Ghent University

Faculty of Arts and Philosophy

THE QUEST FOR IDENTITY: SELF VERSUS

OTHER IN PAUL AUSTERS THE NEW
YORK TRILOGY

Supervisor:
Dr. Andrew King
English Literature Dpt.
2008-2009

ROZA LAMBRECHTS
Verhandeling voorgelegd aan de faculteit Letteren en
Wijsbegeerte voor het verkrijgen van de graad van
Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am greatly indebted to Dr. Andrew King for his dedicated supervision of this dissertation.
His constructive criticism has helped me to focus and develop my research in a more
concrete direction. Every comment and moment of feedback has served this work to reach
the state, in which it lies before you.
Also, I would like to thank Dr. Melissa De Bruyker for helping me with Das Unheimliche and
retrieving a bibliographic reference, that I feared to be untraceable.
A special mention for Timo and Dieter, for proofreading this work.
Finally, thanks to my parents, and my friends Wim, Simon, Dieter, Iris and Sofie, for their
support and distractions.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: BAKHTIN AND THE CHRONOTOPE

1 General Overview

2 Bakhtinian concepts in The New York Trilogy: relevance and function

13

CHAPTER TWO: AUSTERIAN DETECTIVE FICTION

17

1 Genre conventions of traditional detective fiction

17

2 Role and function of traditional features in The New York Trilogy

21

Cyclical pattern
Eccentricity of the characters
Observation and rationality
Narration
CHAPTER THREE: DOPPELGANGERS AND IDENTITY: THE UNCANNY AND THE OTHER

29

1 The Uncanny Sigmund Freud

29

2 Workings of the Uncanny in The New York Trilogy

32

3 Jacques Lacan: the mirror stage and the Other

33

4 Self versus Other

35

City Of Glass
Ghosts
The Locked Room
CHAPTER FOUR: QUEST FOR IDENTITY
1 Structure of the Quest

44
44

Stasis before mysterious event

Mysterious event
Complication of mystery (+peripeteia)
Climax and unraveling of the mystery
Lack of resolution
2 Time and space in The New York Trilogy: an Austerian chronotope

WORKS CITED

48

51

INTRODUCTION
WHEREVER I AM NOT IS THE PLACE WHERE I AM MYSELF.
PAUL AUSTER. CITY OF GLASS

This statement, written down by Quinn in the first story of Paul Austers The New York
Trilogy, incorporates the existential problem that holds all the main characters of this novel in
its grip. They do not feel like themselves, they are at loss. Also, the structure of this sentence
foregrounds the connection between self and place. Therefore, it would seem to suggest
that, in order to truly get to know oneself, one must embark on a quintessential quest for
identity. This is exactly what the characters of Austers stories try to accomplish.
The New York Trilogy was first published in 1987 as a whole, though before this
moment the three stories, City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room, had been published
separately already. At first, the stories appear to be rather straightforward detective stories,
but a closer inspection learns that thematically Austers trilogy is a meditation on the
problematic of self-identity, in which textual sense of the self undermines our
commonsense, essentialist notions of selfhood. (Alford, Space 615) This problematic of selfidentity becomes even more complicated, as the stories introduce multiple doubles. These
doubles further undermine any form of a stable sense of self, as [d]oubles proliferate
repeatedly not to disseminate the notion of subjectivity, but rather to underscore the notion
that these characters each reflect different ontological dimensions of the self. (Dimovitz 625)
Many different dimensions of the self complicate not only the development of plot, but also
the search for answers the detectives embark upon. It is not wonder, then, that amongst all
these complications the protagonists seem to have lost their notions of selfhood and are
confronted with doppelgangers. Despite their attempts to escape the existentialist maze their
lives have become, they find themselves to become more and more stuck in nothingness.
In this dissertation, I will try to reconstruct the complex quest for identity in each
story. In order to gain insight into the structure, different steps in the process need to be
identified. The use of a quest is generally associated with the genre of the epic, the
picaresque and adventure novels. How can the use of the term quest be justified then? I will
argue that the theories of Mikhail M. Bakhtin support the use of a quest in other genres as

well. He introduces a way of looking at literature that allows the identification of specific
elements of one genre and explains how these can be applied in other genres as well.
Through his development of the chronotope this mingling of features can be easily
reconstructed and traced. What is the chronotope and how does it function? How is this
concept connected to the quest? Moreover, questions also arise about the detective genre.
What are the typical characteristics of this genre? Why is The New York Trilogy not a
straightforward detective story? Also, what is the relevance of the notion of selfhood? What
role do the many confusing doppelgangers play? What is their function? I intend to answer
these questions in four chapters. In what follows I will give an outline of each chapter.
The first chapter focuses on the theories of Mikhail M. Bakthin, as posited in his The
Dialogic Imagination. Bakhtin is a Russian literary critic, usually associated with the school of
Russian Formalism. Because of his controversial ideas, Bakhtin was arrested in 1929 and sent
to live in exile Kazakhstan, where he remained until 1936. It was there that a lot of his work
was composed. During Soviet reign Bakhtins theories did not reach a wide audience. It was
not until the 1980s that his theories became popular in the West and have gained critical
acclaim ever since.
From The Dialogic Imagination, I will discuss one essay, entitled Forms of Time And Of The
Chronotope In The Novel, in which Bakhtin introduces his concept of the chronotope. The
word chronotope, derived from Greek chronos + topos, literally means time-space. For
Bakhtin, these concepts are inextricably linked to one another and, what is more, it is the
chronotope that defines genre conventions. He then moves on to chronologically discuss
different forms of chronotopes in literary history. I will try to discern exactly what concepts
and novelties Bakhtin introduces in this essay. By shedding light on the essay in its totality I
hope to establish a broad understanding of his theories, which, in turn, I will link to Austers
Trilogy. What concepts introduced by this Russian critic can be of relevance for the three
stories under investigation here? How do Bakhtinian concepts function in these stories?
In order to answer these questions, I first will discern what aspects the essay deals with and
explain them in their contexts. Then, I will move on to identify the relevant elements for
Austers fiction and explain how they function within The New York Trilogy.

The second chapter deals with the genre of detective fiction. As, according to
Bakhtinian concepts, chronotope defines genre conventions, I deem it worthy to look at these
conventions in more detail. Even though the features of typical detective fiction remain
contested, I will attempt to discern a few elements worthy of discussion. In order to so, I turn
to an essay by W.H. Auden, entitled The Guilty Vicarage. This work is one of the key texts
often cited in discussions of this genre. Auden establishes a parallel between Aristotles
theory on the structure of ancient tragedy and the structure of the detective story, which is of
particular interest to this research. Next to this link, three other features will be discussed in
greater detail. Also, as Austers Trilogy is not an example of traditional (British) detective
fiction, but rather of the American hardboiled tradition, a brief discussion of a specific feature
of the hardboiled is included. However, taking into account the postmodern tradition, in
which Austers stories came into existence, it is not my intention to analyze his works as
examples of traditional detective fiction. Therefore, I will identify traditional elements and
discuss how Auster turns these right on their heads. In An Art of Desire: Reading Paul Auster,
Bernd Herzogenrath writes that Auster subverts the genre from within and in doing so,
[uses] traditional conventions. (Herzogenrath 2)
A third chapter is concerned with the use of the doppelganger, in combination with
the concepts of The Uncanny and the Other. In this part, I will discuss the effect the
doppelganger has on the quest for identity. In order to do so, an overview of Sigmund
Freuds concept of The Uncanny is of the essence. Next, the relevance of this essay for The
New York Trilogy is established. The discussion then moves to an explanation of the term,
the Other in light of Lacanian theories on the mirror stage. Herzogenrath deems the use of
Lacan worthy indeed, as Lacanian psychoanalysis [] goes from the assumption of a
fundamentally split subject and thus comes up with a model of subjectivity that grounds itself
on a constitutive lack rather than a wholeness. (Herzogenrath 6) In the final part of this
chapter previous insights are combined as the polarity between self and other is discussed in
greater detail for each story. The question central to this part of the research is what function
the doppelganger and the other have in the quest and what the results are of the
confrontation between the protagonist and his double.
The last part of this dissertation is an attempt to combine all insights to reconstruct
the quest for identity more specifically in each story. The (modified) pattern of detective
3

fiction returns as the backdrop for the structure of the quest. Also, the bakhtinian
interconnectedness of time and space plays an important role for this quest. Both aspects will
be inspected in greater detail. What function do time and space have in The New York
Trilogy? How does their interconnectedness contribute to the quest? How does all of this
relate to the role of the Other and the double?
As such, with these four chapters I aim to answer the questions that arise when
reading Paul Austers The New York Trilogy as being quintessentially a quest for identity.

CHAPTER ONE: BAKHTIN AND THE CHRONOTOPE

There is also M. M. Bakhtin, the Russian critic and literary philosopher. During the German invasion of
Russia in World War II, he smoked the only copy of one of his manuscripts, a book-length study of
German fiction that had taken him years to write. One by one, he took the pages from his manuscript
and used the paper to roll his cigarettes, each day smoking a little more of the book until it was gone.
(NYT 255)

This citation is an anecdote recounted by the nameless narrator in The Locked Room,
the final story of The New York Trilogy. This same narrator, at the very end of the story, is
described as doing the exact same thing Bakhtin has done: One by one, I tore the pages
from the notebook, crumpled them in my hand, and dropped them into a trash bin on the
platform. (NYT 314) It should come as no surprise that Auster, master of intertextuality, is
familiar with the Russian scholar, Mikhail Bakhtin. The link between Bakhtins life and Austers
work is established not only in the recounting of this anecdote, but also in the recurrent
image of tearing up a manuscript, page by page. Because of this connection, the proposed
application of Bakhtins literary theory to Austers writing would seem to make sense and
could certainly prove to be of interest. The question I would like to answer in this chapter is
How can the literary theory of Mikhail Bakhtin shed light on Paul Austers The New York
Trilogy? What concepts has Bakhtin introduced that can be helpful for reading Auster? How
does his theory contribute to the focal points identity, the quest and the Other of this
research?
In order to answer these questions, I will discuss the influence of Bakhtinian theory on Auster.
But first, I will give an outline of the main principles of one of his studies in his The Dialogic
Imagination; what concepts it introduces. Following this, then, I will discuss how these aspects
are relevant for The New York Trilogy.
1. GENERAL OVERVIEW
During the 1930s Mikhail M. Bakhtin wrote The Dialogic Imagination. This work
consists of four longish essays, dealing with specific elements and features of the novel and
19th century literature. Bakhtinian concepts have influenced the twentieth-century scholar to
a great extent. Not only have his concepts of polyphony or the chronotope gained recognition
in literary criticism, but also his more general way of looking at literature dialogically has
been of interest. However, it may be perceived as somewhat curious that Bakhtin is so
5

popular among modernists and postmodernists, while he himself never actually discussed
modernist works. Stacy Burton recognizes this paradox in her article entitled Paradoxical
Relations: Bakhtin and Modernism, writing that Bakhtin simply did not write in detail about
any aspect of twentieth-century literature [] (Burton 520) She calls attention to what seems
to be Bakhtins unresponsiveness to twentieth-century literature: From the point of view of
Western literary theory and criticism at the centurys end, this unresponsiveness is ironic, for
in the last twenty years Bakhtins theories have proved popular among critics of modernist
and postmodernist literatures. (Burton 520) Burton comments on this irony, yet she does not
view it as a fundamental problem. She stresses Bakhtins historical limits and the richness
of his theories for reading modernism as a contradictory boundary phenomenon, a moment
preoccupied at once with identity and otherness, authority and heteroglossia. (Burton 536)
The emphasis here lies on the richness of Bakhtins theories and how well they seem fit the
modernist vantage point. And, what is of interest to this research, these also fit the themes of
Austers novels.
In his essay, Forms of Time And Of The Chronotope In The Novel, published in his
The Dialogic Imagination, Bakhtin introduces the concept of the chronotope in literature. The
chronotope literally means time space, and Bakhtin

defines it as the intrinsic

connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in

literature. And which expresses the inseparability of space and time [] (Bakhtin 84) It has
a intrinsic generic significance, and consequently Bakhtin states that it is precisely the
chronotope that defines genre and generic distinctions [] (Bakhtin 84-85) With regard to
Austers (mocking) use of the genre conventions of the detective novel, this intrinsic
connection of chronotope and genre is of great significance.
As already mentioned above, space plays a pivotal part in Austers novels. Bakhtin
writes that space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and
history. in the same way that [t]ime, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically
visible [](Bakhtin 84) This interconnectedness of time and space obviously is of great
importance to the notion of the quest, as well. As has become clear from the introduction,
the quest is the main element of the novels discussed in this dissertation. A quest, according

to the Cambridge Online Dictionary, is a long search for something that is difficult to find 1.
In this definition the link between time (long) and space (search) is inherently present,
foregrounding the chronotope as a noteworthy aspect of The New York Trilogy.
The above statement can be interpreted in such general terms that it can be applied to just
about any type of fiction, therefore, a more detailed discussion of the chronotope will aim to
illustrate its particular usefulness for understanding Auster. Indeed, in The Dialogic
Imagination, Bakhtin moves from a general overview of the concept of the chronotope to a
chronological overview of different genres and their chronotopes. He starts with the Greek
Romance, a genre in which he distinguishes three basic types, each with their own novelistic
chronotope. Bakhtin writes: These three types turned out to be extraordinarily productive
and flexible, and to a large degree determined the development of the adventure novel up to
the mid-eighteenth century. (Bakhtin 86) He claims that a detailed analysis of the three types
is necessary in order to make sense of the European variants of these types and the influence
they have had on the European novelistic tradition. The first type is what Bakhtin calls the
adventure novel of ordeal and it is most notably characterized by adventure-time. This
adventure-time lacks biological or maturational duration (Bakhtin 90), which means that
the poles of plot are fixed and the adventure that unfolds between them does not change the
lives of the heroes: there is a sharp hiatus between two moments of biographical time [= the
poles of plot], a hiatus that leaves no trace in the life of the heroes or their personalities.
(Bakhtin 90) What then, if not historical or biographical time, drives this adventure-time?
What force lies behind it? Bakhtin claims it is chance that shapes this form of time, that [it] is
entirely composed of contingency [] (Bakhtin 94) In the earliest forms of the Greek
Romance, these contingencies are the result of supernatural interferences; in later forms a
novelistic villain can take on this role. Bakhtin describes the later development of this
adventure-time: Whenever Greek adventure-time appears in the subsequent development
of the European novel, initiative is handed over to chance, which controls meetings and
failures to meeteither as an impersonal, anonymous force in the novel, or as fate, []
(Bakhtin 95)
Next, Bakhtin describes one of the main motifs of these early novelistic types, the motif of
meeting. This motif is of considerable importance, as it is one of the most universal motifs
1

