City of Glass

“What interested him about the stories he wrote was not their relation to the world but their relation to other stories.”

Quinn reflects on his love for the stories he reads and writes, particularly the way different stories interact with each other. His reflection underscores the intertextuality of the construction of narrative and identity and contributes to the postmodern literary techniques and the theme of Identity as Constructed and Contingent in the novella. Just as stories impact each other, they also impact the way he crafts his own identity.

“[I]t 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 wasn’t his appointment, it was Paul Auster’s. And who that person was he had no idea. Nevertheless, as time wore on he found himself doing a good imitation of a man preparing to go out.”

This passage is one example of the way Quinn experiences the fragmentary nature of his identity. Even before the events of the story have begun to impact him, he already views the various pieces of his identity as entirely separate entities, allowing him to observe “Paul Auster’s” actions from outside himself.

“For thirteen years the father was away. His name is Peter Stillman too. Strange, is it not? That two people can have the same name? I do not know if that is his real name. But I do not think he is me. We are both Peter Stillman. But Peter Stillman is not my real name. […] Tomorrow is the end of thirteen years. That is bad. Even though they say it is not, it is bad. I am not supposed to remember. But now and then I do, in spite of what I say. He will come. That is to say, the father will come. And he will try to kill me.”

Peter’s long, stilted speech takes up the majority of Chapter 2. Throughout the rambling, incoherent dialogue, he uses many examples of repetitive phrases and childlike language, such as his repeated line about his real name. This piece of dialogue also establishes the mystery/crime that Quinn, under the guise of Paul Auster, is meant to investigate, as well as contributing to the narrative’s exploration of identity.

“I think, probably, that he began to believe in some of the far-fetched religious ideas he had written about. It made him crazy, absolutely insane. There’s no other way to describe it. He locked Peter in a room in the apartment, covered up the windows, and kept him there for nine years. Try to imagine it, Mr. Auster. Nine years. An entire childhood spent in darkness, isolated from the world, with no human contact except an occasional beating.”

Following Peter’s confusing speech in Chapter 2, Virginia then takes up the story to provide a more coherent explanation of events and their concerns. Her dialogue is crucial for both Quinn and the reader to understand the facts of the case and the threat that Stillman poses. This passage explicitly describes the abuse that Stillman subjected his son to as a child.

“If Stillman was the man with the dagger, come back to avenge himself on the boy whose life he had destroyed, Quinn wanted to be there to stop him. He knew he could not bring his own son back to life, but at least he could prevent another from dying. […] He thought of the little coffin that held his son’s body and how he had seen it on the day of the funeral being lowered into the ground. That was isolation, he said to himself. That was silence. It did not help, perhaps, that his son’s name had also been Peter.”

In one example of the intertextuality of the novella, Quinn relates Peter’s case to the story he has read of Kasper Hauser, a German boy who was similarly locked in a dark room and isolated from human contact, and who was later murdered by an unknown assailant with a dagger. Additionally, Quinn reveals one of the many doubles in the narrative by noting that his son was also called Peter, which partially motivates him to protect Peter Stillman.

“He picked up his pen and wrote his initials, D.Q. (for Daniel Quinn) on the first page. It was the first time in more than five years that he had put his own name in one of his notebooks.”

This line is significant for two reasons. First, as Quinn notes, it is the first time in five years that he uses his own name, rather than his pseudonym William Wilson, in a piece of writing. Second, this marks the moment that Quinn begins to concretely connect his sense of identity with the literal text contained in the red notebook, an important symbol of his identity in the narrative.

“And then, most important of all: to remember who I am. To remember who I am supposed to be. I do not think this is a game. On the other hand, nothing is clear. For example: who are you? And if you think you know, why do you keep lying about it? I have no answer. All I can say is this: listen to me. My name is Paul Auster. That is not my real name.”

Following writing his own initials in the red notebook, Quinn then immediately exposes the fractures in his sense of identity by calling himself Paul Auster and warning himself to remember who he is, demonstrating the way the various fragments of his identity clash and overlap. It is also one of several examples of Quinn repeating and mimicking Peter’s odd turns of phrase, further blurring the lines of his identity and illustrating how easily elements can be incorporated into one’s core identity.

