The Things He Had Lost: Reflections of Family in Paul Austers City of Glass

Daniel Pereira
12/26/15
Honors English 11-12

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It was too much for Quinn. He felt as though Auster were taunting him with the things
he had lost, and he responded with envy and rage, a lacerating self-pity. Yes, he too
would have liked to have this wife and child, to sit around all day spouting drivel about
old books, to be surrounded by yoyos and ham omelettes [sic] and fountain pens. (Auster
100)

In City of Glass, Paul Auster challenges narrative conventions of description,

providing few details about elements of the characters that are usually considered the
most interesting. The nature of the traumatic events surrounding Daniel Quinns loss of
his family provide an example of this kind of deliberate obfuscation. The narrator tells
us at the beginning of the story that who he was, where he came from, and what he
did are of no great importance. We know, for example, that he was thirty-five years old.
We know that he had once been married, had once been a father, and that both his wife
and son were now dead. (3) It is not until chapter 4 that Quinns sons name is given,
and his wifes name is never revealed.
At the same time, Auster provides evidence to suggest that the narrators
judgement about the importance of these facts may be misleading, an echo of Quinns
own attempts to distance himself from a painful past:
He did not think about his son very much anymore, and only recently he had removed
the photograph of his wife from the wall. Every once in a while he would suddenly feel
what it had been like to hold the three-year old boy in his arms but that was not exactly
thinking, nor was it even remembering. It was a physical sensation, an imprint of the past
that had been left in his body, and he had no control over it. These moments came less
often now, and for the most part it seemed as though things had begun to change for
him. (Auster 5)

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Auster establishes that Quinn is the kind of person to engage in this sort of distancing
when he tells us that Quinn had been more ambitiousbut quite abruptly he had
given up all that. A part of him had died, he told his friends, and he did not want it
coming back to haunt him (4). Not only is Quinn capable of abruptly shutting down
aspects of his life, but he does not want elements of the past to come back to haunt him.
The narrators insistence that these events are of no great importance mirrors Quinns
efforts to escape the circumstances of his life. These efforts are ultimately unsuccessful
as Quinn comes to realize in the course of City of Glass that the way to escape from
being haunted by the past and by who you are is not to try to erase those elements of
your life but rather to embrace and transcend them.
Thus, the plot of City of Glass operates as a haunting; the ghostly, vaguely
defined family Quinn has lost appears throughout the story, reflected in the situations
and characters he encounters. They provide the purpose behind his decision to take the
Stillman case, the impetus for the creation of his private eye, Max Work , and the
emotional backdrop of his eventual confrontation with the author of the book, Auster
himself.
Many elements of the Stillman case deepen our understanding of Quinns family
and the way its loss has affected him. The two Peter Stillmans, Junior and Senior,
operate as proxies for Quinns own familial relations. Auster presents Peter Stillman Jr.
as an arrested, Peter-Pan-like stand-in for Quinns own son (also named Peter), and

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Peter Stillman Sr. as a tragic and grotesque reflection of Quinns own inability to protect
his son. The name Stillman is, in and of itself, evocative. It suggests both death (still
in the sense of motionless and quiet), and the perseverance of life (still in the
sense of nevertheless). The double-sided nature of this name dead and not dead
conjures a ghostly presence.
This ghostly aspect is highlighted by Auster in the narrators initial descriptions
of Peter Stillman. He is a young man, dressed entirely in white, with the white-blond
hair of a childEverything about Peter Stillman was white. White shirtwhite pants,
white shoes, white socksthe effect was almost transparent, as though one could see
through to the blue veins behind the skin of his face (14). As he enters the room and
sits down, the narrator remarks that as their eyes met, Quinn suddenly felt Stillman
had become invisible. He could see him sitting in the chair across from him, but at the
same time it felt as though he was not there (15).
Auster also emphasizes Stillmans childlike qualities, both in the narrators
descriptions and in Stillmans monologue in chapter 2. This emphasis includes using
phrases such as like a child (14) to describe his hair, Stillmans childish use of
euphemisms such as caca and pipi (17), and connecting Peter Stillman to classic
childrens literature. In the initial description of Peter, the narrator notes it seemed to
Quinn that Stillmans body had not been used for a long time and that all its functions
had been relearned.It was like watching a marionette trying to walk without strings.