From http://dictionary.cambridge.org

and it is difficult to find a work where this motif is completely absent [] (Bakhtin 98). In his
essay, Bakhtin then continues to discuss the role of space in adventure-time. Adventure-time,
he states, is characterized by a technical, abstract connection between space and time, by the
reversibility of moments in a temporal sequence, and by their interchangeability in space.
(Bakhtin 100) This means that spaces in the Greek Romance are not fixed, the action takes
place in a geographical space but this is not a determining factor to the plot, what happens
in Babylon could just as well happen in Egypt or Byzantium, and vice versa. (Bakhtin 100)
Another vital aspect of this type of novel, is the unchanged identity of the hero. During his
adventurous journey the main character does not undergo any psychological changes.
Bakhtin summarizes this first type as the most abstract of all chronotopes, as well as the
most static and claims that [i]n it there is no potential for evolution [] (Bakhtin 110) Thus,
these ancient novelistic types are a mere affirmation of the identity between what had been
at the beginning and what is at the end. Adventure-time leaves no trace. (Bakhtin 110)
He then moves on to the second type, called the adventure novel of everyday life,
which is characterized by the mix of adventure-time and everyday time [] (Bakhtin 111)
However, Bakhtin stresses that this type is not simply a blend of two forms of time: Both
adventure- and everyday time change their essential forms in this combination, as they are
subject to the conditions of the completely new chronotope [that is] created [] (Bakhtin
111) In contrast to the adventure novel of ordeal this type focuses on the course of the
heros [] life in its critical moments, which makes up the plot of the novel. (Bakhtin 111) In
what follows, he distinguishes two features that define a special everyday time. First, there is
the context of a metamorphosis and secondly, that the course of his [= the protagonists] life
must correspond to an actual course of travel [] Bakhtin 111) Nonetheless, this does not
mean that such a novel only portrays biological time, it rather, as Bakhtin argues, shows us
moments of crisis in a persons life, [b]ut these moments shape the definitive image of the
man, his essence, as well as the nature of his entire subsequent life. (Bakhtin 116) As in the
first type, in this second Greek form chance plays an important part. Yet, this form of chance
is different in the sense that the hero attracts the power of chance to himself. (Bakhtin 117)
That means that the adventure sequence is organized not by chance [itself], but by the hero
himself and by the nature of his personality. (Bakhtin 117) Thus the links between the
adventure sequences are changed, they become more active. This, in turn, creates a series of

adventures that the hero undergoes but it does not result in a simple affirmation of his
identity, but rather in the construction of a new image of the hero [] (Bakhtin 117) This
construction is a remarkable aspect of the novel and is connected to the motif of the
metamorphosis. [T]he way it [= this novelistic type] fuses the course of an individuals life (at
its major turning points) with his actual spatial course or road is, according to Bakhtin, [t]he
most characteristic thing and it explains how everyday time can be merged with adventuretime. (Bakhtin 120)
The third and final type is the (ancient) biographical novel, by which Bakhtin does not
mean a novel in the modern sense of the term. Nevertheless, these series of
autobiographical and biographical forms that were worked out in ancient times [] had a
profound influence not only one the development of European biography, but also on the
development of the European novel as a whole. (130) However, since these types are of little
relevance here, I will omit Bakhtins discussion of them.
Chronologically following the Greek romance is the chivalric romance. On many
levels, the chivalric romance resembles the adventure novel of ordeal, the first type of Greek
romances. Bakhtin writes: A testing of the identity of heroes (and things)basically, their
fidelity in love and faithfulness to the demands of the chivalric codeplays the same
organizing role. (151) This later genre is also characterized by adventure-time that contains
a mixture of chance, fate, the gods and so forth. (152) However, a completely new feature
arises in the chivalric romance. Adventure-time, according to Bakhtin, emerges only at points
of rupture [] in normal, real-life law-abiding temporal sequences, where these laws (of
whatever sort) are suddenly violated [] (152) However, this suddenly is not out of the
ordinary for the hero, it is normalized, as it were, []; it becomes something generally
applicable. (152) Whereas the hero of the Greek romance, strives to escape from the game
of fate and to return to ordinary, normal life [], the hero of the later chivalric romance,
plunges headfirst into adventures as if they were his native element [] (152) This type of
hero, who organizes his life and sense of self by the chivalric code, can live only in this world
of miraculous chance, for only it preserves his identity [] (152) Another innovative feature
of the chivalric romance are the many heroic deeds [that] are performed by which the
heroes glorify themselves, and glorify others [] (153) These differences between the two
romances is what makes the chivalric romance resemble the genre of the epic adventure.
9

Also, Bakhtin argues, in the chivalric romance there is a subjective playing with time which is
expressed by an emotional and lyrical stretching and compression of it [] that is unseen in
Greek or Roman forms. (155) A final aspect that Bakhtin discusses in his overview of the
novelistic genres of the Middle Ages, are three types that originated in low folkloric forms.
These three prominent types, the rogue, the clown and the fool, were enormously
significant for the later development of the European novel. (158) As Bakhtin writes, these
three figures, though not new inventions of their timefor they already figured prominently
in the literary forms of antiquity, create around themselves their own special little world,
their own chronotope. (159) Their shared and most distinct feature is their right to be
other in this world [] (159), which is an aspect that echoes the role of metamorphosis in
the ancient Greek types. These characters reflect private life and make it public [] (161)
thus aiding in the novels struggle against conventionality [] (162) which aimed at
upturning conventions, trying to portray life in all its ugliness and beauty and, in a sense,
paved the way for realism.
Bakhtin then moves on to his extensive discussion of the Rabelaisian chronotope. He
argues that Rabelais novels are characterized by a special connection between a man and all
his actions, between every event of his life and the spatial-temporal world. (167) He suggests
that Rabelais work breathes a passion for spatial and temporal equivalence which leads to
its ideal to purge the spatial and temporal world of those remnants of a transcendent world
view still present in it [], in order to recreate an adequate world able to provide a new
chronotope for a new, whole and harmonious man [] (168) Bakthin claims that these works
are organized in seven different series, intersecting one another, each with their own specific
logic [] [and] own dominants. (170) He then continues to give extensive examples. What
then is the function of these series for Bakhtins research of the Rabelaisian chronotope? He
writes that [a]ll the series selected [] above serve in Rabelais to destroy the old picture of
the world [], and to create a new picture, at whose center we have a whole man, both body
and soul. (205) This new picture is a drastic change of [t]he elements themselves that make
up the whole image, motif or plotas well as the artistic and ideological functions of the
entire matrix taken as a whole at various stages of development [] (205) The relevance of
this is that, according to Bakhtin, [b]eneath this matrix, which serves as the exterior index,
there is hidden a specific form for experiencing time and a specific relationship between time

10

and the spatial world, that is, there is hidden a specific chronotope. (205) This chronotope is
the expression of a new world view, in which time becomes a creative force, rather than a
destructive means. Therefore, [a] new chrontope was needed, that would permit one to link
real life (history) to the real earth which would enable the opposition of a creative and
generative time, a time measured by creative acts to eschatology. (206) Bakhtin identifies the
fundamentals of a creating time as present in the images and motifs of folklore. (206) He
then continues to discuss the folkloric bases of the Rabelaisian chronotope and the 7
distinctive features of this new form of time. He begins with the collective nature of time,
that is, it [=time] is differentiated and measured only by the events of collective life []
(206) This means that the focus on the individual and his personal progression is not yet of
any relevance. Secondly, Bakhtin identifies the role of labor as another feature. This new form
of time is the time of labor and time is measured by labor events which means that [t]his
sense of time works itself out in a collective battle of labor against nature. (207) Thirdly, it is
also the time of productive growth. It is a positive conception of time, in that [t]he passage
of time does not destroy or diminish but rather multiplies and increases the quantity []
(207) Moreover, it also marks not only a quantitative but also a qualitative growth [] (207)
A fourth feature of this form of time is that it is a time maximally tensed towards the future.
(207) Bakhtin writes that, [a]ll labor processes are aimed forward. (207) In addition, this form
of time is profoundly spatial and concrete. (208) Bakhtin clarifies this: It is not separated
from the earth or from nature. It, as well as the entire life of the human being, is all on the
surface. (208) Which, in turn, makes it unified in an unmediated way. (208) This is the sixth
feature of the new form of time, according to Bakhtin, though this imminent unity becomes
apparent only in the light of later perceptions of time in literature [] (208) All these features
above, are categorized by Bakhtin as being positive features of folkloric time. (209)The final
feature, however, is perceived as negative. It is extensively marked by a cyclicity, that limits
the force and ideological productivity of this time. (209-210) This means that [t]imes
forward impulse is limited by the cycle. (210) This, in turn, causes a restriction of growth, for
it does not achieve an authentic becoming. (210) Finally, Bakhtin also stresses that in the
work of Rabelais all members of the matrix (all members of the complex) are equally valid.
(211) Every event in these novels is attributed the same weight, be it food and drink or birth
and

death.

However,

as

society

changes,

the

matrix

changes:

it

becomes

compartmentalized, as Bakhtin writes. This fragmentation is caused by the growing

11

development of class society. Consequently, ideological spheres are increasingly

differentiated, the internal disintegration [] of each element of the matrix becomes more
and more intense [], they become predominantly a personal and everyday affair [] (213)
This can be seen in ideologies and literature, where the elements of the matrix are
scattered throughout various genres, styles and tones. (213) Similarly, the form of time
changes as well. Bakhtin coins this as such: Out of the common time of collective life emerge
separate individual life-sequences, individual fates. (214) This overview of the new concept
of time concludes Bakhtins discussion of the Rabelaisian chronotope.
In the final chapter Bakhtin discusses the idyllic chronotope in the novel. He identifies
the different types and variants of the idyll, but rather than focusing on the differences, he
points out the common aspects of the idyll. These aspects which they have in common, all
determined by their general relationship to the immanent unity of folkloric time. (225) This is
expressed in the intrinsic connection of time and space: Idyllic life and its events are
inseparable from [] [their] concrete, spatial corner of the world. (225) The idyll is thus
characterized by the creation of a little world, separated from other places, which is home to
several generations, all living together peacefully. What is more, [t]he unity of the life of
generations [] in an idyll is in most instances primarily defined by the unity of place []
(225) This unity of place translates itself in a blurring of all the temporal boundaries, which
also contributes in an essential way to the creation of the cyclic rhythmicalness of time so
characteristic of the idyll. (225) Another aspect, shared by all variants of the idyll, is the
limitation of its subject matter to only a few of lifes basic realities. (225) Bakhtin identifies
these basic realities as: love, death, birth, marriage, food and drink, labor and stages of
growth. However, in contrast to what we see in Rabelais work, here these basic life-realities
are present [] not on their naked realistic aspect [] but in a softened and to a certain
extent sublimated form. (226) The last shared aspect of the idyllic form is the conjoining of
human life with the life of nature [] (226) The language of both is intertwined and highly
metaphorical. Bakhtin then discusses the presence of these aspects in the different types of
idylls. What interests him the most, however, is the role the idyll has played in the
development of the novel. This influence, according to Bakhtin, takes on flesh in five different
directions. He identifies the influence of the idyll, idyllic time and idyllic matrices on the
provincial novel; the destruction of the idyll, as in the Bildungsroman of Goethe [], its

