Thoughts on "City of Glass" by Paul Auster, 9/4/08

After reading the "dissertation chapter" in City of Glass I wondered how many more complexities to the story there were to come. Chapter 6 left me feeling worn out, yet I found the content and the ideas compelling. Another such complexity arose when Quinn encountered the woman reading a book in the train station. When I really thought about what was going on in that particular moment, it made me dizzy. I thought to myself, I'm reading a detective story whose main character is a writer who writes detective stories who is now sitting next to a woman who is reading one of the stories written by the main character. The fact that the main character in this situation is posing as a detective and sharing the same name as the actual author of the story, one Paul Auster, makes things much more simple! I'm inclined to think that Auster, the real Auster that is, is attempting to communicate directly with the reader despite the various levels of plot and character identities. When Quinn asks the woman, "Do you find it interesting," she responds, "Sort of." When he asks about the detective in the story, she replies, "Yeah, he's smart. But he talks too much," to which Quinn replies, "You'd like more action?" I think the conversation between Quinn and the woman is relatively true of what the readers feel too, and it's amusing that Auster would want to know how his readers are "hanging in there" with the story.