It is often the case in a novel that the setting sets the general mood and atmosphere for the events of the novel to take place.  The space in which the novel exists often reflects the emotional tone of its characters.  Paul Auster pushes this notion beyond just an atmospheric style, as his central character, Daniel Quinn, interacts with his settings on a deeply psychological level.  Paul Auster’s City of Glass manages space in a mentally perceptive mode; corporal space is presented through the transitioning scope of Quinn’s mind, where his thoughts selectively focus on specific elements of his settings while letting other elements fade from his existence.  As Quinn’s body moves through various areas within New York, his mind also shifts as it processes information, drawing an interwoven relationship between the physical and the mental world. 

City of Glass physically sets Daniel Quinn within the spread of New York City, a place so large that the central character mentally never has to bring himself to focus on any specifics, be it external or internal.  Quinn is initially presented as a solitary figure consumed with the need to feel nothing and to be no one, due to the immense pain of having lost both his wife and son to death.  This feeling compels him to take randomized walks through the city: “Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within…New York was the nowhere he had built around himself” (Auster 8-9).  Quinn chooses to see only through the optical tools of his eyes, closing the lid to his mind’s eye.  Mentally he shuts down in an attempt at existing only in the physical moment, without the burden of memories or thoughts.  Space is at the mercy of Quinn’s construction and how the man chooses to build the world in which he can exist. 

In the next instance of Quinn’s journeying through New York, his field of vision tightens the urban sprawl he previously sought to lose himself within into a moment of selective focus.  He appears at a train station in hopes of meeting the subject of his query, Peter Stillman Senior:  “The train was crowded, and as the passengers started filling the ramp and walking toward him, they quickly became a mob…Quinn watched them all, anchored to his spot, as if his whole being had been exiled to his eyes.  Each time an elderly man approached, he braced himself for it to be Stillman” (Auster 88).  From the mob, Quinn’s eyes focus only on the elder males, and the remaining figures become nothing but blurs in his vision; young men, women and children disappear from the space, leaving only the possible Stillmans at the train station.  Whereas the notion of viewing through his physical eyes was formerly used as a means to shut his mental visions off, this case shows Quinn tuning his eyes to see and find a match to the vision of an older man already embedded in his mind by a mixture of a photograph and Quinn’s preconceptions of Stillman. 

Once Quinn determines which elderly man is Stillman, the space once again spreads to encompass the busyness of the city; conversely, instead of letting himself get lost within the city, Quinn’s mental obsession is set on Stillman.  In following the man, “he decided to record every detail about Stillman he possibly could…Not only did he take note of Stillman’s gestures, describe each object he selected or rejected for his bag, and keep an accurate timetable for all events, but he also set down with meticulous care an exact itinerary of Stillman’s divagations, noting each street he followed, each turn he made, and each pause that occurred” (Auster 99).  In Quinn’s mind, only Stillman exists in New York; his space has been reduced to the elderly man he is following so much that Quinn begins to take on characteristics of Stillman.  By physically engaging in the same activities of the man he’s following, Quinn assumes he is psychologically the same as Peter Stillman Senior.  Quinn’s observations and recordings on Stillman have become highly neurotic.  Ye

t it is when Quinn stakes out Virginia and young Peter Stillman’s apartment that his tendency to engage in this obsessive behavior reaches its all time high; but at this time Quinn’s fixations aren’t so much on individuals, but rather on the physical site of the apartment.  While it is his initial need to determine what outcome has befallen the young Stillman couple that forces Quinn to watch their apartment, the couple quickly fades from his focus and the material surroundings takes precedence in Quinn’s world.  Situated between the tall buildings of New York, Quinn spends quite a deal of time staring at what he calls “his patch of sky” (Auster 180).  His thinks only of weather or the time of day, and what his body needs for basic survival.  In fact, Quinn becomes so acutely aware of his physical surroundings that he blends into the dirty New York environment as a filthy bum.  The irony of it all resides in the fact that Quinn doesn’t even realize that Virginia and young Peter Stillman have actually removed themselves from the apartment or that Peter Stillman Senior has gone beyond any bodily space, since Quinn is so completely enthralled with his territory in New York’s ecology.
   
