It was a flight to Zante that started it...

Thoughts on Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy by Paul Karasik, Lorenzo Mattotti and David Mazzucchelli

My band at the time—inventively called Andy, Glenn and Ritch, featuring Andy, me, and, you guessed it, Ritch—had decided to take a group holiday.

Mother booked it. We were all still inept at the time, and thus we found ourselves in the sleepy resort of Kalamaki on the Greek island of Zakynthos, or Zante.

Highlights as a collective included the lamb chops, the “Greek potatoes,” and Ritchie trying to clean off a hennaed AGR tattoo we’d all drunkenly convinced each other to get the night before. He spent most of the holiday trying to hide an inky, black smudge on his shoulder.

What larks, Pip!

For me, however, there remains a much more important and formative memory.

It started in the airport, waiting for the gate to be announced…

I’d opened the pages of Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy for the first time—“It was a wrong number that started it…”—and I’d found myself plunged into a strange meta-world where an unknown character is calling the main character, Daniel Quinn (who writes under a pseudonym, Max Work), asking to speak to another character called Paul Auster (who’s the author too, obvs).

I looked up, wondering what the hell I was reading, wondering if I’d wandered through some kind of looking glass.

I hadn’t. I could see Andy was mentally calculating how long before he could smoke again. Ritchie, how long before he could drink.

Still. My more routine surroundings were soon forgotten as I delved back into the strange, post-modern detective story Auster was setting up.

I read the book so intently that days later, we noticed I’d sunburned my chest in such a way as to leave a white ghost of the book itself. A more romantic (albeit weird) way to see it is that I’d inadvertently tattooed Auster’s book across my heart.

Ever since, I’ve been a fan, to the point I once saw a clip of Kevin Barry slagging off Auster, and it genuinely upset me that one writer I liked was diminishing another.

In fact, in a different world, I would have applied to the hallowed Creative Writing MA at the UEA and might have been published by now, sneaking myself into “the literary system” that way. But alas, I showed my entry story to a tutor of mine and, unwittingly echoing an old Woody Allen joke, he said it was a great story, but there was no need to have written it as Paul Auster had already written it.

He was right. I’d absorbed Auster’s voice to such an extent, I’d lost my own (or at least what vague voice I might have had at the time). With such tonal fragility, I wasn’t ready to face the literary establishment, nor admit I’ve not read any Austen to someone like Rushdie.

(You say Austen, I say Auster. Let’s call the whole thing post-modern.)

All to say: Auster had a big influence on me. And so it was a pleasure to go back into the meta-fictional world of The New York Trilogy thanks to this newly updated graphic novel version.

A picture paints, etc

I say “newly updated” because the first story of the trilogy (City of Glass) was produced in graphic novel form many years ago.

This version, published now Auster is sadly no longer with us, adds a graphic adaptation of the last two stories in the trilogy, Ghosts and The Locked Room.

I don’t know—and can’t be arsed to research (this isn’t the LRB)—but I get the feeling Auster wasn’t so much involved (or didn’t offer permission or something) and therefore it seems the second two stories pretty much lift the entire text of the novel version, whereas the originally adapted story is a little looser with the source material. Or maybe it’s just me being biased/nostalgic.

Either way, rereading City of Glass, I was reminded of how effectively the story and imagery are woven together. It’s a great advert for how the graphic novel form can elevate and develop the written word.

The two new adaptations don’t quite reach the same heights, but are still good.

Ghosts is accompanied less by comic-typical panel-work and more by what I’d describe as single-scene sketches, often-dark drawings that develop the mood of what’s happening, if not the complete detail of the text. The Locked Room is more similar in visual style to City of Glass—and more intricately woven into the text—and rounds off the book well.

What stood out for me more was Auster’s writing and how singular it can be.

Auster loves to reference the likes of Cervantes and Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Whitman. But older now and more well-read, I realise how much of Samuel Beckett’s influence is in Auster’s writing, more so than any of the writers he suggests he’s borrowing from.

He wore Beckett’s influence more openly in later work, such as Man in the Dark and Travels in the Scriptorium, but I see Beckett much clearer now here in The New York Trilogy too.

What I think is interesting—and what makes early Auster so good, or at least so enjoyable for me—is that he manages to evoke Samuel Beckett in a much less pretentious or aloof manner than other imitators tend to affect. It’s like Richard Osman rewriting Ulysses (not that I’ve read any Richard Osman, nor finished Ulysses, but you know what I mean).

I’m a fan, and for some reason I connect deeply with Auster’s writing (His work is concerned with authorship, with the act of writing, with personal identity, with chance—all things, I guess, I’m concerned with too).

At an event recently, having discovered I do this Library thing and the podcast and all that jazz, an American friend asked me what books they should read. My instinct was to say The New York Trilogy. It’s been one of my top recommendations for years (along with Oracle Night, also by Auster, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera, and My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk). For a split second, before answering, I paused to wonder if, given all the books I’ve read since, and given it’s not quite as cool as it once was to like Auster (see Barry et al.), I wondered if I should promote another writer to the top of my list… something by Percival Everett maybe (I mean, Erasure is pure genius, as too is The Trees. And that’s not to speak of I Am Not Sidney Poitier). But no. I went with my gut and stuck with Auster’s The New York Trilogy. Having enjoyed reading it again in the graphic novel format, I’m glad I did.

My recommendation: If you read a lot, go for the novel first and then the graphic novel. If you don’t read very often, go for the graphic novel first as it’s a nice way into Auster’s work. And if you don’t read at all: Christ, what’s wrong with you? What with Paul Auster and Percival Everett’s back catalog alone, you could happily spend the rest of your days stuck in one of Auster’s many locked rooms, utterly entertained and equally befuddled.