Paul Auster, his trilogy, and psychogeography

In light of the recent departure of the American writer Paul Auster, I read his work "The New York Trilogy".

Auster, P., "The New York Trilogy", Faber & Faber, Kindle Edition

I realized that in his three novels ("City of Glass", "Ghosts" and "The Locked Room") there are psychogeographic elements.

If psychogeography is a practice or approach to urban geography that explores how urban environments influence people's emotions and behaviour, Auster explores New York City not only as a physical place but also as a space filled with symbolic and psychological meanings. 

In the trilogy, Auster uses New York as a backdrop to explore themes of identity, alienation, loneliness, and randomness. Characters like Daniel Quinn (alias William Wilson alias Paul Auster, self-cited) often wander the city, exploring its neighbourhoods and interacting with its inhabitants in ways that reflect their own internal crises.

"......More than anything else, however, what he liked to do was walk. Nearly every day, rain or shine, hot or cold, he would leave his apartment to walk through the city – never really going anywhere, but simply going wherever his legs happened to take him. New York was an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps, and no matter how far he walked, no matter how well he came to know its neighbourhoods and streets, it always left him with the feeling of being lost....."

(Auster, p. "The New York Trilogy (pp.3-4). Faber & Faber. Kindle Edition)

Auster often plays with the notion of the urban labyrinth, with his characters getting physically and metaphorically lost on the streets of New York. This creates a sense of disorientation and isolation, which contributes to the work's psychogeographic nature.

Auster also explores the concept of the flâneur, who contemplatively wanders the city, observing and reflecting on urban life. This type of exploration contributes to the feeling of psychogeographic immersion present in the trilogy.

"The City of Glass" is a psychogeographical significant noir: it recalls other visual/literary works such as "Following Piece" by Vito Acconci, "Suite Venitienne" by Sophie Calle or "The Man of the Crowd" by Edgar Allan Poe. Here, too, in a hallucinated and somewhat dark New York, the protagonist stalks Peter Stillman for about fifteen days, in an apparently casual wandering, whose itineraries will later reveal themselves, shown on the map, the disturbing drawing of the phrase "Tower of Babel ". 

"....Quinn was used to wandering. His excursions through the city had taught him to understand the connectedness of inner and outer. Using aimless motion as a technique of reversal, on his best days he could bring the outside in and thus usurp the sovereignty of inwardness. By flooding himself with externals, by drowning himself out of himself, he had managed to exert some small degree of control over his fits of despair. Wandering, therefore, was a kind of mindlessness. But following Stillman was not wandering....". 

(Auster, P. "The New York Trilogy (pp.74). Faber & Faber. Kindle Edition)

The dialogues, narrative, and continuous cross-references between symbols of the past and words of the present have as a backdrop the city labyrinth and continuous psychogeographical references linked to casual wandering, the emotional, almost obsessive relationship with the urban environment and objects ( details) abandoned on the street as signs and meanings, and the alienation of identity in the container city.

"Stillman could wander, he could stagger like a blindman from one spot to another, but this was a privilege denied to Quinn. For he was obliged now to concentrate on what he was doing, even if it was next to nothing. Time and again his thoughts would begin to drift, and soon thereafter his steps would follow suit."

(Auster, P. "The New York Trilogy (pp.74-75). Faber & Faber. Kindle Edition)