City of Glass

Written by Paul Auster
Adapted by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli
It has been a number of years since I read Auster's New York Trilogy, and I had pretty much forgotten those books, except for the feeling that I had enjoyed them. Recently I came across this comics adaptation by one of my favourite artists, and thought that it was high time to reintroduce myself to Auster's seminal work.

This adaptation is fantastic. Karasik and Mazzucchelli have added so much to what was already a wonderful piece of work. Widowed and depressed writer Quinn receives incorrectly-dialled telephone calls to a 'Paul Auster', and eventually decides to impersonate the man. They are coming from Peter Stillman, a man who, as a child, was locked away from the world by his father in an ill-conceived and abusive experiment involving language and religion. Now his father is out of jail, and Stillman needs Auster's help and protection. Quinn, posing as Auster, begins to stake out the elderly Stillman, following him through the city and eventually speaking to the man. The result is a metaphysical shift in Quinn's life, which at one point involves the real Auster as well.

The story is labrynthine and confusing in places, but this is aided by Karasik's break-downs and Mazzucchelli's art. The two gentlemen take a very inventive approach to the art, packing a lot of imagery into their small, dense panels. Particularly interesting to me was when Quinn was speaking to the younger Stillman, his usual comic art word balloon came from deep inside him, like a tendril of smoke. It helped convey the difficulty Stillman has with language, and the complexity of his situation.

This is a very dense piece of work, and I feel like I will need to return to it again to pick up all of the nuances of its story-telling.