7/01/09

The ending of City of Glass frustrated me because nothing was really resolved. In fact, it left me with more unanswered questions than I had at the beginning. But perhaps that was Auster’s goal? I feel as though Auster writing such an ambiguous ending would have to be deliberate. Having reached the conclusion of the book I think I can understand Quinn’s feelings after he had been following Stillman for a while and was wondering if it was a waste of time. Quinn chooses to believe that Stillman knew he was being followed and therefore had an elaborately concocted scheme rather than believe that Stillman was aimlessly wondering. Likewise, I choose to believe that Auster had some purpose in mind with such a vague ending. What that purpose is I can’t even begin to imagine but I choose to believe that Auster had purpose behind his writing so that I don’t feel as though I’ve been wasting my time with the aimless writing of a madman.

Perhaps if Quinn had followed the second Stillman the book would have ended very differently. The moment in the book when Quinn has to decide which Stillman to follow reminded me of those cheesy chose your own ending books, where it tells you to turn to page 5 if you want the character to do action x but turn to page 20 if you want the character to do action y. Quinn had to make a choice and his decision was as arbitrary as choosing x or y. After that point in the book I kept expecting the second Stillman to reappear. Perhaps it was the second Stillman who jumped off the bridge, not the ragged Stillman Quinn had been following. Although it seemed as if Stillman (#1) was foreshadowing his demise in his last conversation with Quinn. In that last conversation between Quinn-as-Peter Stillman Jr. and Peter Stillman Sr., Stillman told Quinn/Peter Jr. that now he could die happily. In addition, he mentioned something about lying making you wish you were dead and we know that Stillman lied at least once, in his book’s discussion of Henry Dark. Maybe Peter Stillman Jr. and Virginia disappeared because of the second Stillman. Perhaps the second Stillman was the one they were worried about. There are an endless number of unanswered questions. Something the really interested me was the author’s reference to Auster at the end. He says that he severed ties with his once good friend Auster because he felt that Auster had treated Quinn very poorly. However, I didn’t see anything horrible in Auster’s treatment of Quinn so it makes me wonder if there is more to Auster’s part of the story than we know. After all the author tells us he has written only what was in the red notebook, so how much of the story hasn’t been told to us?