12

[=the idyll] influence on the Sentimental novel of the Rousseauan type; its influence on the
family novel and the novel of generations; and as a last direction, its influence on novels
belonging to certain other categories []. In short, Bakhtin recognizes the chronotope of the
idyll in many related, as well as completely unrelated, forms and then moves on to a separate
discussion of these forms (which I will omit here, for the sake of relevancy).
In his concluding remarks, Bakhtin makes a few final interesting observations, which
can also be seen as relevant to Austers work. He touches briefly upon the workings of the
chronotope of encounter and the chronotope of the road. Both are linked in the sense that
[t]he road is a particularly good place for random encounters. (243) This is because [o]n
the road spatial and temporal series defining human fates and lives combine with one
another in distinctive ways, even as they become more complex and more concrete by the
collapse of social distances. (243) Time and space function as follows: Time, as it were, fuses
together with space and flows in it (forming the road); this is the source of the rich
metaphorical expansion of the image of the road as a course: the course of life [] This
course of life is linked to the role of the quest in Austers work.
In the end, Bakhtin asks what the significance is of all these chronotopes. He answers his own
question by stressing their importance for narrative, he claims that chronotopes are the
organizing centers for the fundamental narrative events of the novel. (250) For him, the
chronotope , functioning as the primary means for materializing time in space, emerges as a
center for concretizing representation, as a force giving body to the entire novel. (250)
2. BAKHTINIAN CONCEPTS IN THE NEW YORK TRILOGY: RELEVANCE AND FUNCTION
The question now arises how this lengthy discussion of Bakhtins work is relevant to
the quest for identity, as well as other elements in Austers work. First of all, as already
mentioned above, chronotopes define a specific genre. The importance of genre plays a vital
part in this discussion, since Auster deliberately mocks the genre conventions of detective
fiction. This adaptation of genre conventions by Auster is not a new experiment, as suggested
by Alison Russell in an article entitled Deconstructing The New-York Trilogy: Paul Austers
Anti-Detective Fiction. It belongs to a parodic postmodern approach to the detective story,

13

as introduced by Pynchon and Nabokov2. These literary experiments are called anti-detective
fiction3 and deliberately (ab)use the traditional conventions of the genre. This aspect will be
discussed later on more extensively, when we discuss detective fiction as such. Significantly,
Russell writes: The detective storys highly stylized patterns are derivative of the Romance, an
extremely conventional literary genre. (Russell 71) These conventions are exactly what is
discussed by Bakhtin and there are some noteworthy elements in his discussion of the Greek
romance that are also applicable to The New York Trilogy. For example, Russell identifies the
element of a solitary quest (Russell 83) as a similarity between detective fiction and the
Romance. Bakhtin has also commented on the role of a quest in his analysis of the adventure
novel of everyday life. The heros life course corresponds to an actual course of travel. This is
specifically the case in The Locked Room, when the protagonist wanders around Paris in the
final part of the story. Actual travels to a great extent make up the course of his and
Fanshawes life. The element of travel incorporates another aspect, the motif of meeting,
which Bakhtin discusses in connection to the adventure novel of ordeal. As already
mentioned, according to Bakhtin it is nearly impossible to find a novel in which this motif is
completely absent. However, for Austers novels, the motif of meeting is more than just
present. It is actively used by Auster to shape the protagonists travels, as well as to gain
insight into what is happening around them, or to themselves even. Meetings between the
main characters and their doubles make up an important part of the protagonists quest for
answers. An example that illustrates best what impact the meeting can have, is the meeting
between Daniel Quinn and the character named Paul Auster in City of Glass, though Quinn
only realizes this at the end of their meeting. The life the character Auster lives, is exactly the
life he too would want to lead. Quinn feels as though Auster were taunting him with the
things he had lost, and he responded with envy and rage, a lacerating self-pity. (NYT 101)
However, that is not and will never be his life, as he is being kicked around by the ancient
force of chance. The role of chance, considered by Bakhtin the force that drives adventure
time, is an important element in Austers novels. Characters are thrown into adventures by
mere coincidence, as it were. The first story, City of Glass, starts with a seemingly random
event: It was a wrong number that started it [] (NYT 3) Thus, action is triggered by chance,
by mere randomness. For Blue, in Ghosts, it is the same: Blue goes to his office every day
2
3

The works Alison Russell mentions are The Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon) and Pale Fire (Nabokov)
Russell borrows this term from Stefano Tanis The Doomed Detective

14

and sits at his desk, waiting for something to happen. For a long time nothing does, and then
a man named White walks through the door and that is how it begins. (NYT 137) In the last
story, action is also governed by the unexpected, by things happening suddenly: Out of
nowhere, Fanshawe had suddenly reappeared in my life. (NYT 202, emphasis added) It would
seem that the heroes of the stories do not seek adventure themselves, adventure is just
something that happens to them, as is the case with the heroes of the ancient adventure
novel of ordeal.
Another feature of the adventure novel of everyday time is important for The New
York Trilogy. This is the element of metamorphosis, which is one of the most ancient motifs in
literature. It is the perfect means for portraying the Other in fiction and may be considered a
strategy to incorporate a person or thing at the margins of society into the body of the story.
Bakhtins example is The Golden Ass by Apuleius, in which the hero turns into an ass. This
eventually, after a long journey, turns out to change his life for the better. As a beast of
burden, he stands on the periphery, looking in. Since people are unaware that he is actually
human, it is the perfect opportunity for him to eavesdrop and spy on the private lives of
others. Closely linked to this aspect, as already mentioned, are the figures of the rogue, the
clown and the fool. As they create their own little worlds, they attempt to make private life
public. A figure often deployed by Auster, linked to the rogue, the fool and the clown, is that
of the homeless bum, living on the streets. In Austers fiction they are all rather stereotypical
in their appearance, living on street corners, often seen talking to themselves. They star in
most of his works, not only in the Trilogy. In Moon Palace for example, the homeless bum,
adrift in the world, forms an important motif. Moreover, these homeless figures represent the
Other very well, as they live their lives (private) on the streets (public). They are the obvious
in-between, intertwining the private with the public spheres. Another figure that can be
associated with the Other, though not mentioned by Bakhtin, is the double or doppelganger.
The double is equally important for the intertwinement of public and private sphere and it is
also a figure that expresses living as an in-between. The New York Trilogy is spiked with these
doubles. They play an essential part in the quest for identity, which will be discussed later on.
They act as a complement to the detective-protagonist, creating a mirroring effect to what
the detective is trying to do. All of this will be discussed more fully when looking at the Other
in these stories. What is more, making private life public is exactly what a detective is

15

supposed to do. He is always on the outside looking in, trying to uncover what is supposed
to stay hidden. Therefore, the element of disguise plays a key-role as well. Bakhtin mentions
the role of disguise when discussing metamorphosis. Disguise and metamorphosis mean to
achieve a similar effect, combining what is actually familiar with what is hidden. All the
protagonists of The Trilogy use the trick of disguise, both literally and figuratively, in their
quest for answers.
It has become clear, then, that the concept of the chronotope can shed light on the
workings of Austers stories. The interconnectedness of time and space is relevant for the
quest for solutions, which is a vital element of the characters development. Also, certain
aspects of ancient novelistic types discussed by Bakhtin are still relevant for modern works of
fiction. There are more similarities between these stories and ancient adventure novels than
one would expect. Going back to these old forms of fiction can uncover the basic workings of
a story, so as to blow away the thick layer of postmodern dust, which can cloud our
understanding.

16

CHAPTER TWO: AUSTERIAN DETECTIVE FICTION

1. GENRE CONVENTIONS OF TRADITIONAL DETECTIVE FICTION
As The New York Trilogy is based upon the genre conventions of the detective novel,
it is necessary to provide a short overview of the structure of the detective genre. It is not my
intention to classify Austers work as an example of traditional detective fiction. The novel
belongs to the realm of the postmodern and should be analyzed as such. Nonetheless, as
Kathleen Belin Owen writes: A postmodern detective story cannot evade the context of the
detective genre it is post to, but the postmodern detective story seeks not to evade or
eliminate echoes of its genres traditions; rather, it embraces the traditional, then turns it right
on its head. (Delamater & Prigozy 73) In order to test this claim, I will attempt to uncover in
which ways Auster might turn the traditional right on its head.
Owen identifies some traditional features in the postmodern detective story: The
postmodern detective novel, despite some assertions that it possesses a lack of center and a
nonsolution (Tani 40), does initially ground itself in the typical detective genre declarations
of a mystery, a detective, an epistemological search (though the solution is ontological, for in
postmodernism the rational explanation about states of being cannot be assumed), and a
goal of resolution. (Delamater & Prigozy 74) As such, she identifies four main elements of
postmodern detective fiction. The elements of detective fiction, however, remain open to
debate. In order to provide a broad overview, it is of importance to identify the most
common elements of traditional detective fiction. In an internet article on teaching (classic)
detective fiction, Pamela M. Price-Anisman identifies the genre as follows:
[T]he genre is skeletal. What hangs on the outside makes each work unique; the inside
process, however, follows a fairly consistent pattern. The construction of most mystery and
detective novels revolves around four basic elements. The author begins with the statement of
the problem (the crime). Next, he must create, invent, or produce the information (clues)
during an inquiry that leads to a solution of the problem. Then, the author completes the
investigation at the point where the investigator declares that he or she knows the answer.
More often than not, the novel will continue into a final phase: proving the accuracy of the
declared solution to the reader through a careful explanation of the evidence. (Price-Anisman,
web resource Yale.edu)

17

Apparently, Price-Anisman also discerns four basic elements but names them as:
1) statement of the problem; 2) creation of clues, during an inquiry that leads up to a
solution; 3) declaration of the solution; 4) verification of the accuracy of the solution by
explaining the evidence.
Key to her analysis, as to many writers on detective fiction, is The Guilty Vicarage, an
essay by W.H Auden, and Audens connection of the features of detective fiction to Aristotles
theory of Greek tragedy. This would appear to create a paradox, in the sense that a tragedy
ends badly and most detective fiction tends to end with an air of contentment after righting
what was wrong. However, it must be noted that Aristotles theory has a universalising
element to it, which allows for it to be applied to a great variety of literary productions.
Martin Priestman discusses this link between Aristotles theory and detective fiction, justifying
it through a claim that Sophocles play Oedipus the King has an unusually important role in
our culture for two reasons. The first is that it was the main model on which Aristotle based
the generalisations of The Poetics, the founding work of Western literary theory ; the second
is because it is the reference point for Freuds theory of the Oedipus complex, and hence a
cornerstone of psychoanalysis. (Priestman 16) He also remarks that it [= the play] also has a
strong formal resemblance to a detective story (Priestman 16) It is this formal resemblance
that Auden uses to explain the conventional pattern of the detective story. He identifies six,
rather than four, steps in the pattern, in analogy to the pattern of a Greek tragedy. To him,
the pattern is as follows:
Peaceful state before the murder Murder False clues, secondary murder, etc. Solution
Arrest of the murderer Peaceful state after arrest.
This is in analogy to the pattern laid out by Aristotle:
False innocence Revelation of presence of guilt False location of guilt Location of real
guilt Catharsis True innocence.
Price-Anisman describes this return to a peaceful state as follows: After the solution has
been stated, the detective can then calmly recreate the crime logically and efficiently for the
eager reader turned participant. Emotionally and intellectually, the audience is finally
satisfied. (Price-Anisman, web resource Yale.edu) This satisfaction is also present for the

