SOURCE: “The Detective in Search of the Lost Tongue of Adam: Paul Auster's City of Glass,” in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Vol. XXXII, No. 4, Summer, 1991, pp. 224-34.

In the following essay, Rowen examines Auster's detective-like investigations into the role of language as a medium of representation and the nature of reality in the modern world as portrayed in City of Glass. “Throughout the book,” Rowen notes, “we are continually reminded of the unknowable nature of this world.”

When the volumes of Paul Auster's New York trilogy began to appear, reactions were confused. Reviewers were interested and curious, even excited, but puzzled and rather wary. Rebecca Goldstein in the New York Times Book Review described Ghosts, the second work of the trilogy, as “a mystery novel-of-sorts,” a kind of “metamystery” (13); and other reviewers noted the presence of such disturbing elements as complex interplays of doubles and a wilful...