Who is the “author”/narrator of the novel?.What happens to Quinn? Where does he disappear to?.

and Virginia Stillman? Why do they disappear? In lecture a possibility was discussed that this could be an embodiment of the possibility of the story of a writer going in different directions, and which direction is chosen is somewhat arbitrary.Why are there two Peter Stillman Sr.’s?.Of course, these are not wrapped up nicely in answers as in traditional mystery novels: But I still find some things mysterious in it. We don’t have to take this as a mystery novel, of course, and for reasons we discussed in class it might be better thought of as a novel about mystery novels. I’ve tried to provide textual evidence to support this as a possible reading though. So it could very well be that what I say below is proven wrong by someone else’s more expert reading. I try to challenge myself to come up with my own interpretations before reading anyone else’s.

I didn’t read any secondary sources on these texts before writing this, and I expect there is a great deal that has been written about these very questions. And perhaps, while writing them down here, I’ll come to some further clarity. But I wanted to share some of the thoughts I came up with when thinking about it before class. We did talk a bit about this question, as it came up when a student brought up something similar in class.

I puzzled over many things in these works, but the one I decided to write about here started off with me asking myself the question: this is a novel about a writer of mysteries, but is it a mystery novel itself? And if so, what is the mystery and how might we solve it? Paul Auster, 2008, by David Shankbone on Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0

Paul auster graphic novel