If you are new to the graphic medium, as I am, "City of Glass" is one of those narratives that will change the way you think of comics. I even think fanboys and true believers are a bit thrown by Mazzucchelli and Karsik's genius interpretation of the classic post modernist anti-detective story. "City of Glass" was originally published in 1985, the first novel in Auster's New York Trilogy. I've only read a few chapters from the original novel, but I feel that Mazzucchelli and Karsik have given a perfect visual form to the absurd, terrifying, and down right (pardon me) "mind-fucked" narrative of Auster's original novel.
"City of Glass" follows mystery writer Daniel Quinn who is mistaken for a detective named Paul Auster (trippy I know) by a man who is afraid his father will kill him when he is released from prison. To try and explain much further would be futile, the only way to truly experience this work is to read it.
The first thing I noticed was M&K (Mazzucchelli and Karasik) using a type of panel transition called "non-sequiter". This type of panel transition combines an unrelated series of images and situations to further the visual and textual narrative. M&K's use of this series of transitions is the beginning of a post-modern "romp" into how to represent the broken, psychotic, and chaotic culture of Quinn's existence in "City of Glass" and, arguably, our own modern existence. Quinn's character is a guy who likes to be lost. He enjoys getting lost in the city and in his very head. It is ironic then, that his novels fixate on a character (Max Work) who solves crimes and rationally orders things. As Quinn slowly losses his mind, as he becomes more fixated and obsessed with his mission to understand and protect his client, the visual and textual aspects of the narrative become more abstract and formless. By the end of the narrative we see the typical six to nine panel sequence collapse into scattered frames and gutters, until they disappear altogether. In fact, in order to understand and make sense of the text it is necessary to follow the overarching "feeling" and "tone" of the story as opposed to the actually story line. Throughout the story is connected by the aforementioned sense of obsessiveness maintained by Quinn throughout the case and, perhaps more strongly and importantly, the sense of chasing after a lost cause.
If there is any character from the literary cannon that Quinn identifies with it is Cervantes' Don Quixote. Like Quixote (p.s. look at those initials!!!!) Quinn wants a way out of the boredom, misery, and senselessness that is his life. And like Quixote, it can be argued, that Quinn crafts meaning and order to his life by obsessing over the case in much the same way that Quixote chases his windmills. Other than seeking out meaning and identity in a chaotic existence, this graphic novel takes on the idea of a prelapsarian language (think language before tower of Babel), how we view images and connect them to meanings ("Ceci n'est pas une pipe") and a whole host of other ideas like these that I have not grasped or identified fully.
If there is one bit of advise I can offer the new reader taking on "City of Glass" it is a quote from Auster himself "...Much later he would conclude that nothing was real except chance" (p.2). Perhaps it is safer to say that we shouldn't assume meaning, that we should let this graphic narrative just be. Maybe, more importantly, we too should loose ourselves in this chaotic existence.
Perhaps there is no order.
Until next time,
GN
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