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(15). At the end of his monologue, Stillman says that I know that I am still the puppet
boy. That cannot be helped. No, no. Anymore. But sometimes I think I will at least
grow up and become real (21-22). Taken together, these statements amount to a clear
reference to the classic story of Pinnochio, the puppet who becomes a real boy after
many misadventures. Similarly, among the many different appellations Peter gives to
himself beyond his real name is Peter Rabbit. (18).
These references help link Peter Stillman Jr. to Quinns lost son even before the
narrator reveals that they share the same name. When Quinn researches other examples
of cases like Peter Stillmans, the narrator tells us Back in the days of his other life, not
long after his own son was bornhe had done some research on the subject (33) but:
It had been years now since Quinn had allowed himself to think of these stories. The
subject of children was too painful for him, especially children who had suffered, had
been mistreated, had died before they could grow up.He knew he could not bring his
own son back to life, but at least he could prevent another from dying. It had suddenly
become possible for him to do this, and standing there on the street now, the idea of what
lay before him loomed up like a terrible dream. He thought of the little coffin that held
his sons body and how he had seen it on the day of the funeral being lowered into the
ground. That was isolation, he said to himself. That was silence. It did not help, perhaps,
that his sons name was also Peter. (35)

This quote demonstrates the relationship between the Stillman case and Quinns
motivations in the book. It provides an opportunity for him to protect his own son by
proxy, a chance to resurrect a sustaining relationship, an image of fatherhood and
connection, in a life that has become increasingly isolated.

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This image of fatherhood is shattered by Peter Stillman Sr., the absent, abusive
father who locked his child in a room for nine years. This negative image of fatherhood
helps to develop our understanding of Quinn as a father, and the true scope of what he
has lost. The key moment in this development is the third meeting between Stillman
and Quinn in chapter 9 when Quinn introduces himself to the unstable and possibly
senile Stillman as Peter Stillman.
Thats my name, answered Stillman. Im Peter Stillman.
Im the other Peter Stillman, said Quinn.
Oh. You mean my son. Yes, thats possible. You look just like him. Of course, Peter is
blond and you are dark. Not Henry Dark, but dark of hair. But people change, dont
they? One minute were one thing and the next were not. (82)

As this critical exchange begins, Stillman brings up the concept of change. Auster
employs themes of change and transition throughout City of Glass. Here, the
inevitability of change, and the way that it forces us to leave aspects of ourselves in the
past, becomes linked to fatherhood, the process by which men replace and renew their
association with the world, even beyond the end of their lives. Later, Stillman makes
this connection explicit: Time makes us grow old, but it also gives us the day and the
night. And when we die there is always someone to take our place (84).
For Quinn, however, unlike Stillman, this is not necessarily the case. The cruel
ironies of the situation are brought home moments later:
When youre old, perhaps youll have a son to comfort you.
I would like that.
Then you would be as fortunate as I have been. Remember, Peter, children are a great
blessing.
I wont forget. (Auster 82-84)

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Quinn, of course, has lost the son who might comfort him. That he is reminded of this
fact by a father who ignored and abused his son serves to accentuate the unfairness of
this loss.
At the same time, by presenting Peter Stillman Sr. with the fiction of his son not
as a broken marionette, but as a real live boy, one who made a complete recovery and
has all words available to me now. Even the ones most people have trouble with,
Quinn engages in an act of mercy towards the father (83). He allows Peter Stillman Sr.
to experience his life as one that has a purpose. Stillman says: A father must always
teach his son the lessons he has learned. In that way knowledge is passed down from
generation to generation and we grow wise (85). Quinns lie allows Stillman Sr. to
enact this teaching, to feel that he is building towards something meaningful. As a
result, Stillman Sr. says that Ill be able to die happily now (85) (and in fact he
commits suicide the very next day).
Stillmans release from a lifetime of cruelty, isolation, and madness, is not
without a message for Quinn. After saying that he will be able to die happily, Stillman
adds an admonition to the man he thinks is his son: But you mustnt forget anything.
Quinns response, I wont father, I promise, repeats his telling Stillman that he wont
forget that children are a great blessing. (84) The irony of this response is that
forgetting is exactly what Quinn has been trying to do for years through his writing,
and particularly the creation of his private eye, Max Work.

