The New York Trilogy

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Russell, Alison. 1990. Deconstructing the New York trilogy: Paul Auster’s anti-detective fiction. Critique 31 (2): 71–84. La stanza chiusa" --> L'ultimo racconto rientra un po' più nei canoni di un racconto tradizionale. C'e' una trama appena piu' sviluppata, un racconto in cui c'e' pure un amore, c'è

Marcus, Laura. 2003. Detection and Literary Fiction. In The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction, ed. Martin Priestman, 245–267. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. And yet, I was surprised by a number of similarities that arose between the two. First, both books explicitly mention the Tower of Babel (in fact, if you have a copy of the Penguin Deluxe Classics edition of the trilogy, they both even display artistic renderings of it). Both books also focus extensively on language—in particular, its relation to "reality." But perhaps most importantly, both explore the notion of systems (mathematical, artistic, etc.), as well as what it means to operate outside of said system. Negde na polovini Njujorške trilogije piše da je primarni cilj svake knjige da zabavi čitaoca. Ako je to Oster hteo, u mom slučaju je potpunosti ispunio cilj: silno sam se zabavljala sve vreme, malo i na bis. A kako i ne bih, kad je unutra strpao sve i svašta: detektivske priče od vrste misterioznih, književne aluzije, svakovrsne anegdote i zabavne pričice (kako je Servantes sve hteo da nas zezne zamenom identiteta, kako je obdukciju Volta Vitmena radio jedan smotanko forenzičar, kako glavni projektant Bruklin bridža nikad nogom nije kročio na svoj most), maskiranja, malo Vavilonske kule, malo Pariza, mnogo Njujorka, mnogo ispisanih svezaka, pisaca, izdavača, seksa, dece i beba, poštanskih fahova, taštine, voajerske ostrašćenosti, zanesenjaštva, hazarderstva,...a između čitaoca i sveg tog zamešateljstva stoji neko ko igra kolariću – paniću sa likovima i imenima, dok je Pol Oster (imenom) epizodista koji obavlja neka svoja posla, pa se zbuni (kao i čitalac) kad čuje kakve se to stvari sve zbivaju na ovome svetu.

Fiction entangles and ensnares the reader in a hall of mirrors, in which everybody is both watcher and watched: Barone, Dennis. 1995. Introduction: Paul Auster and the Postmodern American Novel. In Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster, ed. Dennis Barone, 88–106. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

I had only one string left to my fiddle. There was a remote chance, I thought, that if I wrote fiction about New York then I might find something original to say. The idea came to me of a book made up of three novellas, each one set at a different moment in New York's history. I would start with the revolutionary war of 1775-83. I taught for five years at Princeton. These were writing workshops. I had a horror of them. Five years of teaching and I still have a horror of creative writing. Either you have an imagination or you don’t; either you have a feel for language or you don’t. I did have the feeling that I was an old man talking to younger people in this book. Not in a classroom, but around a dinner table and sharing my insight and enthusiasm for this writer and his work.l’intera poetica di Auster per come ho imparato a percepirla, temi che si ritrovano anche nelle sue opere seguenti. The New York Trilogy is perhaps the most astonishing work by one of America's most consistently astonishing writers. The Trilogy is three cleverly interconnected novels that exploit the elements of standard detective fiction and achieve a new genre that is all the more gripping for its starkness. It is a riveting work of detective fiction worthy of Raymond Chandler, and at the same time a profound and unsettling existentialist enquiry in the tradition of Kafka or Borges. In each story the search for clues leads to remarkable coincidences in the universe as the simple act of trailing a man ultimately becomes a startling investigation of what it means to be human. The New York Trilogy is the modern novel at its finest: a truly bold and arresting work of fiction with something to transfix and astound every reader. Zilkosky, John. 1998. The revenge of the author: Paul Auster’s challenge to theory. Critique 39 (3): 195–206. In the third novella, the author Fanshawe disappears, leaving behind a beautiful wife and child (Daniel), allowing his childhood friend (also a budding author) to take his place as loving husband and attentive father.