18

characters themselves, since [t]he job of the detective is to restore the state of grace in
which the aesthetic and the ethical are as one. (Auden, online) The ethical and the aesthetic
are as one, when a society finds itself a state of grace, in which there is no need of the law,
no contradiction between the aesthetic individual and the ethical universal [] (Auden,
online) This state of grace finds its origin in a ritual, as Auden describes. A ritual, explains
Auden, is a sign of harmony between the aesthetic and the ethical in which body and mind,
individual will and general laws, are not in conflict. (Auden, online) He underlines the
necessity of this ritual, in combination with a closed society. Thus, with the restoration of this
state of grace, the pattern of a detective story forms a clear cyclical movement. Also, Auden
remarks: Greek tragedy and the detective story have one characteristic in common, in which
they both differ from modern tragedy, namely, the characters are not changed in or by their
actions [] Time and space are therefore simply the when and where [] (Auden, online)
It is clear then, that detective fiction is made up of a step-by-step cyclical construct,
beginning with a state of peace and returning to that state. This echoes the conditions lined
out by Bakhtin for the Greek romance, as well as the typical structure of an adventure epic. In
these two novelistic types, the heros peaceful state is disrupted, there is a disturbance of the
ethical, and the hero is thrown into one adventure after another in attempt to restore the
state of grace. At end, however, he succeeds and everything returns to its prior state,
including the hero, who turns out unchanged by all that has happened.
Auden also comments on the characters. He defines them as unchanged by their
actions, by the plot of the story. However, this does not mean that the characters are
supposed to be bland, on the contrary [t]he characters of a detective story should, [], be
eccentric (aesthetically interesting individuals) [] (Auden, online) One of these eccentric
figures is the detective himself. Timothy R. Prchal writes in Theory and Practice of Classic
Detective Fiction that [d]etective characters serve as [] exemplary object in their enviable
ability to solve mysteries and to maintain morality when everybody around them fail.
(Delamater & Prigozy 30) In the end, he says, detectives offer characteristics to redefine and
fortify ego-ideals in highly individualized ways. (Delamater & Prigozy 30) This can serve as
an explanation for the success of popular eccentrics, such as Sherlock Holmes and Hercule
Poirot. Owens first observation also focuses on the aspect of eccentricity, as one of the
obvious traits (Delamater & Prigozy 75). Secondly, she claims that a feature which all
19

detectives share, is a guiding principle of observation. (Delamater & Prigozy 76) The actual
content of such a principle can vary from one detective to the other, but what all of them
share is a belief that, no matter how bizarre or under what impossible circumstances the
crime was committed, one can arrive at the solution by rational explanation. (Delamater &
Prigozy 77) All of the traditional detectives rely on rationality, despite what their outer
oddball appearance may convey to bystanders. This creates a contrast, as specified in the
third observation, between each sleuths outer appearance, demeanor, or method and his
inner abilities. (77) This contrast is connected to the role of disguise, in the sense that
detectives tend to disguise themselves, though more often figuratively than literally. Finally,
Owen comments on the role of the narrator. She writes that [a] reliable (often first-person)
narrator who will provide all the details as he or she sees them constitutes another important
part of the detective story formula. (78) Such a reliable narrator recounting the events would
imply then, that a proper detective story [should consist] of the detective arriving at the
solution before the reader with a greater understanding than the reader could have had. (78)
This is an important aspect of detective fiction, the moment of insight , the moment in which
the reader solves the puzzle together with the detective.
To conclude, let us take a brief look at the American hardboiled tradition, to which
Austers detective fiction is definitely indebted the most. An important feature of the
hardboiled is the figure of the solitary detective, the private eye. This figure has a vital role for
the tradition. Martin Priestman explains it as follows: the specialisation of the private eyes
work [enables a limitation to] [] one perspective, from this one point of view, the complex
life outside looks simpler and clearer. (Priestman 170) Next, he identifies an important
difference with the English tradition, in that [i]t is not, as in the English whodunnit, that a
microcosmic society has been carefully sealed off from a larger one [] but that a sprawling
and threatening world is made manageable by being seen in terms of a deliberately limited
range of issues. (Priestman 170) At the same time, this generates the exact opposite
situation. As Priestman claims, if the limitation of the private eyes perspective constitutes a
necessary means of keeping this world under control, it has often also provided a highly
effective means of evoking a world where such control seems impossible. (Priestman 170) As
such, the clash between the constant threat of the outside world and the attempts of the
private eye to keep it in check is one of the typical features of the hardboiled tradition. This

20

creates an air of existential insecurity, accompanied by a gloomy atmosphere. Moreover, as

Priestman explains, there is an anti-liberalism at present [= 1990] very current in the United
States, whereby the ills of an increasingly acquisitive society are no longer accounted for in
terms of its structure but of inherent human evil. (Priestman 178) He adds that [a]gainst this
background the hardboiled quest to make sense of a largely senseless world by
understanding its connections comes to seem heroically outdated. (Priestman 178) This
paves the way for fiction not unlike that of Paul Auster. Priestman reads Austers Trilogy as
not only [declaring] that the world outside makes no sense but also that [] there is no
world out there to make sense of. (Priestman 178)
We have now reached an overview of the main principles and features of the classic
and hardboiled detective traditions. However, it should not surprise any astute reader that
Paul Austers detective fiction is of a different kind still. Which of these typical features are
relevant for his The New York Trilogy and which of these are (conspicuously) absent or
completely turned around?
2. ROLE AND FUNCTION OF TRADITIONAL FEATURES IN THE NEW YORK TRILOGY
CYCLICAL PATTERN
It is clear that a return to a peaceful state before the murder/crime is out of the
question for Austers detectives. These stories do not have a cyclical structure and the
detectives do not manage to restore the state of grace. In fact, it would seem that the
narrative omits any form of resolution or ends before a solution can be reached, leaving
Audens classical pattern unfinished. In City of Glass, for example, the story starts rather
ominously, though there is an air of simplicity and stasis: Much later, when he was able to
think about the things that had happened to him, he would conclude that nothing was real
except chance. But that was much later. In the beginning, there was simply the event and its
consequences. (NYT 3) The beginning is as plain and simple as that. The story starts off with
a short and basic introduction of the protagonist, Daniel Quinn. The narrator stresses Quinns
routine existence, which exemplifies a reassuring repetition. However, by the end of the story
this element has completely vanished. The story does not end in a return to this reassuring
pattern. Though the ending is left open, it seems to deny the notion of ending or resolution.
When the narrator and Auster visit the Stillmans apartment, the scene ends like this: Then
21

we left and walked out into the snow. The city was entirely white now, and the snow kept
falling, as though it would never end. As for Quinn, it is impossible for me to say where he is
now. (NYT 133) This image of the snow that keeps falling, as though it would never end is
connected to Quinns fate. It suggests the impossibility of ending, of achieving a clear
resolution. The denial seems to be in contrast with classical pattern of detective fiction.
What pattern can be identified in these stories then? In order to answer this question,
it could prove of interest to return to Aristotles theory on the structure of the Greek tragedy.
Auden reconstructed this theory in terms of a bipolarity guilt vs. innocence. When we, in
turn, look at the structure stripped bare of any interpretation, its build-up is as follows:
Incentive moment Complication Climax Dnouement Resolution. Two other
important elements of Aristotles theory are the peripeteia (reversal of intention) and the
anagnorisis (Recognition). Barbara F. McManus writes that a peripeteia occurs when a
character produces an effect opposite to that which he intended to produce, while an
anagnorisis is a change from ignorance to knowledge [] (McManus, web resource cnr.edu)
The presence of a peripeteia would seem plausible, however, whether or not there is a
moment of anagnorisis in any of the stories is debatable. The next valuable step is to adapt,
rather than adopt, this scheme and that of Auden to make it fit more specifically to The New
York Trilogy. We could construct a pattern as follows:
Stasis before mysterious event Mysterious event Complication of the mystery Climax
Unraveling of mystery Lack of resolution.
The peripeteia would take place during the Complication of the mystery, the presence of
which heightens the tragic feel of the protagonists lurking fate. What is significant in this
pattern, however, is the actual absence of a mystery. Austers detectives are set on a quest
solve a crime that has not occurred, or will never occur. Both Quinn and Blue are stuck with a
non-case. This lack of an actual crime drives them both to start looking inwards, as will be
discussed later. These protagonists are, in fact, attempting to answer a question that has not
been posed. Yet, the story is set up in such a way, that for the detective and the reader, it
feels as if there is a mystery to solve. Both observations are equally important: the absence of
the crime becomes a presence through absence. This means that the absence becomes a
presence, exactly because of its absence. In the sense that, if we were to look at nothing at all

22

for a long period of time and let it consume all our activities, it would become something
precisely because of its nothingness. In that respect, it is difficult to make Austers detective
fiction adhere to a fixed, traditional pattern. Though, The New York Trilogy does not deny a
pattern per se, the stories are characterized by significant deviations from any traditional
pattern.
ECCENTRICITY OF THE CHARACTERS
The eccentric characters are a main feature of any detective story. It is what compels
the reader to identify with the detective and what keeps them interested. The stereotypical
detective has his quirks and oddities and generally his looks underline this. It is interesting
then, that Austers detectives are nothing like this at all. Daniel Quinn, the detective in City
of Glass, is not even described in terms of appearance. His description consists of a listing of
plain facts about him and his life. In the case of Blue, in Ghosts, the description is even more
stripped bare of any detail. The story starts almost in medias res with just a simple
introduction: First of all there is Blue. (NYT 137) This is supposed to say it all and we get few
other details of Blues appearance or his interests. The final story, The Locked Room, is
somewhat different. As this story is the least detective-like, its protagonist is not at all like the
generic detectives of the two previous stories. This narrative offers a lot more insight into the
protagonists personal thoughts and feelings. Nonetheless, to claim that any of Austers
detectives are similar to a traditional British eccentric detective like Hercule Poirot, would be
untrue. It seems that these characters are in essence plain and not eccentric at all, however
quirky their lives may seem. In fact, both Quinn and Blue fit into the American hardboiled
tradition, focusing on the private-eye, as discussed above. In that respect, Auster sticks to the
tradition, as he stresses their feelings of being lost in a hostile world. However, instead of
making the world more manageable by limiting their perspective, they only create more
chaos for themselves. During their investigations they discover their inner selves and loose all
means of making sense of themselves.
OBSERVATION AND RATIONALITY
By means of deduction, as is the case for Sherlock Holmes, or a method involving
attentive observation, the detective gains knowledge about the case. Also, no matter what

23

method is used, all the traditional detectives tend to rely on rationality. Let us now look at to
what extent these elements are relevant for The New York Trilogy.
First of all, the principle of observation plays the main role in the detectives methods. In City
of Glass, observation figures in its most literal form. Quinn follows Stillman, sr. around and
observes him meticulously. He feels that he could do no more than observe, [and] write
down what he saw in the red notebook, [] (NYT 59) Blue, in Ghosts, also observes his
subject of investigation and writes down his observations in reports. Thus, both detectives
share the strategy of observation, but in addition to that they also share a sense of boredom,
of inactivity. Quinn can do no more than observe and starts to feel stuck in a monotonous
routine. In Ghosts it says that Blue watches Black, and little of anything happens. (NYT 144145) Both need secondary activities to keep them occupied. Also, for Quinn and Blue
observation leads to confrontation.
Most importantly, however, it should be noted that Austers detectives gain little to
no knowledge about their cases. Despite their careful and precise work of observation, they
do not seem to uncover any useful information. If anything, it leaves them even more
confused and clueless than before. This is an important feature of Austers anti-detective
fiction. In Detective Fiction and Literature, Martin Priestman writes that the commitment of
the private-eye-like hero to his case is repeatedly made to overshoot any chance of his
making sense of it, in ways which demonstrate the existential absurdity of all such tasks and
commitments. (Priestman 178) It becomes clear then, that notwithstanding all their efforts,
the heroes are not going to acquire any insights into their cases by the conventional tactic of
observation.
Secondly, it should not come as a surprise that, in this dominant atmosphere of
existential absurdity, the role of rationality is limited. Austers detectives cannot rely on
rationality in the way the traditional detectives do. Rather, it would seem that, as the case
evolves, the concept of rationality itself is questioned. The longer Quinn and Blue observe
and conduct research, the more confused and completely at loss they become. This growing
confusion and the lack of progress results in a rise of their existential insecurity: Until now,
Blue has not had much chance for sitting still, and this new idleness has left him at something

24

of a loss. For the first time in his life, he finds that he has been thrown back on himself []
(NYT 145) For Quinn, the same occurs as he is following Stillman, sr.:
There remained the problem of how to occupy his thoughts as he followed the old man.
Quinn was used to wandering. His excursions through the city had taught him to understand
the connectedness of inner and outer. [] By flooding himself with externals, by drowning
himself out of himself, he had managed to exert some small degree of control over his fits of
despair. [] Wandering, therefore, was some a kind of mindlessness. But following Stillman
was not wandering. (NYT 61)

Quinn finds himself flooded with thoughts, whereas previously, his wandering about the city
was a means to avoid his fits of despair, caused by over-thinking life. Both Blue and Quinn
are used to a state of mindlessness and the confrontation with idleness triggers an
unwelcome inwardness. It would seem that it is exactly this traditional feature of observation
and rationality that Auster abuses and uses ironically. By trying to uncover the truth his
detectives only raise more questions.
CONTRAST AND DISGUISE
The fourth feature of traditional detective fiction concentrates on the contrast
between appearance, demeanor and inner abilities of the figure of the detective. Closely
linked to this is role of disguise. The feature of the eccentric detective has already been
discussed above and it has become clear that this aspect is relatively (and conspicuously)
absent. However, the use of disguise is very important in the first two stories of The New York
Trilogy.
In Ghosts, Blue uses a disguise to take his investigation to a higher level. Completely
disguised as a wise fool, a saint of penury living in the margins of society, (NYT 173) he
approaches Black and tries to engage him in conversation, to uncover his role in the case.
This method of investigation features the use of disguise in a very literal sense. In the first
story, City of Glass, a real form of masquerade is less present. The use of a disguise should be
interpreted more figuratively. Quinn does not put on a costume to confront Stillman, sr. He
does not need to, since Stillman does not seem to recognize Quinn on their second meeting:
Then, looking up from his menu, he studied Quinns face in an abstract sort of way. He
apparently did not recognize him from the day before. (NYT 79) And even on their third
meeting, Stillman does not remember Quinn: Then he sat down next to the old man and
said hello. Incredibly, Stillman did not recognize him. This was the third time Quinn had
25

presented himself, and each time it was as though Quinn had been someone else. (NYT 83)
Quinn manages to disguise himself during the second and third meeting, simply by taking on
another name. He claims to be Henry Dark on the second meeting, and the other Peter
Stillman during their third and final meeting (NYT 84). This taking on of a different name,
functions as yet another mask. Quinn feels free, he does not fear recognition as he hides
behind this mask, which conceals his true self. The truest form of disguise occurs when Quinn
begins his surveillance of the Stillmans apartment. He spends months living on the streets
and in the end he seems to have become a different person:
He thought that he had spotted a stranger in the mirror, and in that first moment he turned
around sharply to see who it was. But there was no one near him. Then he turned back to
examine the mirror more carefully. Feature by feature, he studied the face in front of him and
slowly began to notice that this person bore a certain resemblance to the man he had always
thought of as himself. [] He had turned into a bum. [] It had been no more than a matter of
months, and in that time he had become someone else. (NYT 120-121)