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Max Work is the creation of William Wilson, the nom de plume that Daniel
Quinn uses to write his mystery books. Developing the relationship between these
personae is a significant element of the first chapter of the novel. The narrator tells us
that:
Over the years, Work had become very close to Quinn. Whereas William Wilson
remained an abstract figure for him, Work had increasingly come to life. In the triad of
selves that Quinn had become, Wilson served as a kind of ventriloquist, Quinn himself
was the dummy, and Work was the animated voice that gave purpose to the
enterprise. Work had become a presence in Quinns life his interior brother, his
comrade in solitude. (6)

The name Max Work is hardly even a pun: it directly suggests the idea of maximum
work; that Quinn is throwing himself into his work in the aftermath of his tragedy.
This reading is supported by narrators observation that Work gives purpose to the
enterprise. The image of the puppet dummy, ventriloquist, and voice foreshadows
Austers later representation of Peter Stillman Jr. as Pinnochio, with the supposedly real
person in this triad of selves, Quinn, being cast as the puppet.
To Quinn himself, however, it is Work who becomes real while his creator begins
to vanish like a ghost. Shortly after Work is introduced, the narrator writes that:
If [Quinn] lived now in the world at all, it was only at one remove, through the
imaginary person of Max Work. His detective necessarily had to be real. If Quinn had
allowed himself to vanish, to withdraw into the confines of a strange and hermetic life,
Work continued to live in the world of others, and the more Quinn seemed to vanish, the
more persistent Works presence in that world became. (9)

Quinns work is the work of a writer, about which the narrator observes the writer and
the detective are interchangeable, and which he defines as one who looks, who

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listens, who moves through this morass of objects and events in search of the thought,
the idea that will pull all these things together and make sense of them (8).
Contextualized by this connection, the narrators statement that the more Quinn
seemed to vanish, the more persistent Works presence in that world became, becomes
both a statement about Quinns psychology and a statement about writing in general.
Quinn tries to escape his pain of losing his son through the work of writing and the
practice of observation, by reducing himself to a seeing eyeand this, more than
anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within (4). This
emptiness amounts to a kind of forgetting by reducing experience to the present
moment in which there is no past: The speed with which it kept changing made it
impossible to dwell on any one thing for very longBy wandering aimlesslyhe was
able to feel that he was nowhere (4).
In Quinns ghostly, vanishing existence, one in which he had managed to
outlive himself, as if he were somehow living a posthumous life, Auster foreshadows
and doubles Peter Stillman Jr.s character (5). The half-living father and the half-dead
son are both aimless, without clear purpose. For Quinn, this vanishing is a choice
exemplified by his association with Max Work and enacted throughout the novel by his
assumption of the detectives job: to see and report. Quinn justifies this vanishing act by
saying that Peter had to be protected (71), but the irony is that it is Quinn, and not

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Peter, who is being protected, and what he is being protected from is the suffering that
comes from loss.
On a broader scale, Austers narrator implies that the traditional role of the novel
writer is one of self-effacement. The writer ensures the integrity of the work by
removing himself from it. In this way the world and set of circumstances he has created
are not punctured by an alternative dimension of the real which plays by a different set
of rules: arbitrary, rather than orderly, mystifying rather than illuminating. This
understanding of the writers work has specific implications for Quinn and for the plot
of City of Glass. The writer is the creator of the character; through a symbolic association
that goes back at least as far as Athena springing fully formed from the head of Zeus,
the writer gives birth to the characters he creates. He is a father of sorts who places
those children in a hermetically sealed environment and compels them to speak
wisdom, all while remaining absent to them and denying that he exists.
Into this traditional understanding of authorship, Auster introduces the third of
the triad of fathers and sons who form the emotional core of his novel: Daniel Quinn
and Peter Quinn, Peter Stillman Sr. and Peter Stillman Jr., Paul Auster and Daniel
Auster. In his interaction with this final pair, Quinn is forced to directly confront a
reflection of what he has lost, a climactic moment which sets in motion the end of the
novel, in which he recovers his purpose and wills himself back into being, finally
escaping the world which Auster has created for him.

