherwise, the whole book would've gone right over my head.

So, before I go any farther with my complaints, I should probably tell you what each book is about.

The first book in the trilogy is City of Glass. The main character is Daniel Quinn, a writer of detective fiction who received a telephone call one night from a woman asking for a private detective named Paul Auster. The third time the woman calls after being informed that she had dialed the wrong number twice, Quinn decides to assume the identity of Paul Auster to solve the case and finally become a detective like the characters in his books.

After meeting with his clients under his assumed identity, Quinn has been charged with keeping an eye on his client's husband's father, who was just released from prison (for abusing his son) and is now on parole, to make sure that the former prisoner does not try to approach his son.

The second book in the trilogy is Ghosts. This time the main character is Blue, a professional private detective this time. He is hired by White to watch Black and make write weekly reports to be delivered to White. At first, Blue is excited to find out what Black is up to, except . . . he never does anything. For the most part he just sits in his apartment all day and writes. So what is he writing? And why does White want Black to be watched?

The third book is called The Locked Room, and this time it is told in first-person perspective. After years of never hearing from his childhood best friend, Fanshawe, the main character receives a letter from Fanshawe's wife one day and learns that Fanshawe has been missing for months and is most likely dead. Sophie, Fanshawe's widow, needs help from the main character to publish Fanshawe's manuscripts so that she can have money to support herself and her child.

After a few months, the main character marries Sophie and adopts Fanshawe's child as his own son and receives royalty checks for Fanshawe's books after publication. Everything is finally perfect. Or is it? Is it really worth living a perfect life if that life isn't even yours?

So, those are the plot summaries for all the books in the trilogy. But I should warn you guys: the point of this trilogy is that there is no point. That's pretty much what post-modern books are all about.

In all honesty, I enjoyed the in-class discussions about these books more than I enjoyed actually reading the trilogy itself. So, in case you're still unclear, I was not a big fan of the books. The trilogy, it seems to me, would be better suited for people who like puzzles and like to think about books with confusing plots that go around and around in circles. I hate puzzles, so it was more difficult for me. But that doesn't mean that other people won't like it. There were definitely some students in my class who enjoyed the book. So if you do like puzzles, why not give it a shot?

Okay, that's all for this post. Hope you guys enjoy my blog and that you'll comment to let me know what you think and if there are any books out there that you are just dying for me to review.

Happy reading!!