Quinn has become a different person, to such an extent even, that he does not even
recognize himself anymore. In his transformation Quinn has transgressed the boundary
between the self and the other, the one the disguise is supposed to create. However,
underneath he is still the same person, his changed appearance is only temporary. He resides
in a sort of in-between state, between the self, his disguise and the Other. The relevance of
this in-between state will be discussed more fully later on, focusing on the Other and the
double.
It has become clear then, that Quinn and Blue, both use a disguise, or a form of
disguise, as an attempt to gain insights into the subjects of their investigative work. However,
these confrontations leave them ever more baffled than before, as was the case with the act
of observation. Blue does not seem to get any answers from Black, only more questions. Also,
for Quinn, hiding behind a different name does not seem to get him very far. He gets stuck in
the case and completely loses himself in his transformation, lingering in a limbo-like place
between what he has become and who he wanted to impersonate and who he used to be.
NARRATION
The final feature, identified by Kathleen Belin Owen, is the use of a reliable first-person
narrator, recounting the events chronologically and earnestly, inserting all the details needed
to solve the mystery. Consequently, this narrator reaches the solution before the reader does
26

and shows an understanding of what has happened in a way that the reader never could.
In The New York Trilogy however, a reliable first-person narrator is out of the question. Both
the first and the second story are narrated in the third person, with the distinct exception of
the end of City of Glass, which introduces the reader to a first person he never heard of
before. The final story, The Locked Room, is the only story with a real first-person narrator,
but conspicuously this story also seems to fit the conventions of the detective genre the least
of all three. Most importantly, however, is that neither the third-person narrators nor the
first-person narrator arrive at a solution before the reader does. All the narrators are equally
at loss to make sense of the occurring events. If anything, they seem to deny the existence of
a clear resolution.
In City of Glass, the final passage, narrated in the first-person, suggests that the true
story will never be known: As for Quinn, it is impossible for me to say where he is now. []
The red notebook, of course, is only half the story, as any sensitive reader will understand.
(NYT 133) By the end of the story, the narrator knows just as little as the reader does. Auster
clearly shows that there is no information to withhold from the reader, there is only text. This
is a clear denial of the convention of traditional detective fiction, in which writer and reader
engage in a game of withholding and concealing information, until finally a solution is
reached. In all three stories of The New York Trilogy, the endings are left open, there is no
definitive knowledge to be found there.

From this overview we can conclude that Austers The New York Trilogy indeed
adheres to most conventions of traditional detective fiction, yet, in the atmosphere of
postmodernism, turns these upside down. Owen, in her discussion of the postmodern
detective novel, writes that [p]ostmodernism also transforms the detection process of the
story, a process by which the detective novel traditionally had entangled the reader in the
confusion of determining the solution, had exhibited the detectives prowess as he begins to
make his discoveries, and promised the satisfaction of the solution finally revealed, with its
consequent restoration of world order. (Delamater & Prigozy 81-82) The promised
satisfaction, the restoration of world order and especially the confirmation of detectives

27

prowess are conspicuously absent. What is more, the process of detection is turned into an
operation, in which all the clues seem to cancel each other out as clues.

28

CHAPTER THREE: DOPPELGANGERS AND IDENTITY: THE UNCANNY AND THE OTHER
In order to understand the working of the Other in Austers Trilogy, it would be best
to first shed light on a few theoretical approaches to the concepts of the doppelganger and
the Other. What role does the Other and the doppelganger, play for the protagonists? How
does the confrontation with a double affect their identity, the sense of self? In what follows, I
will first explore Sigmund Freuds concept of The Uncanny and try to determine its
relevance to The New York Trilogy. Adding to this discussion, and particularly to the analysis
of the double, is the theory of Jacques Lacan on the Other and the mirror stage. After
outlining these theories, I will discuss their relevance to the use of the doppelganger in each
story.
1. THE UNCANNY SIGMUND FREUD
In 1919 the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud wrote Das Unheimliche4, an influential
essay in which he focused on the phenomenon of the uncanny, applied to psychoanalysis
as well as literature. This phenomenon is a complex concept, based on the internal
contradiction in meaning of the German word unheimlich (uncanny) and its opposite
heimlich. Freud writes: Das deutsche Wort unheimlich ist offenbar der Gegensatz zu
heimlich, vertraut, und der Schlu liegt nahe, es sei etwas eben darum schreckhaft, weil es
nicht bekannt und vertraut ist.5 (Freud 244) Next, Freud discusses this contradictory aspect in
greater detail. A long citation from a dictionary leads him to conclude da das Wrtchen
heimlich unter den mehrfachen Nuancen seiner Bedeutung auch eine zeigt, in der es mit
seinem Gegensatz unheimlich zusammenfllt.6 (Freud 248) On the one hand heimlich
means familiar, belonging to the house and on the other hand it can also be used in the
context of something that is to be kept hidden, of something secret. The word unheimlich
then, can be used to indicate the opposite of the first meaning, i.e. the opposite of something
familiar, whereas it cannot be used as the opposite of the second meaning. Freud thus
4

Translations can be found online, in an English version of Freuds essay: http://wwwrohan.sdsu.edu/~amtower/uncanny.html. The translations cited below stem from this version, though
some of them have been somewhat adapted, whenever I found it to be necessary.
5
The German word 'unheimlich 'is obviously the opposite of 'homely' (heimlich) the opposite of
familiar (vertraut); and the conclusion readily comes to mind, that what is 'uncanny' is frightening
actually and precisely because it is not known and familiar.
6
that the word heimlich in its multiplicity of nuances of meaning, also incorporates one particular
meaning, in which it coincides with its opposite, unheimlich.

29

underlines that the word heimlich belongs to two very different semantic fields, dem des
Vertrauten, Behaglichen und dem des Versteckten, Verborgengehaltenen.7 (Freud 248) This
paradox adds to the complex nature of the experience of the uncanny. This experience can be
defined as a sort of scary, unexpected moment of recognition of something that is
supposedly unfamiliar. This means that the uncanny is actually nichts Neues oder Fremdes,
sondern etwas dem Seelenleben von alters her Vertrautes, das ihm nur durch den Proze der
Verdrngung entfremdet worden ist.8 (Freud 264) The unfamiliar is unexpectedly recognized
as being familiar. Freud then corners some moments in which the uncanny experience can
take place. He quotes E. Jentsch, who claims that the Zweifel an der Beseelung eines
anscheinend lebendigen Wesens und umgekehrt darber, ob ein lebloser Gegenstand nicht
etwas beseelt sei9 (as cited in Freud 250) an ideal circumstance creates for the experience of
the uncanny to take place. For Jentsch this doubt about inanimate objects that could be alive,
is connected to the literary motifs of wax figures, realistic dolls and automatons. Freud, like
Jentsch, then connects this phenomenon to the realm of the literary. He discusses the
presence of the uncanny in The Sandman, a work by the German author E.T.A. Hoffmann,
who Freud dubs the Meister des Unheimlichen in der Dichtung.10 (257) The figure of the
doll Olimpia in this story, corresponds to the observations of Jentsch about dolls and wax
figures. Though Freud acknowledges this as a typical example of an uncanny experience, he
adds to this another observation that, according to him, creates an even more significant
instance of the uncanny. He finds this in the motif of the sandman, incorporating the fear of
losing ones eyesight, which Freud connects to the protagonists repressed childhood trauma
of castration. It cannot go unnoticed that this example of the uncanny has nothing to do with
an intellectual insecurity about the aliveness, that surrounds the doll Olimpia. This presence
of a living doll Freud connects to a childish wish for toys and specifically dolls to come to life.
He writes: Die Quelle des unheimlichen Gefhls wre also hier nicht eine Kinderangst,
sondern ein Kinderwunsch []11 (257) In the combination of these two observations, he

that of the familiar, the comfortable and that of the unknown, the hidden.
"[this uncanny is in reality] nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established
in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression.
9
Doubt about the soul of an apparently alive creature and the other way around, doubt whether or
not an inanimate object could be alive
10
master of the uncanny in literature
11
Thus the source of the uncanny feeling here is not a childhood fear, but a childhood wish [] (my
translation)
8

30

recognizes a paradox, in the sense that both the childhood fear and the childhood wish are
sources for the uncanny. In an attempt to solve this, Freud then starts to discuss another
motif in the Hoffmann text, which is of great importance to the focal point of this
dissertation. This motif is that of the doppelganger. Freud discusses the phenomenon of the
doppelganger and identifies it as:
das Auftreten von Personen, die wegen ihrer gleichen Erscheinung fr identisch gehalten
werden mssen, die Steigerung dieses Verhltnisses durch berspringen seelischer Vorgnge
von einer dieser Personen auf die andere [], so da der eine das Wissen, Fhlen und Erleben
des anderen mitbesitzt, die Identifizierung mit einer anderen Person, so da man an seinem
Ich irre wird oder das fremde Ich an die Stelle des eigenen versetzt, also Ich-Verdopplung, IchTeilung, Ich-Vertauschung und endlich die bestndige Wiederkehr des Gleichen, die
Wiederholung der nmlichen Gesichtszge, Charaktere, Schiksale, verbrecherischen Taten, ja
12
der Namen durch mehrere aufeinanderfolgenden Generationen. (257)

In this lengthy citation a lot of these observations about the double are applicable to The
New York Trilogy as well, but we will return to this in what follows below.
Then Freud returns to his interpretation of the paradox, inherent to the uncanny, as a
return of was im Verborgenen htte bleiben13, i.e. the repressed (264). Freud writes that, in
fact, [d]ie Vorsilbe un an diesem Worte [=unheimlich] ist aber die Marke der
Verdrngung.14 (267) The act of repressing what ought to remain hidden, is what causes the
doubling of the self. The doppelganger is the personification of the uncanny. The double
causes the repressed to inevitably bubble to the surface, rupture the self and becomes the
source of an uncanny feeling for the characters in the book, and possibly for the reader as
well.
Next, Freud differentiates between the uncanny in literature, and the uncanny in
psychoanalysis. He writes: Das Unheimliche der Fiktion der Phantasie, der Dichtung
verdient in der Tat eine gesonderte Betrachtung. Es ist vor allem weit reichhaltiger als das

12

The appearance of characters who are to be considered identical because they look alike. This
relation is accentuated by mental processes leaping from one of these characters to another by
what we should call telepathy , so that the one possesses knowledge, feelings and experience in
common with the other. Or it is marked by the fact that the subject identifies himself with someone
else, so that he is in doubt as to which his self is, or substitutes the extraneous self for his own. In other
words, there is a doubling, dividing and interchanging of the self. And finally there is the constant
recurrence of the same thing the repetition of the same features or character-traits or vicissitudes,
of the same crimes, or even the same names through several consecutive generations.
13
What was supposed to stay hidden
14
The prefix un in this word [=uncanny] is actually the mark of repression

31

Unheimliche des Erlebens, es umfat dieses in seiner Gnze und dann noch anderes, was
unter den Bedingungen des Erlebens nicht vorkommt.15 (271) Freud discerns a contradiction
here, in the sense that a lot of things that would be uncanny in real life are not uncanny in
literature, much in the same way that literature has possibilities for the uncanny that are
absent in real life. Despite this observation, the effect of the uncanny is not diminished in any
way, because, according to Freud, the author succeeds in tricking the readers to respond to
fiction similarly as to real life experience. I have now outlined the basic principles of the
uncanny, as identified by Freud. Now we will take a look at how this theory affects Austers
writings.