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The Paul Auster who is described in chapter 10 of City of Glass is, at least on the
surface, the real Paul Auster. Born in 1947, he married the writer Lydia Davis in 1974,
with whom he had one son, Daniel, before they divorced in 1977. In 1981, he married
the writer Siri Hustvedt, with whom he has a daughter, Sophie, who was born two
years after City of Glass was initially published. They live in Brooklyn. (Paul Auster).
The details of his life in the early 80s, before the birth of his daughter, are related in
chapter 10 when Quinn goes to see Auster, at a loss for what to do next.
Quinns first impression of his creator is as a writer, He was a tall dark fellow in
his mid-thirties, with rumpled clothes and a two-day beard. In his right hand, fixed
between his thumb and first two fingers, he held an uncapped fountain pen, still poised
in writing position (Auster 91-92). Despite Quinns statement that this has nothing to
do with literature (93), the great majority of their interaction involves writing. First
Auster enquires into Quinns writing and then they engage in an extended discussion
about Don Quixotes authorship.
At first this interaction is pleasant to Quinn. He feels a connection with Auster, as
well he should, since Auster is his creator. Austers affirmation that If I had been in
your place, I probably would have done the same thing, comes as a great relief to
Quinn, as if, at long last, the burden was no longer his alone. He felt like taking Auster
in his arms and declaring his friendship for life. (94).

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But as the discussion progresses, it starts to unsettle Quinn. The moment of
change begins with Quinn waiting for Auster to cook some eggs. He closed his eyes. In
the past, it had sometimes comforted him to make the world disappear. This time,
however, Quinn found nothing interesting inside his head (96). Face to face with his
creator, Quinn loses the ability to disappear.
Austers subsequent riff on Don Quixotes authorship continues this unsettling
trend. Quinn asserts that the book after all is an attack on the dangers of make-believe
(97). Auster acknowledges this, responding that In some sense, Don Quixote was just a
stand-in for [Cervantes] (97). Nevertheless, Auster then follows up with an entirely
different reading of the book, one which upends its status as an attack on the dangers of
make-believe. In his reading, Don Quixote himself was the author of Don Quixote, and
the book was an experimentto testto what extent would people tolerate
blasphemies if they gave them amusement? The answer is obvious, isnt it? To any
extent...And thats finally all anyone wants out of a book to be amused (99). This
reading suggests that far from being an attack on the dangers of make-believe, the book
exists only to entertain rather than to educate. It elucidates no particular truth beyond
whatever will amuse the reader. It is not a defense of the real, but an enchantment of the
unreal.
Quinns reaction to this reading demonstrates the degree to which it is unsettling
to him. Looking at Auster the narrator tells us, The man was obviously enjoying

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himself, but the precise nature of that pleasure eluded Quinn. It seemed to be a kind of
soundless laughter, a joke that stopped short of its punchlineQuinn was about to say
something in response to Austers theory, but he was not given the chance (99). While
Quinn is not directly aware of his status as a character inside Austers book, the
dramatic ironies of this situation are orchestrated to emphasize this fact. Much as
Quinns conversation with Peter Stillman Sr. in chapter 9 presents him with an
interaction in which elements of his life within the book the loss of his child and his
inability to protect that child become inescapable, his confrontation with Auster in
chapter 10 presents the reader with interactions in which elements of his life as a
character in the book become inescapable. To a character, the idea that his suffering and
struggle have been simply in the service of amusement instead of a reflection of any
kind of meaningful truth must be a monstrous realization, even if he cannot directly
appreciate it. Quinn may still be in the dark, but he is beginning to see the light.
This moment of hidden realization is followed by a presentation of the real that
once and for all changes Quinns purpose in the novel. The reason why he is not given
the chance to respond to Austers theory is that Austers family returns home: The
child shot into the living room, caught sight of Quinn, and stopped dead in his tracks.
He was a blond-haired boy of five or six. (99) This child, named Daniel, just like
Quinn, blond just like Peter Stillman Jr., compels Quinn to subconsciously recognize not
only the son he has lost, but the nature of his relationship to Auster:

