ABSTRACT
With the publication of his first novel City of Glass, Paul Auster was hailed as the latest in a series of American authors who could be labeled ‘postmodernist.’ City of Glass is a pastiche of the detective genre and exhibits many of the classic traits of postmodern fiction. These include an indeterminate and ironic relationship between character and author; an ambiguous narrative voice; the blurring of fact and fiction; and döppelgangers as a central theme. As the novel’s protagonist Daniel Quinn is a writer with the literary pseudonym William Wilson, Auster alludes to Edgar Allan Poe’s eponymous story that deals with duality.
