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A review by sidharthvardhan
City of Glass by Herbert Geisen, Paul Auster
5.0
"What better portrait of a writer than to show a man who has been bewitched by books?"
That was fun! Auster's 'mystery' novel is not so much as a mystery as a sort of ode to Don Quixote in so much as imitation is flattery. Cervantes' work is directly mentioned and a character named Paul Auster (yeah you heard it) even gives a sort of theory about doubts concerning the book within the book in Don Quixote. The novel itself does something similar. In fact, the doubts concerning the identity of the author and identity, in general, are the main theme here.
The novel starts, for example, when the protagonist, a writer who writes detective novels under an assumed name - all about a detective named Max Work, mistakenly gets a call for Paul Auster, a detective. He ends up assuming the identity of this Paul Auster. Later he ends up trying to find this Paul Auster, the detective only to find a Paul Auster, the author - who btw is not the writer of this novel but a friend of his. Moreover, the protagonist's son shares the name with the man who called him.
There are other themes thrown in but Don Quixote's connection was quite impressive. The sentence I quoted at beginning of this review was said by Paul Auster, the writer about Don Quixote but this book itself could be said to be about a man driven to madness by books.
That was fun! Auster's 'mystery' novel is not so much as a mystery as a sort of ode to Don Quixote in so much as imitation is flattery. Cervantes' work is directly mentioned and a character named Paul Auster (yeah you heard it) even gives a sort of theory about doubts concerning the book within the book in Don Quixote. The novel itself does something similar. In fact, the doubts concerning the identity of the author and identity, in general, are the main theme here.
The novel starts, for example, when the protagonist, a writer who writes detective novels under an assumed name - all about a detective named Max Work, mistakenly gets a call for Paul Auster, a detective. He ends up assuming the identity of this Paul Auster. Later he ends up trying to find this Paul Auster, the detective only to find a Paul Auster, the author - who btw is not the writer of this novel but a friend of his. Moreover, the protagonist's son shares the name with the man who called him.
There are other themes thrown in but Don Quixote's connection was quite impressive. The sentence I quoted at beginning of this review was said by Paul Auster, the writer about Don Quixote but this book itself could be said to be about a man driven to madness by books.