P. Auster's "NYT" is one of the most gripping and fascinating books I've ever read. It's such af different novel compared to "normal" detective stories, puzzling and mysterious from the moment you start reading until you've finished. You just cannot stop thinking about it! It's a book that demands the attention and imagination of its readers- like P. Auster himself once mentioned: "The book is not a mathematical equation to be solved, it's rather a springboard for your imagination." Isn't imagination one of the most vital things we have? Isn't a book which provokes imagination one of the most precious literary pieces of work we have? However, P. Auster's book has many more layers. In "City of Glass" the author shows brillianty how easily we can be subject to obedience without even noticing. But he doesn't leave us alone with this fact, but shows us a way to liberate ourselves from this state of ignorance: By solitude and reflection, questioning and experiencing ourselves, he claims, we can put an end to our ignorance and be truly ourselves. And Auster's book is a start: He really almost forces us not to just accept his story, not to accept the nearly godlike powers an autor has over his novel, but to fill his story with our own ideas, to think for ourselves and not to just let ourselves get lost and suppressed by the course of the story. - "City of Glass" is a wonderful piece about the relationship between authors and his readers. I believe, the reason for making his novels so confusing, is to show us that the author has the power to lead us anywhere he wants to and even to tell us lies as long as we the readers don't start to use our owen mind and start to object. There'd be so much more to say about "City of Glass", but let me just mention only one more aspect- the title. What does it provoke in our minds? Maybe a city where everyone can see everyone and think that they are free to do anything, but in fact are not for being confined to "Locked Rooms" and not being able to communicate with others. However, it might also provoke the image of a room of mirrors with the person inside it thinking he or she is surrounded by infinity of space and dozen of people, while in fact he or she sees only mere images of his or her own- sees "Ghosts". The titles of the thress stories are very much intertwined and they all are somehow connected. "Ghosts" the second part of the trilogy, for instance, also takes up the idea of a person being trapped in a locked room, being subject to manipulation of others. But apart from that I believe, it's very much about failure of communication: Blue (the protagonist) mentions that the words he's written down don't express what he's actually feeling - the limits of words. Words, our sole attempt to communicate with each other, can reveal and obscure so much, an so in some sense we are all ghosts, able to see each other, but because of the fallibility of words, unable to genuinely communicate with each other, so in fact the writer is writing about and for ghosts. Another thing which struck me, was Blue's statement that he had read something and felt like having done nothing: This is what Auster critises: People who merely read books to claim they've read them in fact haven't done anything at all. Reading a book passively without questioning is like doing nothing! However, "Ghosts", even more than "CofG" provokes you to project yourself into the story, like in a fairytale there a scarcely any details, but by creating them in your mind you get totally involved in the story - again Auster stipulates imagination. "The locked room" treats (much stronger than the first to parts of the trilogy) on the theme of being commanded by another person/ power- and on tearing oneself away from the foreign control. I believe these moments, when the characters realize who and what they are, and take action to change their condition by escaping from the Locked Room, are the most essential moments of the trilogy for they remind the readers that they, too, have a part in creating the book. Works of fiction, which demand the readers to imagine the scenes and protagonists of a book, have too often become locked rooms with the author dictating the course of the story. But the readers themselves can- like the characters of Auster's story- escape from these locked rooms. In other words, if we, are conscious of the ways in which we are being manipulated, then we too can take control of the text and make it our own. And in that way we can fill the text with our own emotions and imaginations, making it a story whcih can teach us a lot- because it's a story about our own feelings and sensations. To actively questioning readers this text becomes a reflecting pool that shows us our own souls.
