A Writer's Search 
 I have read and greatly enjoyed four Paul Auster novels before these: 
 The Book of Illusions 
 (2002), 
 Oracle Night 
 (2004), 
 The Brooklyn Follies 
 (2005), and Man in the Dark (2008). But they are all recent work. Had I started with the three novellas collected here as The New York Trilogy (1985-86), the first fiction published under Auster's own name, I think I would have been intrigued, a bit baffled, and certainly respectful, but probably not eagerly waiting for his next book as I am now. In the trilogy, Auster uses the device of the pulp-fiction detective story as a means of exploring deeper issues about identity and the Faustian bargains inherent in writing fiction. The approach works best, I think, where there is a balance between the popular medium and the serious message; the new Penguin Classics Deluxe edition with wonderful faux-distressed covers and title pages by Art Spiegelman plays so perfectly into the pulp genre that the fun carries the reader quite far into some of the more abstract passages--far, but not all the way. 
 All the later Auster novels that I have read involve a central character, usually but not always a writer, who engages in some kind of search for meaning, involving himself in stories of one kind and another: dreams, memories, fantasies, or movie scenarios. A story-writer finding clarity by means of other stories--no wonder Auster's work is often referred to as metafiction. But no cause for alarm; Auster is such a fabulous storyteller that even his slightest diversion becomes a delight. If his framing characters are sympathetic, as they mostly are in his later work, and their situation is believable, Auster's novels work perfectly on several levels simultaneously. But in the first two books at least in Trilogy, he seems more interested in writing a novel of ideas, rather than giving those ideas a human handle. 
 All three books take place in New York, but only the first, City of Glass, is in any real sense tied to its setting. The protagonist here is another writer, Daniel Quinn, but he does not stick to that name. He has begun to think of himself as William Wilson, the pseudonym under which he writes detective stories, and when he receives a series of late night phone calls asking his help as head of the Paul Auster Detective Agency, he impersonates the unknown Auster. He sets off on a long surveillance of a madman who spends his days wandering the streets of the Upper West Side. Receiving little help from the real Paul Auster (whom he contacts later at his real address and meets his real wife and child), Quinn/Wilson must continue his search alone, finding a kind of spiritual nirvana even as his material existence deteriorates. It is a novel of interesting ideas, though carried by an unreal plot. 
 The middle novella, Ghosts, is the most abstract and the least enjoyable. Again, it involves a private detective. This is Blue, engaged by a mysterious Mr. White to watch an equally mysterious man called Black, who lives in a Brooklyn apartment opposite the one that White has rented for Blue. Black appears to be some kind of writer, and most of the book consists of Blue watching Black write, while himself keeping notes on what he imagines Black might be writing. Of the three, this relates most clearly to the nature of fiction, but so artificial a concept can barely sustain even the 60 pages of its length. 
 However I really enjoyed the third novella, The Locked Room, because its container story comes closest to being able to stand on its own. The central character, presumably Auster himself, finds himself appointed the literary executor of his childhood friend, Fanshawe, who has disappeared. He publishes Fanshawe's work, falls in love with his wife, and adopts his son, in a sequence of short chapters that sweeps the reader up in its romance. But the process makes him begin to doubt his own abilities and even his own identity as a person, leading him further and further from where he started. Although his situation is somewhat melodramatic, his feelings, whether as a man or artist, are all too real. 
 Many times I was reminded of a childhood favorite, G. K. Chesterton's detective fantasy nightmare The Man Who Was Thursday. If you enjoyed that, you will like the Trilogy, and vice-versa. Otherwise, I would advise readers new to Auster to start with The Book Of Illusions or Oracle Night.