Walking Through the City of Glass: The Art of Navigation. Roundtable Proceedings
- Issue:
- Received: 05 Apr. 2026
- Approved after reviewing: 21 Apr. 2026
- Date of publication: 25 Jun. 2026
- УДК / UDK: 821.111(73).0
- Publication Type: Review Article
- DOI:
- EDN:
- Abstract:
The roundtable discussion took place at the Faculty of Philology at Lomonosov Moscow State University on December 8, 2025. Among its participants there were professors, students, PhD candidates. The panel was dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the publication of the first part of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. In it, the writer succeeded in combining existential anxiety with narrative experimentation, and the conventions of the crime genre with absurdist play. Detective investigation takes the form of walks through New York City, and the walks themselves are experienced as a form of writing or reading. The subject of surveillance and the investigator eventually disappear, leaving the reader with some clues, signs and markings, “letters on paper.” From a multitude of diverging paths, each reader-analyst chooses their own, emphasizing different aspects of their interaction with the text world. This selection presents some of the materials from the roundtable discussion.
- Keywords: Paul Auster, City of Glass, Postmodernism, Realism, detective fiction, textual analysis, transmedial transition, literature & cinema, Michelangelo Antonioni
- For citation:
Antsyferova, Olga, Shulyatyeva, Dina, Venediktova, Tatiana, et al. “Walking Through the City of Glass: The Art of Navigation. Roundtable Proceedings.” Literature of the Americas, no. 20 (2026): 84–137. https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2026-20-84-137
- References:
Bekuzarova 2008 — Bekuzarova, Yuliya N. Poteryannyi N`iu-Iork», ili fenomen utopicheskogo soznania v romane Pola Ostera «Steklyannyi gorod» [“Lost New-York, or Phenomenon of Utopian Consciousness in Pual Auster’s Novel City of Glass”]. Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta. Seria 9. Filologiya [Philology], no. 5
(2008): 112–117. (In Russ.)
Bernstein 1999 — Bernstein, Stephen. “The Question is the Story Itself”: Postmodernism and Intertextuality in Auster’s New York Trilogy.” In Detecting Texts: The Metaphysical Detective Story from Poe to Postmodernism, edited by Patricia Merivale and Elizabeth S. Sweeney, 134–153. Philadelphia, 1999.
Bewes 2007 — Bewes, Timothy. “Against the Ontology of the Present: Paul Auster’s Cinematographic Fictions.” Twentieth-Century Literature 53, no. 3 (2007): 273–297.
Bökös 2014 — Bökös, Borbála. “Palimpsestuous Intermediality: Paul Auster’s ‘City of Glass’ (1985) and ‘City of Glass: The Graphic Novel’ (1994).” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS) 20, no. 2 (2014): 101–119.
Brown 2007 — Brown, Mark. Paul Auster. Manchester, 2007.
Eckhard 2011 — Eckhard, Petra. Chronotopes of the Uncanny: Time and Space in Postmodern New York Novels: Paul Auster’s ‘City of Glass’ and Toni Morrison’s ‘Jazz’. Bielefeld, 2011.
Espejo 2014 — Espejo, Ramon. “Coping with the Postmodern: Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy.” Journal of American Studies 48, no. 1 (2014): 147–171.
Espejo 2021 — Espejo, Ramon. “New York City in Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy.” In The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies, edited by Jeremy Tambling, 1–8. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2021.
Gonzalez 2009 — Gonzalez, Jesus Angel. “Words Versus Images: Paul Auster’s Films from Smoke to The Book of Illusions.” Literature/Film Quarterly 37, no. 1 (January 2009): 28–48.
Iser 1981 — Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore, MD, 1981.
Iampol’skii 2010 — Iampol’skii, Mikhail B. Skvoz’ tuskloe steklo: 20 glav o neopredelennosti [Through Dark Glass: 20 chapters on uncertainty]. Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie Publ., 2010. (In Russ.)
Ingold 2024 — Ingold, Tim. Linii: kratkaia istoriia [Lines: A Brief History]. Translated by D. Shalaginov. Moscow: Ad Marginem Publ., 2024. (In Russ.)