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Auster saw the yoyo in his hand and said, I see youve already met. Daniel, he said to
the boy, this is Daniel. And then to Quinn, with that same ironic smile, Daniel, this is
Daniel.
The boy burst out laughing and said, Everybodys Daniel!
Thats right, said Quinn, Im you, and youre me.
And around and around it goes, shouted the boy, suddenly spreading his arms and
spinning around the room like a gyroscope. (100)

Im you, and youre me, Quinn says. Like Daniel Auster, Daniel Quinn is the son of
the writer. He is both a father who has lost a son, and a son whose father has kept him
in the dark and caused him pain for his own inscrutable purposes. This recognition
infuriates Quinn:
It was too much for Quinn. He felt as though Auster were taunting him with the things
he had lost, and he responded with envy and rage, a lacerating self-pity. Yes, he too
would have liked to have this wife and child, to sit around all day spouting drivel about
old books, to be surrounded by yoyos and ham omelettes [sic] and fountain pens. (100)

As Quinn departs, Auster drives home the message in a typically double-edged

way:
So long, Daniel, he said, walking towards the door.
The boy looked at him from across the room and laughed again. Goodbye, myself.
Auster accompanied him to the door. He said Ill call you as soon as the check clears.
Are you in the book?
Yes, said Quinn. The only one. (100)

Seeing the author of his troubles, and the lack of care that author has for his pain, Quinn
realizes that he is in the book. In fact, he is the alone (the only one) in the book.
In the three chapters that conclude City of Glass, Quinn slowly but surely starts to
disappear from the narrative as he reappears as a human being with agency. He

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recovers emotions, including painful ones, and comes to realizations about his role.
Writing in his notebook, he begins to focus on capturing the minutia of everyday life
not in an attempt to forget, as he did when he was following Stillman Sr., but to work
against forgetting: For the first time since he had bought the red notebook, what he
wrote that day had nothing to do with the Stillman caseHe felt an urge to record
certain facts, and he wanted to get them down on paper before he forgot them (106).
Among the portraits of people locked inside madness that he describes is one that
poetically embodies the half-life which Quinn himself had only recently been living:
There is the man who walks with his face in his hands, weeping hysterically and
saying over and over again: No, no, no. Hes dead. Hes not dead. No, no, no. Hes
dead. Hes not dead. (108)
This emotional transformation continues until the narrator tells us that in his
heart, he realized that Max Work was dead. He had died somewhere on the way to his
next case, and Quinn could not bring himself to be sorry. (126) Given the association of
Max Work with the act of forgetting about his family, the death of Work signals Quinns
return to life, acceptance of his loss, and the end of his role as a private eye. No longer
willing to live at one remove, he is ready again to lose, and to be lost, through love:
The case was far behind him now, and he no longer bothered to think about it. It had
been a bridge to another place in his life, and now that he had crossed it, its meaning had
been lostHe remembered the moment of his birth and how he had been pulled gently
from his mothers womb. He remembered the infinite kindnesses of the world and all the
people he had ever loved. Nothing mattered now but the beauty of all this. (128)

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Quinns recognition of the transcendent beauty of all this, hidden in the heart
of a tragic and fatal past is the emotional core of this strange, cerebral novel. If we try to
escape our ghosts, we end up becoming one, but if we learn to live with our ghosts, we
become alive to the possibilities of a world that exists beyond words. By reflecting
Quinns lost family in the people that he meets, forcing him to confront an absence he
cannot escape. Auster draws his character towards this understanding and, perhaps,
towards a life beyond the one he has written for him.

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Works Cited
"Paul Auster". n.d. Web. 28 December 2015.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Auster>.
"Sophie Auster". n.d. Web. 29 December 2105.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Auster>.
Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy. New York City: Penguin Books, 2006.