“Adam’s one task in the Garden had been to invent language, to give each creature and thing its name. In that state of innocence, his tongue had gone straight to the quick of the world. His words had not been merely appended to the things he saw, they had revealed their essences, had literally brought them to life. A thing and its name were interchangeable. After the fall, this was no longer true. Names became detached from things; words devolved into a collection of arbitrary signs; language had been severed from God. The story of the Garden, therefore, records not only the fall of man, but the fall of language.”

The primary point of Chapter 6 is to explain the theory that Stillman evinces in his book, which motivates all his actions and forms the core of the theme of The Limits and Ambiguity of Language. He argues that humanity’s fall from innocence in the Garden of Eden simultaneously marked a fall from an original language that accurately represented the “essences” of reality.

“If the fall of man also entailed a fall of language, was it not logical to assume that it would be possible to undo the fall, to reverse its effects by undoing the fall of language, by striving to recreate the language that was spoken in Eden? If man could learn to speak this original language of innocence, did it not follow that he would thereby recover the state of innocence within himself?”

Stillman argues that if he can access the original language spoken in the Garden of Eden, he can simultaneously access the time of innocence that the Garden of Eden represents. This goal is Stillman’s motivation for his abuse of Peter and his task of naming trash on the New York streets. His theory also represents a modernist viewpoint, which the narrative disavows in the theme of language, which shows the limitations of language through Stillman’s failure to reach his goal.

“What happened then defied explanation. 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 Stillman’s. For a second Quinn thought it was an illusion, a kind of aura thrown off by the electromagnetic currents in Stillman’s body. But no, this other Stillman moved, breathed, blinked his eyes; his actions were clearly independent of the first Stillman.”

When Quinn waits at the train station to find and follow Stillman, he is startled when he sees two versions of Stillman, one downtrodden and the other prosperous. This scene heightens the surrealism of the narrative and increases Quinn’s sensation of disorientation, further fracturing his hold on reality. Additionally, it demonstrates the limitations of language to explain the inexplicable.

“[I]t pleased him to know that Stillman also had a red notebook, as if this formed a secret link between them. Quinn suspected that Stillman’s red notebook contained answers to the questions that had been accumulating in his mind, and he began to plot various stratagems for stealing it from the old man.”

The symbolic importance of the red notebook becomes more apparent here as Quinn believes Stillman’s similar notebook creates a connection between them. This contributes to the theme of identity as constructed and contingent. Quinn’s increasingly fractured identity becomes attached to and contingent on Stillman’s presence. When Stillman later disappears, it widens the cracks in Quinn’s identity.

“The first was to tell himself that he was no longer Daniel Quinn. 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. And if there were no thoughts available to him, if his own inner life had been made inaccessible, then there was no place for him to retreat to.”

While following Stillman, Quinn resists becoming distracted from his mission by more fully crafting and inhabiting the identity of Paul Auster. The primary appeal of this identity is its emptiness, represented through the metaphor of a “husk,” which allows Quinn to avoid his own thoughts and memories, such as the loss of his wife and son. At the same time, it marks a significant break in his fragmented identity.

“The solution seemed so grotesque that his nerve almost failed him. Making all due allowances for the fact that he had missed the first four days and that Stillman had not yet finished, the answer seemed inescapable: THE TOWER OF BABEL.”

After two weeks of following Stillman, Quinn has decided the man is harmless. However, he then maps out Stillman’s aimless walks and deciphers the message. From this, he decides that Stillman is more dangerous than he previously thought and decides to speak to him directly. This is a major shift in the plot progression that also highlights the surrealism of the novella. Just as when the second Stillman appeared at the train station, Quinn is unsure if he is imagining things or not.

“You see, the world is in fragments, sir. Not only have we lost our sense of purpose, we have lost the language whereby we can speak of it.”

Over a series of three conversations, Stillman explains his theory and goals to Quinn. His argument that language itself is broken and no longer accurately represents the world forms the central argument of the theme about the ambiguity of language. Stillman believes he can fix this brokenness, whereas a postmodern view argues that the limitations of language will never allow for such coherence.

“Humpty Dumpty sketches the future of human hopes and gives the clue to our salvation: to become masters of the words we speak, to make language answer our needs. […] For all men are eggs, in a manner of speaking.”

Extending his argument in a previous conversation, Stillman argues that the brokenness of language also represents the brokenness of humanity, once again alluding to the state of innocence in the Garden of Eden, using the metaphor of men as eggs. This is also another literary allusion, specifically an allusion to Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, which contributes to the intertextuality of the novella.

