The Locked Room by Paul Auster
Posted in Other fiction, Reading Reviewed at 12:00 on 4 February 2025
In The New York Trilogy, faber and faber, 2004. [The Locked Room, 1987, 116 p.]
The third in Auster’s New York trilogy, this is as awkward a read as the previous two. There is something distanced about the narration; too much is told and little is shown. It is the tale of a man effectively haunted by his childhood friend Fanshawe, who suddenly left his wife but also left behind several manuscripts and instructions to have the narrator sift through them to see if they were worth publishing, and, if so, to try to accomplish this.
That word Fanshawe is a problem, embodying the sense that what we are reading is a construct. Surely nobody ever refers to their childhood best friend by their surname? (Outside the bounds of fiction it would be unusual in any situation where referring to an acquaintance is required.) We readers know perfectly well that any short story or novel is a construct – but we don’t need our faces rubbed in it.
Though the connection seems tenuous – apart from the fact that I was reading these between the same covers – characters from the previous two books in the trilogy like Quinn and Stillman, reappear here. And the narrator mentions City of Glass and Ghosts as if he is the same as the person who wrote those. (Of course he is. He’s Paul Auster. And we know that. But to be reminded of it is annoying.)
There are some sentences where Auster’s writing climbs into wider relevance, “No one can cross the boundary into another – for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself” explores the impossibility of ever truly knowing anyone else – or even oneself. We are told “The story is not in the words; it’s in the struggle” (to say goodbye to something.) If the story isn’t in the words why are we wasting our time? More problematically, one encounter leads the narrator to the thought that “Sexual desire can also be the desire to kill.”
Sensitivity note; Fanshawe’s manuscripts are said to contain “an instance of nigger-baiting.”
Pedant’s corner:- kudos, though, for no entries here.
Tags: City of Glass, Ghosts, New York Trilogy, Paul Auster, The Locked Room, US fiction