2. WORKINGS OF THE UNCANNY IN THE NEW YORK TRILOGY

Roberta Rubenstein, in an essay focusing on doubling and what she dubs the
postmodern uncanny in The New York Trilogy, writes that Freuds essay on the uncanny can
be understood as an influential intertext, because Austers trilogy pivots on
psychodynamic processes and images central to Freuds construction of the psyche and, in
particular, of the uncanny: repetition and doubling. (Rubenstein 246) According to
Rubenstein, this doubling can also be found on an structural level. She claims that Austers
interlocking, overlapping tales are all interconnected, in the sense that each thematically
mirrors, narratively doubles [] the other versions. (Rubenstein 246) Much in the same that
the central character seeks, discovers, swaps places with, disappears into , or struggles
physically with an antagonist who is in fact his double. (246) This summing up of situations
echoes Freuds description of the doppelganger cited above. In all three stories doubles
figure prominently and at times characters seem to merge into other characters, adding to
the overall sense of confusion and the interlocking effect. Steven E. Alford confirms this
insight in his essay entitled Mirrors of Madness:
The names and interrelations of the narrators of the three books of The New York Trilogy are
complex and paradoxical. Characters' names are twinned, characters are revealed to be
imaginary beings invented by other characters, characters appear in one book, only to

15

The uncanny in fiction in fantasy, in literature in fact deserves a separate discussion. First and
foremost, it is more frequent than the uncanny in daily experience, it incorporates this in its totality
and then also other experiences, which under the precepts of daily life never occur.

32

maintain their name, but switch to another identity, in another book, and so forth. This makes
for not only complexity, but outright contradiction. (Alford, Web resource nova.edu)

Austers protagonists are haunted and constantly revisited by doubles who represent what
they try to repress. These doubles figure as mirrors to the main characters. While attempting
to discover as much as possible about their adversaries, they only uncover their own
insecurities, instabilities and imperfections.
However, this observation could seem to be too limited. I would argue that in The
New York Trilogy the role of the double is also closely linked to the motif of metamorphosis
and the ancient novelistic types of the rogue, the fool and the clown. As we have seen
previously, Bakhtin identifies the element of metamorphosis as a pivotal point in the
adventure novel of everyday life. It has already become clear that certain aspects of this
ancient novelistic type are also relevant for Austers fiction. The role of metamorphosis is one
of these aspects. The purpose of the doubles in these stories is not simply to hold up a mirror
to the main characters. In fact, the presence of these doppelgangers seems to instigate an
actual change in the protagonists. This change brings about a state that opens up a whole
new level of being for Quinn, Blue and the nameless narrator in the last story.
Moreover, the double can be linked to the types of the rogue, the fool and the clown in the
sense that they represent the other in society. I will argue, that the double in fact represents
the repressed other. In order to understand how this works exactly, let us take a look at the
doubles and the metamorphosis in each story in greater detail. But first, I will try to explain
what is meant by the Other, where this concept comes from and how it is relevant for The
New York Trilogy.
3. JACQUES LACAN: THE MIRROR STAGE AND THE OTHER
The concept of the other as introduced above, is derived from the theoretical frame
developed by another influential psychoanalyst, and disciple of Freud Jacques Lacan.
He introduced a study on what he dubs the mirror stage. Sean Homer has written a clearly
structured overview of Lacans theories and he explains the different steps of the mirror
stage. The first step occurs [b]etween the ages of six and 18 months [when] the infant begins
to recognize his/her image in the mirror (this does not mean a literal mirror but rather any
reflective surface, for example the mothers face) and this is usually accompanied by
pleasure. (Homer 24) This recognition leads the child to realize that he or she is, in fact, an
33

independent being: [d]uring the mirror stage, then, the child for the first time becomes
aware, through seeing its image in the mirror, that his/her body has a total form. (Homer 24)
This awareness is heightened, even, by the infants insight that he/she can also govern the
movements of this image through the movements of its own body and thus experience
pleasure. (Homer 24-25) However, though this may feel as an achievement for the child, it
also causes frustration, since the new experience of completeness and mastery, [], is in
contrast to the childs experience of its own body, over which it does not yet have full motor
control. (25) In that sense, there is a discrepancy between the infants experience of the own
body as being fragmented and the image it sees in the mirror, which provides him/her with
a sense of unification and wholeness. (25) Sean Homer describes this as follows: The mirror
image, therefore, anticipates the mastery of the infants own body and stands in contrast to
the feelings of fragmentation the infant experiences. (25) Moreover, during this step, the
child identifies with this mirror image. (25) This creates another contrast, however, since [a]t
the same time, [], the image is alienating in the sense that it becomes confused with the
self as [t]he image actually comes to take the place of the self. (25) The mirror image,
therefore, incorporates and brings about two extremes: alienation and identification.
Consequently, the sense of a unified self is acquired at the price of this self being an-other,
that is, our mirror image. (25) All these internal contrasts lead to an important internal
conflict, as Homer explains: [a]ccording to Lacan, from the moment the image of unity is
posited in opposition to the experience of fragmentation, the subject is established as a rival
to itself. (26, emphasis added) It is this conflict and this rivalry that is of importance to the
doubles in Austers trilogy. Homer describes this conflict in greater detail:
A conflict is produced between the infants fragmented sense of self and the imaginary
autonomy out of which the ego is born. The same rivalry established between the subject and
him/herself is also established between the subject and others. [] To exist one has to be
recognized by an-other. But this means that our image, which is equal to ourselves, is
mediated by the gaze of the other. The other, then, becomes the guarantor of ourselves. We
are at once dependent on the other as the guarantor or our own existence and a bitter rival to
that same other. (26)

Curiously, this idea lies at the core of the second story, Ghosts. It is exactly this experience
that Black describes to Blue, during their final meeting. Both of them need the gaze of the
other, according to Black. He describes this as follows: He needs my eye looking at him. He
needs me to prove hes alive. (NYT 184) However, this very conflict is of equal importance to
the entire trilogy. What is more, it is important to note that [t]he imaginary, [], is not a
34

developmental phase it is not something that one goes through and grows out of but
remains at the core of our experience. (Homer 31) The mirror stage, then, forms the basis of
how we both experience ourselves and relate to others. In conclusion, there is an internal
conflict that lies at the core of our being. This conflict, in turn, initiates a rivalry between the
self and the other, i.e. our mirror image and also between ourselves and others in this world.
Austers characters and doubles function in light of a mix of these theories. They
incorporate the uncanny experience, as well as the rivalry with the other. It is the combination
of these aspects that initiates a metamorphosis in the characters. Let us now look at this in
greater detail and I will attempt to explain how this metamorphosis functions for the
protagonists and the doubles in The New York Trilogy.
4. SELF VERSUS OTHER
CITY OF GLASS
In the first story, City of Glass, there are many instances in which doppelgangers
appear. First of all, there is the confusion of identities between Daniel Quinn, his authorial
double William Wilson, his fictional double Max Work and Paul Auster, the role Quinn takes
on for himself (Rubenstein 249). However, all of these doubles are his own creations, the
figments of his own imagination. Quinn explains this as follows:
Over the years, Work had become very close to Quinn. Whereas William Wilson remained an
abstract figure for him, Work had increasingly come to life. In the triad of selves that Quinn
had become, Wilson served as a kind of ventriloquist. Quinn himself was the dummy, and
Work was the animated voice that gave purpose to the enterprise. [] And little by little, Work
had become a presence in Quinns life, his interior brother, his comrade in solitude. (NYT 6)

Quinn feels comfortable in his own created triad of selves, however, things get a little
disrupted when another role or identity for Quinn props up. It does not take him long to
decide that he is going to act as if he is Paul Auster: He knew what he was going to do, and
now that the time had come, he did it. Speaking, he said. This is Auster speaking. (NYT 11)
Despite his initial decision to take on this role, he remains doubtful about accepting the
consequences of this: it did not occur to him that he was going to show up for his
appointment. Even that locution, his appointment, seemed odd to him. It wasnt his
appointment, it was Paul Austers. (NYT 12) Reluctantly and difficultly, Quinn seems to
accept his new role, and as time wore on he found himself doing a good imitation of a man
35

preparing to go out. (12) This imitation of others has apparently always been a part of his
life: Back in the old days, eighteen, twenty years ago, when I had no money and friends
would give me things to wear. Js old overcoat in college, for example. And the strange sense
I would have of climbing into his skin. (40, emphasis added) This suggests that Quinn has
always felt compelled to climb into other peoples skin and inhabit their lives16, and also he
tends to feel out of place in his own skin. (9) Quinn seems able to choose a role for himself,
to create another identity. The problem of choice and the complete unfixed nature of identity
is made clear when Quinn first sees Stillman, Sr. at the train station. After he has spotted
Stillman, Sr. and, for a moment, surveys the crowd around him he notices another Stillman,
Sr.: Directly behind Stillman, heaving into view just inches behind his right shoulder, another
man stopped, took a lighter out of his pocket, and lit a cigarette. His face was the exact twin
of Stillmans. [] The second Stillman had a prosperous air about him,. He was dressed in an
expensive blue suit; his shoes were shined; his white hair was combed; and in his eyes there
was the shrewd look of a man of the world. (55-56) As both men set off in a different
direction, Quinn is forced to make a choice between them. He recognizes the impossibility of
this position and feels that there is nothing he could do now that would not be a mistake,
because [w]hatever choice he made and he had to make a choice would be arbitrary, a
submission to chance. (56) This moment of making such a difficult decision illustrates a
subjectivity of identity. Quinn labels the first man the correct Stillman, Sr. and that is that.
Actually, there is no clue in the story that Quinn has made the right choice. In this way, he
creates another role to be played, an identity that the man has to live up to, just like he does
for himself.
Of course, all these roles that he plays are constructs that he himself has made, they
are voluntary acts of doubling the self. Moreover, it would seem that these voluntary acts do
not initiate a change in Quinn, they are not catalysts of a metamorphosis. They are what he
knows, they make him feel comfortable and reassured. His creation, Max Work, is exactly
16

This image can also be found in Austers Moon Palace, as the protagonist Marco Stanley Fogg, in
college, dresses in his uncles suit: I felt at home in it, and since for all practical purposes I had no
other home, I continued to wear it every day [] It functioned as a protective membrane, a second skin
that shielded me from the blows of life. (MP 14-15) For Fogg wearing his uncle clothes functions as a
second skin, and it even feels homely. Interestingly, this motif of clothes defining identity also props up
in The Blindfold, a novel by Austers wife, Siri Hustvedt. The main character, Iris, feels and behaves like
a different person when she wears a mans suit. She, like Quinn and Fogg, climbs into someone elses
skin.

36

what he is not, aggressive, quick-tongued, at home in whatever spot he happened to find

himself, and for Quinn it reassure[s] him to pretend to be Work as he was writing his books,
to know that he had it in him to be Work if he ever chose to be, even if only in his mind.(9) It
is when Quinn takes on the role of Paul Auster that changes start to occur, for Auster is not
an identity he has created himself. It appears to be more difficult for him to try to become
Paul Auster than Max Work, for example. He uses this new and unknown identity in his
difficult pursuit of Peter Stillman, it becomes his tactic: He was Paul Auster now, and with
each step he took he tried to fit more comfortably into the strictures of that transformation.
Auster was no more than a name to him, a husk without content. To be Auster meant being a
man with no interior, a man with no thoughts. (61) He tries to fit more comfortably into his
new role as the detective Paul Auster. Significantly, Quinn is completely disillusioned when
he finally meets the real Auster, who turns out to be like a mirror of desire. He is leading
the life that Quinn himself wants or at least wanted to lead but never could. Roberta
Rubenstein writes: When Quinn meets Paul Auster in person, he feels that Austers happy
family life taunt[s] him with the things he had lost (121) and fantasizes swapping places with
him. (Rubenstein 247) Therefore, after their meeting, Quinn had nothing, he knew nothing,
he knew that he knew nothing. (104) Paul Auster is one role he cannot take up or fulfill.
There is, however, a role he can fulfill but, nevertheless, has not chosen for himself. It
is exactly this involuntary doubling that prompts changes in Quinn, that causes a life-altering
transformation or metamorphosis. The metamorphosis is brought about by the doubling
between Quinn and Peter Stillman, Jr.. Roberta Rubenstein explains it as a mirror-reversed
trajectory that Quinn enacts, he becomes more and more of an automaton, regressing to
childhood and becoming unreal. (249) The more progress Quinn makes in his case, the
more he starts to become a double of Peter Stillman, Jr., though traveling in a reversed order.
In her essay, Rubenstein phrases it as such: By the narratives end, he [=Quinn] has become
the automaton/son [] sequestered in a solitary room, where darkness had begun to win out
over light (155), time continued to diminish (156) and food arrives from an unidentified
source. (Rubenstein 251) This involuntary doubling initiates a metamorphosis, in which
Quinn transforms from self to other, without ever reaching a state of harmony between these
two extremes. Their presence creates an opposition between the self and the other, much in