“Stillman was gone now. The old man had become part of the city. He was a speck, a punctuation mark, a brick in an endless wall of bricks. Quinn could walk through the streets every day for the rest of his life, and still he would not find him. Everything had been reduced to chance, a nightmare of numbers and probabilities.”

Stillman’s disappearance contributes to both the novella’s exploration of identity and the theme of Invisibility in a Postmodern City. Quinn has tied a large part of his identity to Stillman’s presence, as symbolized by their shared text, the red notebook. Therefore, when Stillman disappears, he takes that piece of his identity with him. Furthermore, Stillman fades into the setting of the city, proving the way the postmodern landscape can render him invisible to the world.

“The idea was to hold a mirror up to Don Quixote’s madness, to record each of his absurd and ludicrous delusions, so that when he finally read the book himself, he would see the error of his ways.”

Quinn’s encounter with Paul Auster the writer severs the PI identity, further shattering his already fractured identity. It contributes to and exposes the metafictional structure of the story. It also reveals the novella’s reliance on pastiche of Don Quixote, which becomes more apparent when Paul Auster draws attention to the parallels between the fictional authorship and the unknown narrator, as well as Quinn’s parallel journey.

“To be inside that music, to be drawn into the circle of its repetitions: perhaps that is a place where one could finally disappear.”

Quinn has lost his identity as both Paul Auster the PI and Daniel Quinn the writer. He wanders the streets of New York and writes in his red notebook about the homeless beggars who live there. He listens to a street busker performing and uses the music as a metaphor for the city itself as a place where people can hide. This scene contributes to the setting and to the theme of invisibility in a postmodern city.

“It was fate, then. Whatever he thought of it, however much he might want it to be different, there was nothing he could do about it. He had said yes to a proposition, and now he was powerless to undo that yes. That meant only one thing: he had to go through with it. There could not be two answers. It was either this or that.”

Previously, the telephone calls Quinn receives and makes have been turning points in the plot, the moments in which he makes a decision or is forced into action. In an ironic reversal, it is his inability to call Virginia that motivates his next action. He views this disconnection as a sign from fate that forces him to continue the case, even though he wants to quit.

“A long time passed. Exactly how long it is impossible to say. Weeks certainly, but perhaps even months. The account of this period is less full than the author would have liked. But information is scarce, and he has preferred to pass over in silence what could not be definitely confirmed. Since this story is based entirely on facts, the author feels it is his duty not to overstep the bounds of the verifiable, to resist at all costs the perils of invention. Even the red notebook, which until now has provided a detailed account of Quinn’s experiences, is suspect. We cannot say for certain what happened to Quinn during this period, for it is at this point in the story that he began to lose his grip.”

The opening passage of Chapter 12 is a significant shift in the tone of the narration, adopting as narrator a faceless neutral third-person who refers to himself as “the author” and claims that he is recounting the events based on the recovered red notebook. This shift further highlights the novella’s pastiche of Don Quixote. This passage also notes Quinn’s deteriorating mental health, indicating that his notes in the red notebook may no longer be reliable.

“Now, as he looked at himself in the shop mirror, he was neither shocked nor disappointed. He had no feeling about it at all, for the fact was that he did not recognize the person he saw there as himself.”

During Quinn’s time in the alley, his fracturing identity and his isolation within the city feed into each other. By the time he emerges, he is stripped of identity and consequently has become invisible to both passersby and himself. He no longer recognizes himself as Daniel Quinn, but that separation is so complete that he doesn’t even experience any reaction to that realization.

“He thought through the question of why Don Quixote had not simply wanted to write books like the ones he loved—instead of living out their adventures. He wondered why he had the same initials as Don Quixote.”

Quinn’s reflections about Don Quixote are ironic, given that he also tried to enact the stories he loves (detective novels) when writing them became insufficient to his needs. Additionally, he explicitly references his shared initials, drawing attention to the ways the narrative imitates the source material from Don Quixote. Quinn is a pastiche of Quixote in name as well as behavior.

“He felt that his words had been severed from him, that now they were part of the world at large, as real and specific as a stone, or a lake, or a flower. They no longer had anything to do with him.”

This passage recalls Stillman’s description of the way language has become disconnected from the objects they represent. In this case, language is separate from Quinn’s thoughts. At the same time, in an ironic twist, he believes his words have become real objects in and of themselves, as if he has achieved the concrete specificity that Stillman could not reach.