The New York Trilogy

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Herebyrests the "Great New York Novel" conundrum: can contendeers like The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Bell Jar and Jazz realistically be mentioned alongside the likes of The Devil Wears Prada? Auster's first major success, the extraordinary New York Trilogy (1987), a thoughtful, at times terrifying, tripartite novel, must be one of the few books you can buy in airport bookshops about the annihilation of identity in the urban world. Rushdie, though, is sceptical: "I'm not sure if I agree that Paul's technique has changed that much. There is always a strong element of fantasy in his stories. In the early works it's probably more elliptical than fantastical, but just look at Lulu on the Bridge , for example, which has a strong element of fantasy."

The 1958 novella introduces audiences to Holly Golightly, a naive and spoiled society girl played by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film adaptation of the literary work. It's hard to write a good horror novel, and it's even harder to write one based in New York City—which is probably why no book within the genre has yet reached the level of fame that Ira Levin's 1967 Rosemary's Baby enjoys.The period following Auster's years at university is well-documented in his autobiography, Hand to Mouth: the abandoned post-graduate degree; the job as an all-round scrubber and mopper on an oil tanker for a few months, the following four years scraping by in Paris. Not many New York-based books feature Long Island as their primary setting—except for what is perhaps considered to be the New York novel par excellance, The Great Gatsby. I don't see any of those as unusual choices," he says. "I think young, literary men are often in search of adventures, and many other writers have shipped out to sea - Kerouac, for example, and Malcolm Lowry."

urn:lcp:newyorktrilogy0000aust:epub:88862c81-91ed-406a-8673-656ef0e6841a Foldoutcount 0 Grant_report Arcadia #4281 Identifier newyorktrilogy0000aust Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t1qg7ph6z Invoice 2089 Isbn 0571149251Fiction: 1987 New York Trilogy; '88 In the Country of Last Things; '89 Moon Palace '91 The Music of Chance '92 Leviathan '94 Mr Vertigo '99 Timbuktu 2002 The Book of Illusions

Equally reminiscentof The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Goldfinch in terms of tone and themes explored, City on Fire chronicles the aftermath of a shooting thatoccurs in Central Park on New Year's Eve in the 1970s, bringing readers face to face with a number of very New York City-like characters while exploringsubjects likeracism and violence thatunfortunately still plague town today.Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Old_pallet IA18196 Openlibrary_edition It seems like most successful books about New Yorkchronicle stories that involve the publishing industry. Aside from Hustvedt, autobiographical echoes resound through Auster's fiction. His conversation is punctuated with "and you know that scene in such-a-such book? Well, that happened to me!" and "remember that time in that chapter? That's a true story!"