Karslieva 2011 — Karslieva, Diana K. “Svoeobrazie tradicionnoi formy v «N`iu-iorkskoi trilogii» Pola Ostera” [“Specificity of the Traditional Form in The New-York Trilogy by Paul Auster”]. Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Seria 8, 10 (2011): 109–114. (In Russ.)
Koolhaas 2013 — Koolhaas, Rem. N’iu-Iork vne sebia [Delirious New York]. Translated by A. Smirnova. Moscow: Strelka Press, 2013. (In Russ.)
Kul`kina 2016 — Kul`kina, Varvara M. “Rossiiskie issledovania tvorchestva Pola Ostera: avtor, zhanr, metatekst v postmodernistskom romane. (Svodnyi referat)” [“Paul Auster’s Studies in Russia: author, genre, metatext in the postmodern novel (review)]. Socialnye i gumanitarnye nauki. Otechestvennaia i zarubezhnaia literatura. Seria 7. Literaturovedenie, no. 2 (2016): 230–236. (In Russ.)
McCabe 1985 — McCabe, Colin. “Realism: Balzac and Barthes.” Theatrical Essays: Film, Linguistics, Literature, 133–151. Manchester, 1985.
Martin 2008 — Martin, Brendan. Paul Auster’s Postmodernity. New York, 2008.
Prozorov 2009 — Prozorov, Vladimir G. Pol Oster: Iskusstvo pravilnych voprosov [Paul Auster: The Art of Relevant Questions]. Petrozavodsk: KGPAB Publ., 2009. (In Russ.)
Russell 1990 — Russell, Alison. “Deconstructing The New York Trilogy: Paul Auster’s Anti-detective Fiction”. Critique 21, no. 2 (1990): 71–84.
Shamina 2014 — Shamina, Vera B. “Postmodernistskaia samorefleksia v romane Pola Ostera Steklyannyi gorod” [Postmodern Self-reflection in Paul Auster’s
Novel City of Glass”]. Uchenye zapiski Kazanskogo universiteta (Gumanitarny`e nauki) 156, no. 2 (2014): 224–232. (In Russ.)
The Sign of Three 1988 — The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce. Edited by U. Eco and T.A. Sebeoc. Bloomington & Indianapolis, ID, 1988.
Sorapure 1995 — Sorapure, Madeleine. “The Detective and the Author: City of Glass.” In Beyond the red notebook. Essays on Paul Auster, edited by Dennis
Barone, 71–87. Philadelphia, 1995.
Stout 1976 — Stout, Janis P. Sodom in Eden: The City in American Fiction before 1860. Westport, CT, 1976.
Toporova 2024 — Toporova, Anna V. «Kniga o raznoobrazii mira» Marko Polo — srednevekovyi travelog? [“Marco Polo’s “On the Diversity of the World” as a Medieval Travelogue”]. Zhurnal VShE po iskusstvu i dizajnu, no. 1 (2024): 156–175. (In Russ.)
Varvogli 2001 — Varvogli, Aliki. The World that is the Book: Paul Auster’s Fiction. Liverpool, 2001.
Venediktova 2001 — Venediktova, Tat’yana D. “Sekret sredinnogo mira. Kul`turnaia funkcia realizma 19 veka” [“A Secret of the Middle World. The Cultural
Function of Realism”]. In: Zarubezhnaya literatura vtorogo ty`syacheletiya: 1000—2000 [Foreign Literature of the Second Milennium: 1000-2000], ed. by L.G. Andreev,
186–220. Moscow: Vy`sshaya shkola Publ., 2001. (In Russ.)
Vidler 2025 — Vidler, Anthony. Arkhitekturnoe zhutkoe: opyty o sovremennoi bespriiutnosti [The Architectural Uncanny. Essays in the Modern Unhomely]. Translated by P. Khanova. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie Publ., 2025. (In Russ.)
Zenkin 2023 — Zenkin, Sergei N. Imago in fabula: intradiegeticheskii obraz v literature i kino [Imago in fabula: Intradiegetic Image in Literature and Cinema]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie Publ., 2023. (In Russ.)
