The novel City of Glass, originally penned by Paul Auster in 1985, was subsequently adapted into a graphic novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli in 2004. It closely resembles Cervantes’s 1605 masterwork Don Quixote in the delusion of its main character, and in its author’s intent. The graphic novel version of City of Glass’s characters and their relationship to one another suggest that the novel, in both its frivolous and moral aspects, can be viewed as a modern-day, metafictional version of Don Quixote.
The written parts of the adaptation of City of Glass raise questions as to the identity of several characters throughout the novel. Auster uses variegated lettering to represent the input of different characters. Several distinct handwritten fonts appear (in speech bubbles corresponding to the characters speaking them), as well as an omniscient typewritten print that occasionally interjects to point out descriptive or factual failings in the narrative. This type reveals that certain records of Quinn’s activity are “less full than the author would have liked” (107), bringing up the issue of the identity of “the author.” This mention of “the author” could be taken as referring to the actual writer of the novel, Paul Auster, metafictionally inserting himself into the text, or as the mysterious translator of the notebook. Cervantes would have us believe that Don Quixote was translated by a non-visible Cid Hamete Benengeli, mentioned within its pages, when in reality we know that Cervantes engineered the entire thing. William Wilson serves as City of Glass’s representation of Benengeli – a character given credit for writing the detective novels of Quinn, but one who never makes an appearance. In fact, Cervantes “[hires] Don Quixote in disguise to translate the story of Don Quixote” (93), just as the real Auster is similarly hired in disguise as Quinn to translate his own story. Auster masterminds his fictional character’s (Quinn’s) realization of his identity as an inseparable part of Auster.
Another parallel between the two novels occurs if City of Glass‘s Daniel Quinn is considered to represent Don Quixote. Superficial clues include the similarity of the duo’s last names, and the exact match of their initials. A more solid indication is the question Quinn asks on page 129, as to why Don Quixote chose experiencing the adventures in the books he loved as opposed to writing books like them. Unbeknownst to Quinn at the time, this inquiry applies as much to himself as it does to Quixote. Quixote becomes so enamored by the medieval tales he reads that he deludes himself into thinking he is a character in one of them, playing the part of a knight. Quinn enjoys reading detective novels to escape the pain of his past – so much so that he deludes himself into playing the part of a detective (Max Work) in one of his own stories.
This comparison leads the reader to the conclusion that Quinn is presumably an unenlightened personality of the real Auster, just as Quixote is of Cervantes. Following this train of reason, the typewritten sections can be identified as the real Auster’s interjections, and logically, simultaneously the enlightened Quinn’s. From this standpoint, when the typewritten voice is convinced the fictional Auster “behaved badly throughout” (138), it is because the voice is also the transformed Quinn (or the real Auster), and feels the fictional Auster should have provided more help to him in his time of need. Of course, the real Auster intentionally wrote the fictional Auster as an indecisive man to give Quinn the chance to discover Quinn’s delusion on his own, as Cervantes did in the guise of Sancho Panza for Don Quixote’s benefit. The real Auster’s feigned adversity toward the fictional Auster may be a metafictional coup de grace, or simply a device to throw the reader further off the track of correct identity.
Two of Cervantes’s possible intentions behind writing Don Quixote are echoed by Auster’s probable purposes in creating City of Glass. According to the fictional Auster, Cervantes composed Don Quixote partly “to test the gullibility of man” (93), which, given the assumption that the characters in City of Glass truly do represent those in Don Quixote, the real Auster must have created his novel to also do. Cervantes wished to determine the extent to which man would tolerate falsehoods in the name of entertainment. Auster writes a discussion between Quinn and the fictional Auster in which they talk about an essay the latter is composing about Don Quixote. In a metafictional twist, the real Auster is involving his characters in the composition of a current version of Don Quixote even as they speak.
Along with investigating man’s credulity, Cervantes and Auster may have written their novels to entertain anyone who might choose to read them. Cervantes purposely makes the delusions and failings of Don Quixote seem humorous in order to keep the book interesting. Auster implies that all books, including his, should serve to entertain when Quinn sits next to a woman in a train station who claims a book is “just a book” (49), which Quinn takes as a blow to his ego. He may also respond adversely because her nonchalance towards the fiction with which he is all-consumingly obsessed wounds him. This is a metafictional moral lesson; Quinn is angry at the woman’s cavalier opinion about books, when, unbeknownst to him, it is his overly inflated opinion towards them that is causing him to be unable to separate his own life from that of his main character, Max Work. Cervantes and Auster address the readiness of man to accept untruths as a form of entertainment, but both make clear in the process the need to be able to separate fact from fiction.
Another example of the public’s eagerness to be entertained is the book of Peter Stillman, a man in City of Glass unhealthily consumed by his own theories of the fall of civilization. Despite his delusions, he still manages to trick the readers of his theories into believing that Henry Dark (a fictional character he created to make his ideas seem more reputable) took transcriptions from John Milton. It is ironic that a man deluded by his own beliefs was able to present an appealing enough theory to an educated public to [fool] them all” (73) into unquestioning belief.
Near the end of City of Glass, its page numbers cease, bringing into question the novel’s metafictional existence as the notebook it describes. The pages that would be 130 to 135 lose their border, becoming entirely black to all four edges of the page. This suggests that they are emblematic of the notebook itself, which always reflects Quinn’s mental state, since he is its creator. The pages become dark with despair to represent Quinn chaotically coming to terms with his own existence only as a fictional character in the real Auster’s mind. Quinn writes of his terror about the impending time “when there are no more pages in the notebook” (134), which would necessitate his death, ie, his merging with the real Auster as a decidedly fictional character and no longer a main identity. This seems to occur when the notebook, both literally and figuratively, runs out. The pages afterward take on a different appearance than any others in the book, becoming entirely typewritten, with a white background, but still unnumbered. They appear to be typed, as before, by the enlightened Paul Auster, who is simultaneously the fictional Quinn. The last page of the novel, in which Auster states that “[Quinn] will be with [him] always” (138), serves as a clever metafictional pun. Auster means not only that he will always remember Quinn, but also that Quinn is an inextricable part of his identity.
In both Don Quixote and City of Glass, puzzling metafictional issues of identity, whether that of person or manuscript, are introduced. Cervantes and Auster both realize that the reader is gullible enough to believe practically any machination of identity or wild fictive invention for the sole sake of being entertained. Only upon close inspection can the reader deduce that he is being fooled. In this way, everyone who reads City of Glass himself becomes a Don Quixote, willingly subscribing to fiction for the sake of entertainment. Cervantes and Auster both argue that when the appeal of fiction surpasses that of real life, the inability to separate truth from delusion becomes problematic, and possibly dangerous.
Reference:
de Cervantes, Miguel . Don Quixote. 3rd. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005. Auster, Paul. City of Glass. 1st: New York, Penguin, 1987.