37

the same way as the double can be seen as the personification of the repressed, the uncanny,
of the other side of the self.
There is one moment, however, in which Quinn voluntarily adopts the identity of the
younger Peter Stillman. This occurs when he is engaging the older Stillman in a series of
conversations, in order to get some answers from him, for the investigation. This has an
important effect on the rest of Quinns research, which will be discussed later on.
Conspicuously, Stillman is already introduced as an Other in the first sentence of the
novel: It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead
of the night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. (NYT 3,
emphasis added) As William Little has noted as well, for he dubs this phone call the call of
the Other (Little 155)
For Austers protagonists, the quest to unite the self and the other is rendered futile.
Though Quinn transforms into a homeless bum living on the streets, turning into the other,
he no longer recognizes himself and as such, he has lost his self. Other and self seem to
cancel each other out. This appearance of a stereotypical homeless bum is actually an
interesting motif in Austers fiction, not only in The New York Trilogy but also in other works
(Moon Palace for example). As Bakhtin discerns, in the adventure novel of everyday life, the
role of metamorphosis is also to reflect private life and make it public. The homeless type is
an ideal personification of the private life turned public, as they live their lives on the streets.
In a way, they turn what is unheimlich (un-homely) into something heimlich (homely).
Especially Quinns state at the end of the story, can be seen as a good example of this. When
juxtaposing Quinns life in the beginning of the story with his situation near the end of the
novel, it becomes clear how extreme his metamorphosis actually is. Quinn is described to us
in the beginning of the story as follows: He read many books, he looked at paintings, he
went to the movies. In the summer he watched baseball on television; in the winter he went
to the opera. (3) Also, he seems to be a typical homely type and, as he plans to go out, he
cleared the table of the breakfast dishes, tossed the newspaper on the couch, went into the
bathroom, showered, shaved, went on to the bedroom wrapped in two towels, opened the
closet, and picked out his clothes for the day.(12) Quinn seems normal enough and engages
in lots of cultural activities, he is the average educated person. At the end of the story,

38

however, he has no time for these activities and has become a creature driven by the most
basic needs: food, sleep and shelter. For each of these he finds creative solutions, yet, it is
clear that his environment now dominates his existence. He is increasingly preoccupied with
nature, more specifically with the sky: He spent many hours looking up at the sky. (118)
Quinn starts studying the sky and its clouds in great detail. Nature takes hold of him as [o]ne
by one all weathers passed over his head, from sunshine to storms, from gloom to radiance
(119), whereas before he was a man of culture. His transformation into the other has
prompted Quinn to discover a more instinct-driven state of being. His repressed prehistoric,
animalistic drives now seem to resurface. What is more, for Quinn it has even gotten to the
point that he does not even care about this metamorphosis anymore: It had been no more
than a matter of months, and in that time he had become someone else. He tried to
remember himself as he had been before, but he found it difficult. He looked at this new
Quinn and shrugged. It did not really matter. He had been one thing before, and now he was
another. (121)
Quinns transformation is probably the most drastic one in the entire novel. For the
nameless protagonist of The Locked Room and Blue in Ghosts their doppelgangers
nonetheless bring about significant changes as well.
GHOSTS
The second story could initially be read as a sort of generic detective story, as Alison
Russell writes: the text is stripped down to a generic level (Russell 77) As such, the story is
rendered to its most basic principles: a detective, an adversary and the search for an answer.
Despite what could be mistaken for a purposeful lack of depth, Blue is a dynamic character
and the confrontation with a doppelganger instigates important changes for him. In the
beginning, Blues life is simple enough. He does not come across as an overly complicated
type. However, when confronted with this rather dull case, Blue already starts to feel different:
For the first time in his life, he finds that he has been thrown back on himself, with nothing to
grab hold of, nothing to distinguish one moment from the next. He has never given much
thought to the world inside him, and though he always knew it was there, it has remained an
unknown quantity, unexplored and therefore dark, even to himself. (145)

And, after many hours and days of observing Black, he starts to realize that in spying out at
Black across the street, it is as though [he] were looking into a mirror, and instead of merely
39

watching another, he finds that he is also watching himself. (146) Also, adding to this,
Roberta Rubenstein writes, Blue recognizes his uncanny connection to Black, feeling that he
has seen Black before, but he cant remember where [] (Rubenstein 253) It is clear then
that Black represents the repressed other part of Blues self. However, for Blue, recognition of
this fact comes only belatedly. In the beginning Blues state of mind can best be described
as one of ambivalence and conflict. (158) This conflict is caused by the constant switching
between two states: [t]here are moments when he feels so completely in harmony with
Black, so naturally at one with the other man, that to anticipate what Black is going to do, [],
he need merely look into himself. [] How he knows this remains something of a mystery to
him, but the fact is that he is never wrong, and when the feeling comes over him, he is
beyond all doubt and hesitation. (158) Despite these instances of harmony, there are also
bad periods when he [=Blue] feels totally removed from Black, cut off from him in a way that
is so stark and absolute that he begins to lose sense of who he is. (158) Apparently, he needs
Black in order to feel whole, to feel like himself, for without Black he loses sense of who he
is. Slowly Blue and Black become closely intertwined and, like for Quinn, in the end there is a
metamorphosis and it becomes unclear which one is Black and which one is Blue. Blue has
punctured the surface of the self and crossed over to the other. Even so, Blues attempt to be
united, going to Black in friendship (194), fails and it becomes clear for him that they
cannot co-exist, as Black says:
I dont need you anymore, Blue.
It might not be so easy to get rid of me, you know. You got me into this, and now youre stuck
with me.
No, Blue, youre wrong. Everything is over now.
Stop the doubletalk.
Its finished. The whole thing is played out. Theres nothing more to be done. (195)

As a result, Blue becomes so angry that he knocks Black out cold, in an attempt to annihilate
him (Rubenstein 254). Roberta Rubenstein identifies this moment as the result of the
characteristic event that distinguishes most double-stories: the principal character belatedly
experiences the uncanny recognition that his double is actually his other self. (Rubenstein
254) In the end, there remains a significant confusion between Black and Blue, as Blue
cannot discern whether the sound of breath is coming from Black or himself (231).
(Rubenstein 254)

40

Nonetheless, it is quite clear that, despite Blues momentous feelings of harmony with
Black, they cannot remain in unity. This lack of a lasting harmony between them, the fact that
they can never remain as one, is underlined in their names: functioning as a pair, they are
Black and Blue, they are damaged and seemingly cannot heal. This is not the only association
that can be made with regard to Austers use of colors. Eric Berlatsky, in his essay on identity
and race in Ghosts, links the symbolism behind these colors to Americas history of slavery
and racism. Obviously, these particular insights are of little relevance here. Yet, what is of
interest is his observation on the apparent connection between Blue and Black. He writes
that, it becomes clear that there is another Blue, the Blue within, which has always been
there but has remained unexplored. (Berlatsky 120) Moreover, as Berlatsky argues, it is not
surprising that at the center of Blues mysterious self we find a Black-ness. (Berlatsky 120)
In short, Berlatsky, while focusing on race, argues that [b]eneath the surface of the self/other
dichotomy enacted by Black and Blue is the racial dichotomy of black and white. (Berlatsky
121)
To conclude, it has become clear that Blues metamorphosis is not overly pronounced,
yet, by the end of the story his life has been altered for good. The struggle between self and
other is of greater significance in this story and this illustrates very well how the
doppelganger functions, how the change from self to other is brought about. Also, the total
confusion of self and other is a key theme, a theme that also features explicitly in the final
story, The Locked Room.

THE LOCKED ROOM

In this story, there is a clear doubling of the protagonist and his former best friend,
Fanshawe. The mirroring effect of the double is taken one step farther here, in the sense that
there is a complex confusion of selves between the protagonist and Fanshawe. Since his early
childhood, the protagonist has felt very close to his friend. However, as the protagonist
describes there was always a sort of distance between them: I see now that I also held back
from Fanshawe, that a part of me always resisted him. (NYT 211) This resistance echoes the
act of repression, which causes the uncanny experience. Moreover, the narrator feels that he
can never truly get to know Fanshawe. That, even though he knew him better than anyone
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else [] (NYT 211), he also senses the distance between them, and whilst trying to be just
like him, he also understands that you could never really know him. (212) In that respect, for
the narrator Fanshawe incorporates both what is known, the familiar or das Heimliche and
what is not known, the unfamiliar. Roberta Rubenstein also remarks that, when the narrator is
recalling his childhood, he reveals that many emotional landmarks of his maturation were
influenced by his relationship with Fanshawe, [] (Rubenstein 255) She dubs Fanshawe the
narrators uncanny double (256) and describes that the narrator inserts himself into
Fanshawes place in the world by courting his wife and eventually appropriating other
relationships from the absent mans life, including those with his mother and his child. (256)
By seemingly taking over Fanshawes life, the confusion of selves between the both of them is
fully realized. However, this movement towards total assimilation of their lives is halted after
the protagonist receives a letter and learns that Fanshawe is, in fact, not dead. His former
friend is in hiding, feeling that hiding was the best and kindest thing I have ever done. (NYT
239) Though Fanshawe wants the narrator to take over his role as husband and father, the
letter leaves the narrator shaken and he becomes obsessed with Fanshawes life. He
convinces himself that he is trying to recreate his friends steps since the moment they
parted, in order to write a biography. However, in the end he discovers that he was haunted,
perhaps [he] was even possessed as he did not once stop thinking about Fanshawe (NYT
244) It would seem that his true attempt is to completely eliminate Fanshawe by retracing his
past and walking in his footsteps. As it turns out, his attempts fail, despite an extensive
blending of their selves. Fanshawe, as the narrators mirror image, apparently cannot be
controlled and this causes frustration. The narrator wants a form of unity between them, he
wants his image, the other, to take the place of his self. Yet, this turns out to be impossible
and he resolves to annihilate Fanshawe. This can be seen as an echo of the situation of Blue
and Black in Ghosts, in the sense that both cannot exist separately, even though unity or
harmony between them can never be reached. For the narrator and Fanshawe this is no
different. They seemingly cannot co-exist and Fanshawe even threatens to kill the narrator if
he were to come looking for him, underlining the supposed danger of their unison: if by
some miracle you manage to track me down, I will kill you. (NYT 239) The internal conflict of
the narrator and his repressed other eventually leads to a confrontation, which, in turn,
results in an ambiguous state for the main character, similar to the ending of the two
previous stories. With this ending, it is even less clear what lies ahead for the main character.
42

When he reads Fanshawes final story in the red notebook, this peculiar experience echoes
the situation between both men: All the words were familiar to me, and yet they seemed to
have been put together strangely, as though their final purpose was to cancel each other
out. (NYT 313) For the narrator, Fanshawe is familiar yet strange, and even though they
belong together, they also cancel each other out, as such underlining the rivalry between
the self and the other.
From all of this we can conclude, that the double has an important function in
Austers fiction. They are the personification of the internal conflict between the self and the
other, as specified by Jacques Lacan. This conflict leads to a confrontation of the main
character and their doppelganger, which causes an uncanny experience . The doubles
represent the return of what is being repressed, as well as the clash of both identification and
alienation with an-other.

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CHAPTER FOUR: QUEST FOR IDENTITY

To conclude, I will combine previous insights, the structure of detective fiction, the
interconnectedness of time and space and the confrontation between the self and the other,
in order to shed light on the quest for identity. All of these elements function together, all
contribute to the existential quest, central to The New York Trilogy.
1. STRUCTURE OF THE QUEST
First, let us return to the structure of Austers detective fiction, as laid out in chapter
two, and reconstruct the steps for each story:
Stasis before mysterious event Mysterious event Complication of the mystery
(peripeteia) Climax Unraveling of mystery Lack of resolution.
STASIS BEFORE MYSTERIOUS EVENT
Before anything happens the protagonists find themselves in a state of stasis, living a
structured and somewhat repetitive life. For Quinn, his life consists of writing mystery novels,
at the rate of about one a year (NYT 3), going on long walks through New York City and
engaging in all sorts of cultural activities, without going into much detail about all of this.
Blues life is even more stripped bare of details and personality: Blue goes to his office every
day and sits at his desk, waiting for something to happen. (NYT 137) It isnt until White
enters his office that something actually happens. Blues situation has to be the best example
of the state of stasis. For the narrator of the final story, his situation causes him distress, yet
he does not undertake anything to change this. He feels old, already used up and he finds
that his accomplishments amounted to a mere fraction of nothing at all. (NYT 209) He goes
so far as to say that what he has done so far was so much dust, and the slightest wind would
blow it away. (209) All of this paints a rather bleak picture for the narrator of The Locked
Room. However, all of their lives are about to change drastically, as a mysterious event
occurs.
MYSTERIOUS EVENT
The term mysterious event is deliberately kept vague, as it is difficult to really speak
of a mystery or crime as such. It has already become clear that there is a lack of an actual
44

