City of Glass

Paul Auster, Duncan Macmillan

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786821713
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

When reclusive crime writer Daniel Quinn receives a mysterious call seeking a private detective in the middle of the night, he quickly and unwittingly becomes the protagonist in a thriller of his own. As the familiar territory of the noir detective genre gives way to something altogether more disturbing, Quinn becomes consumed by his mission, and begins to lose his grip on reality.

Absolute darkness.

NARRATOR (V.O): It was a wrong number that started it...

A sudden, shrill ring of a telephone. At first the sound, like the NARRATOR’s voice, appears to be coming from all-around us.

…The telephone ringing in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.

A bedside lamp is turned on in an adjoining room. Its light cuts geometrically through the darkness and falls onto the telephone, which rings again.

As for who Daniel Quinn was, there is little that need detain us.

The sounds of DANIEL QUINN, off, getting out of bed.

The telephone rings again.

We know, for example, that he was thirty-five years old. We know that he had once been married, had once been a father, and that both his wife and son were now dead.

As our eyes adjust to the light we can make out evidence of the family QUINN has lost – portraits of his wife and son, a child’s drawings pinned to a wall.

The telephone rings again.

We also know that he wrote books. To be precise, we know that he wrote mystery novels, under the name of William Wilson.

The bedroom door opens slowly, throwing light onto a poster for ‘Suicide Squeeze – a William Wilson Novel’. The poster depicts a Private Investigator, MAX WORK, dressed in a trench coat and trilby, standing under a street lamp on a rainy Manhattan street. The telephone rings again.

As a young man he had published several books of poetry, had written plays, critical essays, and had worked on a number of long translations. But quite abruptly, he had given up all that.

The door opens further, and our attention is drawn to shelves of books and stacks of manuscripts. Once a family home, the apartment has become the refuge of a reclusive author. A typewriter sits on a desk, surrounded by take-out cartons, strewn clothes, screwed-up balls of paper and an overflowing ashtray.

The telephone rings again.

It was then that he had taken on the name of William Wilson. A part of him had died and he did not want it coming back to haunt him.

DANIEL QUINN enters the room, approaches the telephone but hesitates.

As far as he could tell, no one knew his secret.

QUINN picks up the phone, mid-ring, and raises it to his ear.

QUINN: (Into phone.) Yes?

NARRATOR (V.O.): Much later he would conclude that nothing was real except chance. But that was much later. In the beginning, there was simply the event…

PETER STILLMAN (O.S.): (Barely audible.) Hello?

NARRATOR (V.O.): …and its consequences.

QUINN turns on a desk lamp. We can see his face properly for the first time.

QUINN: Who is this?

We cannot quite hear the voice on the other end – it’s mostly a crackling hiss of static. It is impossible to tell how old the speaker is, or what gender. Some neon street lights begin to flicker in the distance.

I’m listening. Who is this?

PETER STILLMAN (O.S.): (Barely audible.) Is this Paul Auster? I would like to speak to Mr Paul Auster.

The static crackle of the line becomes louder, like the sound of blood rushing to your head.

QUINN: There is no one here by that name.

PETER STILLMAN (O.S.): (Barely audible.) Paul Auster. Of the Auster Detective Agency.

QUINN: I’m sorry. You must have the wrong number.

PETER STILLMAN (O.S.): (Barely audible.) This is a matter of utmost urgency.

QUINN: There’s nothing I can do for you. There is no Paul Auster here.

PETER STILLMAN (O.S.): (Barely audible.) You don’t understand…

Somehow, the urgency of the caller’s voice makes the following words audible to us, as if we are, for a moment, inside QUINN’s head:

…time is running out.

A beat.

QUINN: (A little shaken.) Then I suggest you dial again. This is not a detective agency.

QUINN hangs up. He looks at the phone for a moment.

NARRATOR (V.O.): For a brief moment Quinn regretted having been so abrupt with the caller. It might have been interesting, he thought, to have played along with him a little.

QUINN picks up the receiver again and holds it to his ear. The dial tone sounds. He listens to it for a moment.

He tried to imagine what his fictional detective, Max Work, would have said to the stranger on the phone.

All the color in the room bleaches away. QUINN looks over to the poster of MAX WORK, which begins to move. WORK speaks into a payphone.

MAX WORK: Yes? Who’s asking?

WORK turns his back, conspiratorially, to take the call and make notes.

NARRATOR (V.O.): Quinn had, of course, stopped thinking of himself as real. But his detective necessarily had to be real. The nature of the books demanded it. Work had become a presence in Quinn’s life, his interior brother, his comrade in solitude.

QUINN gradually lowers the receiver. Time appears to slow, the dial tone elongating and falling in pitch. The flickering neon lights through the windows slow.

Quinn no longer wished to be dead. At the same time, it cannot be said that he was glad to be a...