The Graphic Adaptation of a Classic Book
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I am a big fan of the late Paul Auster. I have read almost everything he has written. The New York Trilogy is an early work of his and it sets the tone for all that comes after it. I love it even though it tends to break my brain when I read it.
I have read the original New York Trilogy (ONYT) several times. Like the Graphic New York Trilogy (GNYT) – and as both titles imply – three stories make up the whole work: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room. All of the stories are mysteries.
My copy of the ONYT has this description of “Ghosts” on the back cover: “Blue, a student of Brown, has been hired by White to spy on Black. From a window of a rented room on Orange Street, Blue keeps watch on his subject, who is across the street, staring out of his window.”
That summary adequately explains how Auster plays with his reader’s brain.
In 1994, City of Glass was adapted into a graphic novel that became a cult classic. It has been published in more than thirty countries. Ever since then, fans have waited for the other two stories to be adapted. The wait is now over.
Three artists have worked on GNYT. Paul Karasik art directed all three books. City of Glass is illustrated by David Mazzucchelli. Ghosts is illustrated by Lorenzo Mattotti, and The Locked Room is adapted and drawn by Karasik. (Karasik and Mazzucchelli adapted City of Glass for the 1994 version and Mazzucchelli created the graphics.)
I do not read a lot of graphic novels so I will not comment on the drawings except to say that the adaptation of Ghosts often contains whole paragraphs under the drawings and there is even a two-page spread of all text. Perhaps that attests to the intricacies and nuances of that particular tale.
Indeed, I think all of Auster would be difficult and tricky to pare down into graphic form. As we are told on page eleven of GNYT, “What [he] liked about mysteries was their economy. There is no sentence, no word that is not significant. And even if it is not, it has the potential to be so. Everything becomes essence: the center of the book shifts, is everywhere…and no circumference can be drawn until the end.”
On page nine of the ONYT this statement is much longer and includes this: “Since everything seen or said, even the slightest, most trivial thing, can bear a connection to the outcome of the story, nothing must be overlooked.”
As an Auster-lover, I do not want to miss even one word he has to say (with the exception of his 880-page book 4321…), so I prefer the ONYT.
However, this graphic version of the trilogy scrambled my brain in many ways, just as I would expect a Paul Auster book to do. Its quick read is therefore a fabulous introduction to Auster. I hope readers will go on from there to read more of his work.
Speaking of which, here are reviews of two other Auster books I have written:
- Baumgartner – https://www.loriekleinereckert.com/2024/06/18/baumgartner-by-paul-auster/
- 4321 – https://www.loriekleinereckert.com/2020/06/05/4321-by-paul-auster/
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