Paul Karasik (2)Reviews

Never thought Auster's work would lend itself so well to this format. Excellent.

This is great, but I wish they'd done the full New York Trilogy.

" ... molto piu' tardi avrebbe concluso ... che niente era reale ... tranne il caso." (p. 38)

"E se non possiamo nominare un oggetto qualunque, come possiamo parlare delle cose che ci riguardano davvero?" (p. 106)

Baudelaire: il me semble que je serais toujours bien la' ou' je ne suis pas.
- Mi sembra che staro' sempre bene la' dove non sono.
Piu' brevemente: ovunque non sono, e' il luogo dove sono me stesso.
CLIK
(P. 140-1)

[magyarul lentebb]

On my journey of discovering graphic novels... just kidding, I have no intention of doing that. But I really liked this one. With a foreword by Maus's Art Spiegelman, City of Glass has a great story written amazingly (that should not come as a surprise, it's Auster after all), so it had a strong skeleton. But the graphics were not just illustrations either, they helped the story transform into something new. I found an original idea on every page, in the creative use of the grid, showing the character of a voice, the disintegration of a mind in pictures instead of words while still keeping the importance of language, and it was fun to see the drawn versions of Auster and his family, too. My attention never faltered for a second, this graphic novel had a firm grip on it. Very well done.

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A kép(es?)regények világában tett felfedezéseim következő állomása Paul Auster New York trilógiájának átdolgozása. Valójában nincs szó semmiféle műfajfelfedezésről, csak ez a kettő* érdekelt, de az Üvegváros alapján nem tennék le a formáról. A Maust elkövető Art Spiegelman előszavával megjelent kötetnek persze őrülten erős alapja volt, hiszen Auster írta. Az előszó szerint figyelmeztette is a projekt mögött álló Spiegelmant, miszerint már többször próbáltak filmforgatókönyvet varázsolni ebből a szövegből, mindhiába. Karasik és Mazzucchelli párosának végül mégis fantasztikusan sikerült az adaptáció. Nem csupán illusztrálták a történetet, egy egészen új művet hoztak létre. Minden oldalon újabb eredeti ötlettel találkoztam, a képregény rácsainak kreatív használatától az írott jellemzések képi megjelenítésre cserélésén át (miközben a nyelv semmit nem veszít jelentőségéből) a rajzolt Auster-családig. Egy pillanatra sem eresztette a figyelmem, remek munka.

*a másik a Cheshire Crossing volt, sóhaj

This was recommended to me by a friend. He's introducing me to ontology and told me a great place to start would be this book. I liked it a lot - thank you very much - and thought it made for a terrific introduction.

For one thing, this carries a lot of layers. My reading experience with reading this was: initially feeling a bit confused, pondering it over a couple of days, then reading it again to find it making a little more sense. It's a very intricate system of names, language, and people's communication with God, and I thought that was really interesting.

But, while I greatly admire this adaptation, I can't help but think that it feels abridged, like I could've had a fuller, more natural experience with the original book. Then again, I'm a comic-holic and I know I've definitely wouldn't have committed myself to this extent if it weren't in graphic-novel format.

It made for a great introduction, and I would recommend it to anyone who's in my position (not knowing a thing about ontology). Just know that this is a book that requires a lot of thought, and one that will take time for you to love.

Auster's "City of Glass" was interesting enuf to begin w/ - but adding David Mazzucchelli's graphics in this series designed by the great Art Spiegleman was enuf to push it to the top for me.

This made me want to reread the original novels. I felt the story interacted beautifully with the visual medium, and I found it more moving than the original sparse and ethereal book. What a well executed idea for this particular book.

This made me want to reread the original novels. I felt the story interacted beautifully with the visual medium, and I found it more moving than the original sparse and ethereal book. What a well executed idea for this particular book.

Stunning use of the graphic novel form, using all the formal options available to tell a story in a way that would be impossible in any other medium.

Intrigued to read the original Auster novel now, I can't imagine it working nearly as well.

This book is good but also kind of bullshit. Like a three panel Nancy comic can totally withstand 40-odd chapters of analysis, that's fine, also there's a lot of fun stuff and they take seriously the work that goes into a good gag. That's cool! But the introduction talks about how many "bad" comics there are out there and (while I agree) their definition of "bad" is like... sloppy linework or improvisation or whatever.... there's something kind of macho about qualitative judgments made within. But who's more like Nancy: Marlys or one of Chris Ware's weird masturbating guys? Obviously Marlys. Sometimes fun, sometimes maddening. Do these guys even like to laugh?

I consider "City of Glass" to be one of the most nonsensical book I’ve ever read. Apart from the occasional interesting scene, this was on the whole a tedious web of confusion.

As a graphic mystery/detective short novel, this book is very well done. What Karasik and Mazzucchelli have achieved here is no small feat. The abstract thoughts and intricate stories intertwined in the book are delicately interpreted into the visual with striking compositions within each panel as well as on each page. The story is a page turner at times, so I had to go back to re-examine the drawings and composition of the pages. And yes, Auster is not your average thriller/mystery writer, so more intellect and general knowledge of historical facts, literature, and New York will allow the reader to appreciate and enjoy the story more.

