City of Glass

City of Glass (1985) is a fiction novella by American author and filmmaker Paul Auster, and the first in his highly regarded New York Trilogy. City of Glass is a surreal and postmodern play on the classic detective story, in which Daniel Quinn, a detective fiction novelist, receives a mysterious call and becomes a private investigator. As he becomes increasingly entangled in the mystery, Quinn’s identity and sense of reality unravel. City of Glass uses metafiction and an array of ambiguous characters, including appearances from Paul Auster himself, to explore the complex layers of language, reality, and identity in a fractured postmodern world. The novella explores themes including Identity as Constructed and Contingent, Invisibility in a Postmodern City, and The Limits and Ambiguity of Language. The novel has been adapted several times, including into an experimental graphic novel in 1994, an illustrated edition in 2006, and an Off-Broadway play in 2016.

This guide is based on City of Glass as published in the collected novellas of The New York Trilogy, 2006 Penguin Classics paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of child abuse, child death, mental illness, death by suicide, and death.

Plot Summary

Daniel Quinn, who writes detective fiction under a pseudonym, lives alone in New York City five years after the deaths of his wife and young son. One night, he receives a mysterious call from someone looking for Paul Auster, the private investigator. When the same person calls multiple times, Quinn decides to pretend to be Paul Auster. The caller, Peter Stillman, says that someone is trying to kill him, and Quinn agrees to take the case and meet Peter at his apartment the following day. 

The next day, he meets Peter and Virginia Stillman at their apartment. Peter is an odd young man who speaks in a childlike manner. He explains that he remembers little from his childhood, except being locked in the dark and beaten. He then spent 13 years in a hospital, and he believes his father, also named Peter Stillman, is coming to kill him. Virginia elaborates that Stillman (the father) was a professor of religion and philosophy who became obsessed with the theories he wrote about. He experimented on his young son by isolating him from human contact and language, hoping to recreate the original language of Adam and Eve. Eventually, he was discovered, arrested, and placed in a psychiatric hospital for 13 years, and Peter was cared for elsewhere. Virginia was his speech therapist and only married him to give him a semblance of a normal life.

Quinn accepts the case and plans to follow the elder Stillman from the train station the following day. On the way home, he buys a red notebook in which to record his thoughts. The next morning, he reads about Stillman’s research, including his analysis of a 17th-century pamphlet called The New Babel by Henry Dark. Henry Dark claims that when humans fell from innocence in the Garden of Eden, they also lost their original language. Dark believes that if they can recreate this original language, they will simultaneously restore their original innocence. This is the goal that Stillman is working toward.

Quinn finds Stillman at the train station. However, he sees two different Stillmans exit: the first is shabby and poor, and the second is prosperous. Quinn follows the first Stillman to a motel. For two weeks, Quinn follows Stillman every day as he wanders a single section of the city, examining trash and making notes in a red notebook like Quinn’s. During this time, Quinn becomes more invested in his false identity of Paul Auster, private investigator (PI). Under various guises, he speaks to Stillman three times. Stillman explains his theories about language and innocence and reveals that Henry Dark is a fabrication that he made up for his book. Then Stillman disappears.

Unsure how to proceed, Quinn finally finds the real Paul Auster, intending to confess his deception and ask for help. However, Paul Auster is not a PI but a writer. He is working on an analysis of Don Quixote, in which he examines the complex fictional authorship of the book. With no further clues, Quinn tries to call Virginia to quit the case but cannot reach her. He takes this as a sign that he should continue working, though he is no longer Paul Auster.

He empties his savings into cash and settles in an alley across the street from Peter and Virginia’s apartment to keep watch. He stays there for many weeks. During this time, he teaches himself how to eat and sleep less. He becomes an invisible part of the city. Eventually, he runs out of money and emerges. He no longer recognizes himself. 

He calls Auster to ask for money, but Auster tells him that Stillman died by suicide, and Peter and Virginia are gone. The case is over. Quinn wanders to Peter and Virginia’s abandoned apartment and stays there in the dark, writing in his red notebook until he reaches the final page, at which point he disappears. Later, Paul Auster and an unnamed friend, who is revealed to be the narrator, arrive in search of Quinn and find the notebook, from which the narrator recounts the story.