Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy review – a classic that will be read for decades to come
Sketched in cinematic black and white, this illustrated interpretation of the late author’s postmodern detective novel is a ‘stone-cold masterpiece’It was a wrong number that started it – literally in the case of The New York Trilogy. In 1980, or thereabouts, Paul Auster twice answered the phone, only to hear a voice ask: “Is this the Pinkerton Agency?” (Pinkerton is a legendary American detective bureau.) He told the caller they had a wrong number, yet he was soon filled with regret. Here, surely, was a story: why hadn’t he asked any questions? But never mind. While a third call never arrived, in its place came inspiration. Out of the disappointing silence, Auster spun the first volume of his trilogy, City of Glass, a literary hall of mirrors that made him famous.City of Glass was published in 1985. Nine years later, under the brilliant eye of Art Spiegelman, the author of Maus, Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli created a graphic adaption of the book, produced with Auster’s approval, and it was widely acclaimed as a work of art in its right. Only now, however, is the cartoon form of the trilogy at last complete. Ghosts, the second volume, has been drawn by Lorenzo Mattotti, an Eisner award-winning Italian comics artist whose work has appeared in the New Yorker and Le Monde, while The Locked Room is again the work of Karasik, a celebrated figure in comics (he began his career at Raw, the magazine run by Spiegelman and his wife, Françoise Mouly). Both were overseen by Auster before his death in April last year, at the age of 77. Continue reading...
