Newspaper Article

ESTHETIC MYSTERIES PAUL AUSTER RAISES THE STAKES FOR SUSPENSE NOVELS

Reviewed by Jack Fuller, The Tribune's Editorial Page editor and author, most recently, of "Mass "

1987

Overview

In the Country of Last Things By Paul Auster Viking, $14.95, 171 pages The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room By Paul Auster Sun & Moon Press; \"City of Glass,\" 203 pages, $13.95; \"Ghosts,\" 96 pages, $12.95; \"The Locked Room,\" 179 pages, $13.95 You can see Paul Auster in his remarkable \"New York Trilogy\" struggling to find a common ground between esthetic depth and crafty suspense. Though the first two novels of the trilogy are fascinating, it is not until the final volume, \"The Locked Room,\" that he is able to get the genre's strength to work toward his own ends. All three books play with the common, post-modernist device of blurring the distinction between author and text. A man named Paul Auster appears in one of the books. And individuals with much of Auster's personal history--at least if the book jacket biographies of Auster are accurate--become important characters, though they take different names.

• Publisher: Tribune Publishing Company, LLC