From the massive exterior of New York City, Quinn takes enough time to come inside from the concrete streets and into an intellectual setting involving baseball, philosophy and theory.  He spends several scenes within restaurants to not only quench his basic need of hunger, but to also converse about baseball.  Quinn recalls a specific person who shares his interest in the sport, “For several years Quinn had been having the same conversations with this man, whose name he did not know…They were both Mets fans, and the hopelessness of that passion had created a bond between them” (Auster 61).  This presents an interesting new side to Quinn; his mind is often focused on the aspects of being a detective and the case he pursues, that to show the man as a baseball fan serves to add more depth to his character.  Quinn’s passion for baseball removes him from the physicality of New York and the case and into a social situation in which he can interact orally, rather then visually.  His opinions on the sport come from mental conclusions that he has drawn.  The comforts of intellectual stimulation from the restaurant are also repeated when Quinn visits the Columbia library: “He arrived early, the first one there as the doors opened, and the silence of the marble halls comforted him, as though he had been allowed to enter some crypt of oblivion” (Auster 67).  The marble structure of the library is not important, but rather its long standing history as being a catalog of ideas and deliberations.  As a writer of books himself, Quinn seems to hold an affinity to intellectual theory and reading materials.  He is also fascinated by Stillman’s deductions which he gleans from his readings and his conversations with Stillman.  This feeling is repeated upon meeting the real Paul Auster, when Quinn also gets caught up with Auster’s deductions about Don Quixote.  Quinn’s mind tends to get hooked on theories, as he deduces his own as well as finding enthrallment in the words of others.  His tendency to get overly involved in ideas reduces Quinn quickly into being able to see only that which he believes. 
   
With the exterior physicality and the interior intellectuality of New York taken into account, Quinn also encounters the personalized space of the residence where the physical and mental facets of Quinn merge.  He recognizes the real Paul Auster’s apartment as being similar to the life he once had, a precious and happy family that Quinn no longer has, painful to see having lost it all.  The warmth of the household contrasts greatly with the space of his own apartment.  When the novel begins with an introduction to Quinn’s own apartment, it is scarcely described, seeming a barren “nowhere” of a place to mirror Quinn’s mental state.  Later in the novel, when Quinn considers giving up on the case, he returns to his dwelling and cannot recognize his own place.  “He sat down in his living room and looked at the walls.  They had once been white, he remembered, but now they had turned a curious shade of yellow… A white wall becomes a yellow wall becomes a gray wall, he said to himself” (Auster 160).  The constant fluctuation of colors echoes the constant fluctuation of Quinn’s identity.  At this point in the novel, Quinn’s own deliberations on who he is has been psychologically confused.  He cannot recognize his apartment, because he cannot recognize himself.  This inability to recognize himself becomes utterly drastic when he returns to his apartment one last time, to find that it is in fact no longer his apartment.  The importance of space is heightened by this fact, as Quinn no longer has a real space to call his own; uncertain of his own identity and of where to go, he turns to an ambiguous room within the young Stillman’s former residence.  He is at first aware that he is in the young Stillmans’ apartment, but later the space is reduced to a single room delineated only by the presence or absence of light.  It is indistinguishable where Quinn’s body lies, as Quinn himself becomes less and less aware of his surroundings.

Quinn’s final space presented in the novel is his precious red notebook, where the words written and the words thought are one and the same; however, Quinn’s awareness has dissipated into nothing and all that exists are words.  His body barely exists, except as a tool, much like the pen, to write down words.  “He felt that his words had been severed from him, that now they were a part of the world at large, as real and specific as a stone, or a lake, or a flower.  They no longer had anything to do with him” (Auster 200).  In the red notebook, there is no more Quinn, just a physical manifestation of thoughts leading nowhere in the form of scrawled letters in a red notebook.  Without the mental space, the space in the notebook quickly runs out.  “The last sentence of the red notebook reads: ‘What will happen when there are no more pages in the red notebook?’” (Auster 200).  And with those words, the reader is no longer presented with any more spaces for Quinn to dwell in.  With the final page of the red notebook, Quinn has run out of space.  His initial aim to make New York City his nowhere has returned in the form of non-existence; Quinn is physically and mentally nowhere.
    
The intricate psychological nature of the primary character of Daniel Quinn interlaces with the physicality in New York City.  The relationship between Quinn and his surroundings function much like a glass of water.  Mentally Quinn can be like the fluid and form to fit the container of his surroundings, seen through his multiple experiences with the exterior of New York.  Inversely, there is a fluidity to his surroundings as they sometimes fit into the container of Quinn’s intellectual mind, seen in the social spaces of the restaurant and library.  Yet, the interconnection between mental and physical space is often more complicated then a distinct separation between the two.  When considering Quinn’s association to residential areas or the infamous red notebook, it is difficult to determine where the glass container ends and the volatility of water begins.  Glass and water, function as clear and reflective mirrors, and Paul Auster’s City of Glass references the city of New York as well as the city of Quinn’s mind as a glass. 

Copyright 2003.  Essay used with author's permission.
This essay may not be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of the author.