“Reading the City”: The concept of language in Paul Auster’s "City of Glass"

Seminar Paper , 2008 , 18 Pages , Grade: 2

Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works

Hunger, chance, disappearance and solitude are the central themes of Auster’s fiction.1 Sometimes these themes are easy to detect but in their core more complex as they seem to be on first sight.
With the New York Trilogy Paul Auster has created a powerful and deep going tripartite work which made him popular all over the world. In 1989, he received the Prix France Culture de Littérature Étrangère for this, his first novella and many other prices followed for other works he has published until now.
City of Glass2 deals with reality and coincidence – failure and identity in the frame of a detective story. “It was a wrong number that started it”3 is the first sentence the reader detects when one begins to read the novel. A story about a writer named Quinn that used to be a quite talented writer. After he had lost his wife and son, he publishes detective stories under the pseudonym William Wilson. Isolated from his fellow humans Quinn gets involved into a sequence of events marked by chance and solitude. He accepts to work on a case as a detective after he had received a strange phone call asking for Paul Auster the famous detective. Quinn accepts the case and from now on works under the name of Paul Auster. Him and the caller Peter Stillman meet and Quinn gets to know the details of his work – he is to protect Peter from his father Mr. Stillman senior who as Peter’s wife thinks is planning to kill his son. This marks the beginning of Quinn’s long journey through New York City.
[...]
1 Dennis Barone: Beyond the Red Notebook,University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1995, S.2
2 Auster, Paul: The New York Trilogy, Faber and Faber Limited, London 1987
3 Zit. Auster, Paul: The New York Trilogy, Faber and Faber Limited, London 1987 S.3

Table of contents

1. Introduction

2. Short information about Paul Auster and his work

3. ‘Reading the City’ - urban spaces and their readability in Paul Auster’s City of Glass
3.1 Getting lost in the labyrinth New York - the concept of urban space and its impact on the main character
3.2 Urban space as a text

4. City of Glass as a detective story and the concept of language 10
4.1 City of Glass a classical detective story?
4.2 Language: Tool of the detective. Role and function of language in the novel

5. Conclusion

6. Bibliography

• College: University of Constance
• Course: Hauptseminar - „History, Theory, Practise of Reading“
• Grade: 2
• Author: Sebastian Bohl (Author)
• Publication Year: 2008
• Pages: 18
• Catalog Number: V213383
• ISBN (eBook): 9783656416777
• ISBN (Book): 9783656417071
• Language: English
• Tags: reading, city”, paul, auster’s, city, glass