Really good story. It's difficult to convey the sense of a descent into madness and the dissipation of self into nothingness in graphical form; yet I think this book succeeds admirably. I'm judging this work on itself, as I haven't read the original novel.

Really good story. It's difficult to convey the sense of a descent into madness and the dissipation of self into nothingness in graphical form; yet I think this book succeeds admirably. I'm judging this work on itself, as I haven't read the original novel.

I like Paul Auster, but I find his brilliance difficult to put into words; with this graphic adaptation of the first volume of The New York Trilogy, the problem is even more difficult.  All of this is appropriate, of course, for a story where the main theme is the inability (or unreliability) of language to capture truth.  When I first read this comic back in 2006, I hadn't yet read the prose novel; upon reading the prose novel some months later, I could not find anything in it that had been subtracted for the comic.  Furthermore, the addition of a visual dimension meant that there was a whole new layer of meaning.

All I can do, then, is praise Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli's artwork; their simple, stark style suits the narrative perfectly, and their use of transitions between panels is astounding, showing a complete mastery of the comics medium.  City of Glass is heavy with meaning in the best of ways.

Hmmm.. a book about the language of god?, a crime detective tale? a why are we here story? I really don't know.

It starts really well, an author called Quinn who tragically lost his family, now writes detective novels under an assumed name and leads a very lonely life. He receives a call one night asking for Paul Auster and for some reason Quinn decides to pretend he is Auster.

The call relates to a troubled soul and his fears that his father will try to kill him. Quinn/Auster is set to follow the father. Things begin to get slowly messed up from here and the man he is set to following has been on a lifelong search to discover the lost language of Babel, the language of God.

There are many digressions into the nature of language and we see our man slowly descend into madness as he follows his case. The real author also appears in the story as a kind of narrator to events that happened and that he can't explain. By the end of the story I was left confused as to what happens. The story itself I was enjoying but I simply didn't get the ending. Perhaps I have to read the novel to figure it all out. Approach with caution, a very confusing premise.½

This is a strange book, 1/2 straight memoir by Judy Karasik and 1/2 graphic memoir by Paul Karasik about the family of a man on the more incapacitated side of the autism spectrum and the difficulty in finding a place for him where he can grow and contribute to his community. It's definitely not a feel good book; the ever present possibility of abuse in institutions that care for people who can't speak for themselves is examined. David, the autistic brother, who is in his 50's now spends a small part of the book in his pajamas, but for the most part he dresses in a suit and tie. He has a very strong need for routine and reminds even his sister of the Dustin Hoffman character in Rainman but without, as she puts it, the "plot devise" of savant mathematics. He is held hostage to frustration which sometimes leads to violence against himself or others. In describing the aftermath of a meltdown, Judy writes He was calming down. Slowly, the autism let go of the frustration. The autism stopped battering my brother with frustration and went back to its usual habit, which was fascinating David with the patterns and images and ideas inside his head. What a perfect description of his condition.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about people on the more severe side of the autism spectrum.

A good antidote to the book I just read, Secret Girl, by Molly Bruce Jacobs. A much more nuanced and interesting book about growing up with an autistic sibling. They're still a nightmare family to me but at least they talk to each other.

An excellent adaptation of the Paul Auster novella, with some very ingenious visual translations of Auster's labyrithine metafictional riddles.

City of Glass seems like an impossible novel to turn into a graphic novel. It's kind of a noir metafiction that circles in on itself. Actually, I doubted anything could be done with it with panel art. The efforts came out better than I thought they would. It's not perfect but it manages to capture most of the feel of City of Glass. It did win a place on the 100 Most Important Comics of the Century list. Still, it's hard to try to turn a review of it into words so I'll stop here before I tie myself into a knot.½

This book is the first in a New York Trilogy. Its about a wrong number in the middle of the night which involves a man named Daniel Quinn into a case more bizarre than any he has ever had to deal with. His only task giving by the person on the phone is to keep Peter Stillman's ( a character in the story) father, an insane scholar who kept his son in a room for nine years away from his rehabilitated son. I was really enjoying the book until about half way in it, took a wrong turn and under unsatisfying and flat.

A wrong number starts everything in this adaptation of Paul Auster's novel into graphic form...and from the moment Daniel Quinn who has been hiding behind his William Wilson identity decides to adopt the identity of Paul Auster, things take a turn for the strange. In a story that manages to effortlessly weave the Tower of Babel, Don Quixote and pulp fiction books, this graphic novel also manages to play with the prose and add depth to the questions of language, identity and obsessive meaning in the meaningless in ways that are limited by mere words. The illustrations do more than merely illustrate - they become integral pieces to solving the unsolvable puzzle.

This is not just a transposition of one of Auster's most famous works in graphical form; it's a masterpiece on its own merit, interpreting the text in a very creative way, pushing the boundaries of sequential art.½

nonsensical and nonlinear

Characters seemed to have multiple personalities, names, identities, textures, grids, rhythms... If ever I thought I was losing myself in my self, this book would be a good map for it. Immediately after finishing this I reread it, not for the sake of enjoyment [though I did in a Through the Looking Glass Don Quixote kind of way], but more to try to understand it further. I felt like I got it while reading, but as soon as I put the book down, it slipped away. Rather than becoming frustrated by this though, I felt intrigued and drawn to Auster's layered circling ideas, conversations, inspired art work.