crime or noteworthy event. However, something happens that triggers the action for the
protagonists. In the first story, the mysterious event starts with the phone call Quinn receives
at night. He decides to go and meet the person in distress in the morning. This decision to
impersonate the detective Paul Auster, leads him to change his routine and act as a private
eye. And, as such, he starts his investigation of the older Peter Stillman, by reading and
observing. For Blue, who is a real detective, the mysterious event comes as less of a surprise.
To him, the case seems simple and he needs the work, and so he listens to White and
doesnt ask many questions. (NYT 137) All of it seems very straightforward for Blue and the
only thing that is more or less suspicious for him, is Whites appearance. Blue finds not only
a black beard [], and the overly bushy eyebrows suspicious, but also the skin, which
seems inordinately white, as though covered with powder. (NYT 137) Despite what appears
to be an odd disguise, Blue accepts the case and starts his surveillance almost immediately. In
these first two stories, the mysterious event is linked to the work of a detective. For the
narrator of the final story, however, this context is absent. For him, the mystery is caused by a
letter with unexpected information. This letter caused a series of little shocks for the
narrator, as it was too much information to absorb all at once. (202) Nonetheless, this
moment and the results of the letter are what trigger the narrators quest.
COMPLICATION OF MYSTERY (+ PERIPETEIA)
By now the protagonists investigations are well under way, and yet, paradoxically,
they are no closer to a solution than before. Not only are they not accomplishing anything,
they are also getting stuck in their own actions. The complication of the mystery is
characterized by the moment of peripeteia for our protagonists. In City of Glass, Quinns
investigation, previously leading him nowhere, has taken a change. He decides to confront
the older Stillman and engage him in conversation. However, their final meeting does not
result in what he had hoped for. By confronting Stillman, Sr. while posing as his son, Quinn
has apparently scared the old man away. As he is waiting for him, like he does every morning,
the old man does not appear. While Quinn, ha[d] worked his way through his roll and coffee,
read the account of the Mets Sunday loss, and still there was no sign of the old man. (NYT
86) Finally, Quinn accepts that he has lost him and he feels equally at loss. In an attempt to
make sense of the situation, he decides to go and meet the real Paul Auster. It is this
moment that can be identified as the peripeteia in the story. Instead of turning this meeting
45

into a positive event, Quinn feels too overwhelmed and sends himself into a downward spiral:
Quinn was nowhere now. He had nothing, he knew nothing, he knew that he knew nothing.
(NYT 104) His loss of a clear trajectory makes him decide to find a spot for himself in narrow
alleyway, and [settle] for the night. (NYT 113) In an attempt to move forward, Quinn has set
the tone for his own lurking fate.
In the second story, Blue is caught in a similar downward spiral. He too, decides to
confront his adversary, Black, by disguising himself and engaging in various conversations.
However, these conversations only raise more questions and even cause Blue to break into
Blacks room and steal his manuscript. Interestingly, Blue mistakes his actions for a result of
fate, he sees them as inevitable and thus, the moment of peripeteia echoes that of the
ancient Greek tragedy. He describes it as follows: This is what the ancients called fate, and
every hero must submit to it. There is no choice, and if there is anything to be done, it is only
the one thing that leaves no choice. But Blue is loath to acknowledge it. (NYT 189) Indeed,
for the ancient classic heroes fate is fixed and any attempt to avoid it is an act of hubris. Blue
eventually acknowledges that he can no longer avoid directly provoking Black. Yet, this
apparent recognition of fate for Blue, only results in the exact opposite, leading him further
away from finding out the truth about his adversary.
Similarly, the narrator of The Locked Room also finds himself even more distanced
from Fanshawe, despite his attempts to uncover as much as possible about his former friend.
In this story the mystery becomes more complicated when the narrator receives a letter from
Fanshawe. The shock this produces leads the protagonist to become obsessed with
Fanshawe, despite his attempts to [dig] into the present. (NYT 244) Ultimately, he resolves
to write a biography about Fanshawe. However, every effort the narrator makes in order to
find out more, leaves him feeling at loss. He achieves the exact opposite of what he intended
to do and seems to lose himself in the process.
CLIMAX AND UNRAVELING OF THE MYSTERY
The next steps, the climax and the unraveling of the mystery, are closely linked in each
story. For Quinn, a climax is reached when he has come to the end of his surveillance of the
Stillmans residence and finds that his old life has disappeared. The discovery that he can no
longer return to his old routine takes him by surprise: He had come to the end of himself. He
46

could feel it now, as though a great truth had finally dawned in him. There was nothing left.
(NYT 126) The mystery unravels as Quinn regresses further into a state of non-being. He is
stuck in a period of growing darkness [which] coincided with the dwindling of pages in the
red notebook and [l]ittle by little, Quinn was coming to the end. (131) This unraveling of
the mystery, however, does not answer any questions as it does in traditional detective
fiction. If anything, it more or less underlines the impossibility of reaching a solution, or even
seems to deny that there is a solution that has to be found.
In Ghosts, the climax occurs in the final confrontation between Black and Blue. After
Blue has stolen Blacks manuscript, Black lures Blue into his room and is pointing a gun at
him. This leads to a fight, in which Blue knocks out Black and it is unclear whether or not
Black is still alive. The rest of the story unfolds much in the same ambiguous way as City of
Glass does. Blue ends up in his apartment with Blacks book and concludes that Black was
right, [] as Blue knew it all by heart. (197)
For the nameless narrator of The Locked Room, the climax is also to be found in a
confrontation between both adversaries. The protagonist receives a second letter from
Fanshawe, demanding they should meet. Their meeting takes place in a house somewhere in
Boston, under unusual circumstances. They speak to each other through a door, Fanshawe
has locked himself in a room and the narrator is not allowed in. During this conversation
Fanshawe unravels his own personal mystery, he explains where he has been and what he has
done since his disappearance. This story, like Ghosts, ends with the protagonist reading the
manuscript of his double.
LACK OF RESOLUTION
All of the stories have an open ending. By the end, in some stories, a few matters have
become clear but most questions remain unanswered. Moreover, for the reader it is
impossible to gather what has happened to the protagonists after the final moment. Quinn
has apparently disappeared and it is impossible [] to say where he is now. (133) The
whereabouts of Blue are equally unknown and the narrator stresses the impossibility of ever
knowing: from this moment on, we know nothing. (198) The third story ends with an image
of finality, in which the narrator is crumpling the pages of the notebook and throwing them
into the trash bin. The final sentence underlines this: I came to the last page just as the train
47

was pulling out. (314) Significantly, all three stories end with a text running out, being read
from beginning to end or being torn up, page by page. The juxtaposing of the motif of texts
or books coming to a halt and the lack of answers these texts have to offer, underlines the
impossibility of knowing and illustrates the uselessness of looking for solutions in texts.

2. TIME AND SPACE IN THE NEW YORK TRILOGY: AN AUSTERIAN CHRONOTOPE

To end this discussion, let us take a look at the interconnectedness of space and time.
As mentioned before, for Bakhtin space and time function as a whole, together functioning as
a chronotope. Many critics have pointed out the importance of space in Austers novels and
have dedicated entire works to this aspect. Steven E. Alford, in an essay dealing with
signification and space, connects space to selfhood. He claims:
Hence from the point of view of The New York Trilogy, space can be a place where selfhood is
lost, where selves (the quarry) are found, where intertextuality can be maintained, where space
itself can be overmastered within space, through mapping, and where, through the act of
establishing utopia, space can finally express its dominance over history. (Alford, Space 621)

This space, in which selfhood is lost, where selves (the quarry) are found is thus, according
to Alford, intimately involved in the significatory acts of self-constitution, acts that somehow
involve the intersection of self and other [] (Alford, Space 623) He then discusses how this
works for Quinn, who tries to leave himself behind on his walks through the city. He explains,
that Quinn thinks that by leaving home, and by having no particular destination, he can lose
not only his way but his self. However, as Alford remarks, he is mistaken because, to lose
himself, he would have to lose not only his destination but also his point of origin, since his
home (in geographical space) is linked intimately to his sense of self. (Alford, Space 623) As
such, the home, or das Heimliche, is the realm of the self. Austers characters are all more or
less forced to leave home and embark on a quest of detection. In fact, [t]o leave home is to
abandon the self altogether, yet home derives its meaning only from its relationship to the
away. (624) This polarity of home and away, then, translates itself into the parallel binary
of self and other. As such, the protagonists fail to truly leave their selves behind, in their
attempts to cross over to the other, exactly because of the self-anchoring [] character of
home. (624) The question now arises why the characters are attempting to leave home and
try to lose themselves? Alford explains it as follows: By supposing ourselves to be in a place
48

(home), and finding it not ideal, we posit (through the textual act of describing a place
where, in principle, we could never be) another place (utopia) where we arent either. This
means, then, that because the characters find the self not ideal, they try to reach an-other.
Quinn, rather ambiguously, writes in his notebook: Wherever I am not is the place where I
am myself. (NYT 111) With this comment he illustrates his inability to be someone else,
which also means someplace else. Interestingly, he writes this comment in his notebook after
meticulously observing the homeless people in New York. It had already become clear that
the figure of the homeless beggar is connected to making visible the other in society. These
people no longer have a home, they are constantly underway to someplace else. What is
more, their binary has been disrupted: they have become simply other, without self and, as
such, they function as the personification of the other in Austers fiction.
It is clear then, that space and selfhood are indeed linked. Yet, how does time fit into
this picture? Time in The New York Trilogy is governed by chance, by contingency. It is
chance that causes the protagonists to embark on their quests and how this quest unfolds is
equally marked by contingency. Scott Dimovitz comments on this by positing that Austerian
chance seems to do nothing but close off options. (Dimovitz 619) However, this does not
mean that chance is destructive force, au contraire, [b]y opening himself up to contingency,
an Austerian character inevitably loops back into a system of correspondences that will take
the character where he needed to go. (Dimovitz 619) Chance, then, enables the workings of
space, taking the character where he needed to go. A good example of this is the moment
with the two older Stillmans at the train station. Quinn feels that any choice between them
would be a submission to chance. (NYT 56) And yet, his choice seems to indeed take him in
the right direction.
Chance, in fact, functions as a denial of stasis. The governing role of chance shows us that
nothing is fixed, nothing can be pinned down exactly. By recognizing that space and selfhood
are interconnected, and that time and chance are connected, it becomes clear that selfhood
is, in fact, subordinate to chance, and as such, to change. In short, the self is not a fixed entity.
In conclusion, it has become clear that the quest in these stories can be structured
according to a specific pattern. All three protagonists follow this similar pattern in their
search for answers, as well as themselves. This quest, then, inherently brings together time

49

and space as one. It is an act in which time and space are of equal importance and cannot be
separated. A quest cannot be an actual quest if either is missing or considered less important.
Therefore, time and space, chance and self, are closely interconnected.

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WORKS CITED
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Alford, Steven E. Mirrors of Madness: Paul Austers The New York Trilogy. Web
resource <http://www.polaris.nova.edu/~alford/articles/ausidentity.html>

Alford, Steven E. Spaced-out: Signification and Space in Paul Auster's "The New York
Trilogy."Contemporary Literature, Vol. 36 No. 4 (Winter 1995), p. 613-63. University of
Wisconsin Press.
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Auden, W. H. The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict. Web
resource, Harpers Magazine <http://www.harpers.org/archive/1948/05/0033206>

Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room. London:
Faber and Faber, 2004

Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. ed. by Michael
Holquist; transl. by Caryl Emerson. Austin (Texas): University of Texas Press, 1982

Berlatsky, Eric. Everything in the World Has Its Own Color: Detecting Race and
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<Project Muse>

Burton, Stacy. Paradoxical Relations: Bakhtin and Modernism. MLQ, Vol. 61 No. 3
(September 2000) University of Washington. P. 519 - 543

Delamater, Jerome H. and Prigozy, Ruth. Theory and practice of classic detective
fiction. Westport (Conn.): Greenwood Press, 1997

Dimovitz, Scott A. Public Personae and Private I: De-Compositional Ontology in Paul

Austers The New York Trilogy. Modern Fiction Studies 52 (2006), p. 61333

Freud, Sigmund. Das Unheimliche (1919). In: Sigmund Freud. Studienausgabe.

Psychologische Schriften, Bd. IV. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer 1970, pp 241-274.

Herzogenrath, Bernd. An Art of Desire: Reading Paul Auster. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999

Homer, Sean. Jacques Lacan. Routledge Critical Thinkers. Online, Google Books. 2005

Little, William G. Nothing to Go on: Paul Auster's "City of Glass."Contemporary

Literature, Vol. 38 No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 133-163. University of Wisconsin Press.
EBSCO 6 Nov. 2008 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1208855>

McManus, Barbara. Outline of Aristotle's Theory of Tragedy in the POETICS. Web

resource < http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics.html>

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Price-Anisman, Pamela. Finding the Key: Teaching Detective Fiction in the

Developmental Classroom. Web resource
<http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/pubs/A4/price-anisman.html>

Priestman, Martin. Detective Fiction and Literature: The Figure on the

Carpet.Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1990

Rubenstein, Roberta. Doubling, Intertextuality, and the Postmodern Uncanny: Paul

Auster's New York Trilogy. LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, Vol. 9 Issue 3 (Winter
1998), p 245
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Russell, Alison. Deconstructing The New York Trilogy: Paul Auster's Anti--Detective
Fiction. Critique, Vol. 32 Issue 2 (Winter 1990), p 71
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