World Famous Comics: City of Glass: The Graphic Novel
City of Glass: The Graphic Novel
By: Paul Auster Publisher: Picador Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Picador Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 144 Publication Date: August 01, 2004
A graphic novel classic with a new introduction by Art SpiegelmanQuinn writes mysteries. The Washington Post has described him as a “post-existentialist private eye.” An unknown voice on the telephone is now begging for his help, drawing him into a world and a mystery far stranger than any he ever created in print.Adapted by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli, with graphics by David Mazzucchelli, Paul Auster’s groundbreaking, Edgar Award-nominated masterwork has been astonishingly transformed into a new visual language.
Eh, it was okay. City of Glass is a graphic novel interpretation of Paul Auster's well received book, originally published in 1985. Halfway through the graphic novel I picked up the original book to see how some of the wild imagery was portrayed in written form. I was surprised (though should I have been?) that there seemed to be greater depth to the literary version, which supplemented the imagery as I continued to move deeper into the graphic novel.
The only reason I didn't give this work a better rating was due to the storyline building up in a way that insisted more in the end. I enjoyed the graphic novel, but after reading it I realized I would have appreciated the original even more. I feet it would probably be best to read the original novel and then try the shorter graphic version again...but I honestly have some difficulty committing myself to a detective yarn when I already know how it will end.
Outstanding Not knowing the book, I bought this comic by chance and was not at all prepared. I've never read a comic like this in my whole life. It goes so deep...it's a miracle.
Brilliant and challenging adaptation The real magic here is that, in reworking Paul Auster's original novel, Karasik and Mazzucchelli have produced a true literary adaptation in comics form. This is no "Classics Illustrated"; this is a comic that strengthens its source material rather than diminishing it. The original book's concern with the gap between language and meaning is given further depth and resonance in the comic, which finds a visual language equivalent, and does it in a way that no other medium could have. This is no mere illustrated text, but comics as a formidable language and medium in itself. Interestingly, when the original book and the comic are read together, the comic itself almost becomes a physical character, another in the story's proliferation of literary doubles.
Damn' good!! "City of Glass" is not a simple adaptation from the original book, but a real translation, from literature to sequential art. Mazzuchelli's drawings provides a very good trip to Auster's universe, his unusual characters, enlarging at same time the limits of comics language. One of the best comic books ever!
Must have companion piece to The New York Trilogy If you enjoyed (or more likely were haunted by) City of Glass then you owe it to yourself to read this graphic novel. Yes, it is essentially the exact same story as Auster's metaphysical detective novella. However, this is a fascinating and beautifully rendered interpretation of the source work. My only complaint: where are the graphic novels for Ghosts and The Locked Room?
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