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Book 2: "The New York Trilogy" by Paul Auster
Monday, February 11th, 2008 19:22City of Glass
Ghosts
The Locked Room
Three detective stories set in New York, tales of surveillance, obsession and identity. In the second story, all the characters are named for colours which gives it an unreal feel, even though all they have ordinary surnames such as Blue, White and Black rather than colours like Magenta, Aquamarine and Viridian. Paul Auster is mentioned in the first story and appears in the third, but is either of these the real Paul Auster? Probably not.
"The New York Trilogy" is meta-fiction - fiction that draws attention to its fictional status, in this case by the character names, the author's appearance between the covers of his own book, and the cross-over of other characters between the stories. They drag you out of the world of the story and back into real life, breaking the diegetic spell as it is called in film studies. Meta-fiction is usually seen as a postmodern literary device, but the first book that crossed my mind when I looked up the definition was "Tristram Shandy" which was written a tad earlier.
A good start to the A to Z Challenge but not a book I want to keep, so I'll be registering it on BookCrossing.
Ghosts
The Locked Room
Three detective stories set in New York, tales of surveillance, obsession and identity. In the second story, all the characters are named for colours which gives it an unreal feel, even though all they have ordinary surnames such as Blue, White and Black rather than colours like Magenta, Aquamarine and Viridian. Paul Auster is mentioned in the first story and appears in the third, but is either of these the real Paul Auster? Probably not.
"The New York Trilogy" is meta-fiction - fiction that draws attention to its fictional status, in this case by the character names, the author's appearance between the covers of his own book, and the cross-over of other characters between the stories. They drag you out of the world of the story and back into real life, breaking the diegetic spell as it is called in film studies. Meta-fiction is usually seen as a postmodern literary device, but the first book that crossed my mind when I looked up the definition was "Tristram Shandy" which was written a tad earlier.
A good start to the A to Z Challenge but not a book I want to keep, so I'll be registering it on BookCrossing.
