City of Glass The first story,
City of Glass, features an author of detective fiction who becomes a
private investigator and descends into
madness as he becomes embroiled in the investigation of a case. It explores layers of
identity and reality, from Paul Auster the writer of the novel to the unnamed "author" who reports the events as reality, to "Paul Auster the writer", a character in the story, to "Paul Auster the detective", who may or may not exist in the novel, to Peter Stillman the younger, to Peter Stillman the elder and, finally, to Daniel Quinn, the
protagonist.
City of Glass has an intertextual relationship with
Miguel de Cervantes'
Don Quixote. Not only does the protagonist Daniel Quinn share his initials with the knight, but when Quinn finds "Paul Auster the writer," Auster is in the midst of writing an article about the authorship of
Don Quixote. Auster calls his article an "imaginative reading," and in it he examines possible identities of
Cide Hamete Benengeli, the narrator of the
Quixote.
Ghosts The second story,
Ghosts, is about a private eye called Blue, trained by Brown, who is investigating a man named Black on Orange Street for a client named White. Blue writes written reports to White who in turn pays him for his work. Blue becomes frustrated and loses himself as he becomes immersed in the life of Black.
The Locked Room The Locked Room is the story of a writer who lacks the creativity to produce fiction. Fanshawe, his childhood friend, has produced creative work, and when he disappears the writer publishes his work and replaces him in his family. "Paul Auster", the name, does not appear in this story as it does in
City of Glass, but Auster breaks the
4th wall by writing about writing of the previous books in the trilogy "...I could not have started this book. The same holds for the two books that come before it,
City of Glass and
Ghosts." He also references clearly autobiographical moments such as his encounter with composer
Wyschnegradsky when Auster was a young man in Paris. The title is a reference to a "
locked-room mystery", a popular form of early detective fiction. == Adaptations ==