The New York Trilogy
Based on novels by: Paul Auster
Adapt by: Paul Karasik, Lorenzo Mattotti, and David Mazzucchelli
Publisher: Pantheon
PUBLICATION DATE: April 2025
The Adaptation of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy As Written by Paul Karasik You have been in the works for a little over Thirty Years. Until Now, Only The First Volume City of Glass You have been available for purchase. What’s Interesting is that the novels were adapted by Three separate artists: David Mazzucchielli, Lorenzo Mattottiand Karasik Himself. As Such, it is perhaps best to understand This Adaptation Through the Lens of the Three Artists Who Helped It Become What It is.
City of Glass Is Perhaps The Most Traditional of The Three Adaptations in Terms of What One Would Expect for the American Comic Book Scene. From a Visual Standpoint, This Would Be a rather shocking to say consider how inventive and intrigueing David Mazzucchielli’s work is here. Frequently using Odd Angles and Disjoinned Visuals to Depict New York City that feels off kilter, From dialogue Balloons Coming from Books, Pieces of Shit, and Dead Bodies to Humans Who Look Like Mannequins Staged In Place. In Many Regards, You Can Feel Mazzucchielli’s Style Shifting Towards What It Would Become In Polyp AsteriosRemove Possibly The First Great Graphic Novel Of The 21St Century
Furthermore, The Shadow Work here is top notch, providing an air of noir Uncertainty Befitting of Auster’s Novel. INDEED, ONE CAN SEE THE GROWTH ON MAZZUCCHIELLI’S PART FOR Batman: Year One and Daredevil: Born Again. The Black and White of the Comic Truly Allows The Shadow Play Here To Fully Avelop Characters in A Way Color Offten Muttes.
Interestingly, The Book is published to look more like a hardcover novel rather than a traditional comic book Hardcover. ITS DIMENSIONS ARE NABLY SMALLER THAN THE TRADITIONAL COMIC BOOK, THOUCH SLIGLY LARGER THAN THOSE OF CITY OF GLASS AS INITIALLY PUBLISHED. The result is submisso that, While Largely aesthetic in nature, Nevertheless retains the novelistic origin of the graphic novels.
What Makes It Feel Traditional Compared to the other Two Works in This Trilogy, However, Is That It Uses Panels. More Specifically, IT use Nine Panel Grid Throunge the Majority of the Graphic Novel. INDEED, MAZZUCCHIELLI’S USE OF THE GRID FREQUENTLY SHIFTS WITH AN ODDNESS AKIN TO THE VISuals Within Them, MAKING T SHAPES, TRANSFORMING INTO PRISON BARS, AMONG OTHER EXTREMEMY CLEVER TECHNIQUES.
In many regards, This Evokes The Shape of New York City Itself, OR, AT Least, The Manhattan Portion of It City of Glass Largely Places Iself Within. ITS DEUTERITION Coinciding With The Deuteriation of the Central Character and Remival from Hist Perspective. Disengaging with the Psychogeographic Implications of the Narrative.
This is further emphasized by Lorenzo Mattotti Decision to Adapt Ghosts Through The Lens of Illustrated continue. Befitting of his background with The New YorkerEACH Page Consists of A Singular Image (Occasionally Split Up into Multiple Panels, But Largely Remaining in the form of the Singular Image, and submo that have no images at all) Contextualized with to Large Paragraph (or a Few Small Paragraphs) of Text Beneath. The Images Refrain From Having Any Text within Them.
Age are submantions to This Such as The Return of the Nine Panel Grid To Show An elapse of Time Or A Climactic Set of Two Page Spreads That Are Rendred Incomprehensible by The PDF Provide that make it night Impossible to the actual read the book at time). But Still, The General Nature of the Illustrated continued Remains. There are dialogue Balloons to guide us into the world of Ghosts.
The results is a Degree of Alienation on the Reader, Further Emphasized by Mattotti’s Almost Charcoal Approach To Drawing and Shading. More than Even Mazzucchelli’s Abstract Realism, The Alienation from The Known Aparins Iself Onto The Reader Such that we can take away see the fullness of the world. Only A Small Portion of It, As If Written with a pseudonym in mind like colors or shapes.
Which Leaves The Locked Roomadapt by Paul Karasik Himself. If there is a singular auteur at The Heart of this Set of Adaptations (There is’s, but it’s nice to pretend), It is Karasik. He has been writing the scripts for the past thirty sum -odde years. WHERE MAZZUCCHELLI APPROACHED THE SCRIPT WITH AN EYE TOWARDS THE VISUAL AND MATTOTTI APPROACHED IT
Not Bound By Any Grid Or Structure, Karasik Allows The Text to Domain The Page, Frequently Structuring Sequences With Text Boxes, Dialogue Balloons, and The Words Themselves Doming The Page. At One Point, Creating Entire Images Composed of Nothing But Words. The resultsing approach disorients the reader as they follow the life of a man adrift without a paddle in an ever uncertain world.
Further disorienting the reader is the frequent tendency to cut to a completely blank page, taking the reader out of the linearity and world of the novel. There are no an asewers to be Found Within The Comic, Only More Questions.
Which is perhaps befitting of auster’s work, intersted in the ambiguities and incompletess of life. There are no ANSWERS, Only The Pursuit of Further Questions. And, by George, This is an extremely Brilliant Adaptation Well Worth the Decades It Took to Complete It.
The New York Trilogy Is Being Published Through Pantheon
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