I've just read "City of glass" (by Paul Auster) and I really don't know what to think about it... Did you like it ?
It's a strange book, right ? But it is great. It is all about chance (in French : le hasard) as you can see right at the beginning, the first line being : "It was a wrong number that started it [...]Much later, when he was able to think about the things that happened to him, he would conclude that nothing was real except chance."
Right at the beginning, we are shown that the main character is confronted with an event, coming out of the blue, unintended, bearing no meaning at all: a wrong number. In just three lines, it is also said that a series of events, which started with this wrong number, will lead the main character to “conclude that nothing was real except chance”. It is interesting to note that Paul Auster's second novel already features a central theme which will be recurrent throughout all his work.
Indeed, the opening of Moon Palace bears strong similarities: 'If not for a girl named Kitty Wu, I probably would have starved to death. I had met her by chance only a short time before, but eventually I came to see that chance as a form of readiness, a way of saving myself through the minds of others.
Moon Palace (Paul Auster' s fourth novel) offers a similar setting, New York, as well as a similar start. Paul Auster has called Moon Palace the “first novel that [he] wrote... later”, showing that the opening of City of Glass could be inspired by Moon Palace rather than the other way around. Both these opening set the main characters, Quinn and Fogg, in a chaotic world where chance is the only meaning, the only driving force leading them to live their life. Chance works through coincidence: and according to both these characters, things could have happened differently. However, chance worked as a trigger, as a course-correction of their life, through the wrong number, or through the lucky encounter with Kitty. Nevertheless, even if the origin of their story is so unexpected and meaningless, they never think too much of how different things could be.
All of this fits in the metaphor of the butterfly effect: a small cause, a benign cause, an everyday event can have colossal repercussions on one life. However, one should keep in mind that even if the event started it all, it is the choices of the character to carry on in a certain direction that led them to their demise.
Postmodern novels, since they leave such an important part of their plot to chance and coincidence are unpredictable. However, the “real Cause” playing hide and seek is how the characters persevere in their being, how they push their own logic to the extreme, how, in the end, they lock themselves up in their world, a world in which everything has a reason, in which their action are justified. In other words, chance is a red-herring, it is a scapegoat on which the character can blame their fate.
I love City of Glass because it is a great introduction to Postmodernism, a literary movement that I do find absolutely fascinating. And I have no room left to go on.
Right at the beginning, we are shown that the main character is confronted with an event, coming out of the blue, unintended, bearing no meaning at all: a wrong number. In just three lines, it is also said that a series of events, which started with this wrong number, will lead the main character to “conclude that nothing was real except chance”. It is interesting to note that Paul Auster's second novel already features a central theme which will be recurrent throughout all his work.
Indeed, the opening of Moon Palace bears strong similarities: 'If not for a girl named Kitty Wu, I probably would have starved to death. I had met her by chance only a short time before, but eventually I came to see that chance as a form of readiness, a way of saving myself through the minds of others.
Moon Palace (Paul Auster' s fourth novel) offers a similar setting, New York, as well as a similar start. Paul Auster has called Moon Palace the “first novel that [he] wrote... later”, showing that the opening of City of Glass could be inspired by Moon Palace rather than the other way around. Both these opening set the main characters, Quinn and Fogg, in a chaotic world where chance is the only meaning, the only driving force leading them to live their life. Chance works through coincidence: and according to both these characters, things could have happened differently. However, chance worked as a trigger, as a course-correction of their life, through the wrong number, or through the lucky encounter with Kitty. Nevertheless, even if the origin of their story is so unexpected and meaningless, they never think too much of how different things could be.
All of this fits in the metaphor of the butterfly effect: a small cause, a benign cause, an everyday event can have colossal repercussions on one life. However, one should keep in mind that even if the event started it all, it is the choices of the character to carry on in a certain direction that led them to their demise.
Postmodern novels, since they leave such an important part of their plot to chance and coincidence are unpredictable. However, the “real Cause” playing hide and seek is how the characters persevere in their being, how they push their own logic to the extreme, how, in the end, they lock themselves up in their world, a world in which everything has a reason, in which their action are justified. In other words, chance is a red-herring, it is a scapegoat on which the character can blame their fate.
I love City of Glass because it is a great introduction to Postmodernism, a literary movement that I do find absolutely fascinating. And I have no room left to go on.
