New York Trilogy

(Written by Paul Aster, 1985-1986)

Hailed by one of the voices of his generation, Paul Aster’s philosophical musings contextualized against the grit & grime of classic New York detective stories, his writings fuse the most groundbreaking parts of David Foster Wallace with Raymond Chandler to tackle some of the most important open questions of humanity; identity, space, art, language, & literature. By mixing the hard-boiled genre of the past, but replacing more superficial mysteries of murder with a post modernist search for meaning, Aster stands out as one of the more unique & ground-breaking voice that speaks out above the noise of an overpopulated city of dreams. In this collection, his New York Trilogy includes 3 of his most notable works; City Of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986), & The Locked Room (1986) create possibly the most poignant gateway into Aster’s world. In City Of Glass, the 1st installment, Aster introduces the world to his protagonist, an unnamed writer which the story revolves around, as well as “Aster the writer” which becomes a character in his own book, to “Aster the detective” that may be a myth, creating an inner monologue of dialectics that feels almost supernatural, while also right at home with the cerebral works of the Beat Generation. In Ghosts, colors become a deeply introspective thematic element when a detective named Blue trained by his mentor Brown, tries to uncover the truth behind a crime on Orange Street involving a man named White. Finally, in the crescendo of this trilogy, The Locked Room, Aster finally breaks the 4th wall to address himself in a story about a non-fiction writer struggling to create an original idea.