Fantasmas

New York Trilogy #2

by Paul Auster, Maribel de Juan (Translator)

El caso parecía bastante sencillo. El señor Blanco, que apareció un día repentinamente, cuando en la vida del detective Azul parecía que ya nada iba a cambiar, quería que Azul siguiera a un hombre llamado Negro, que lo vigilara sin pausa todo el tiempo que hiciera falta. Azul necesitaba un trabajo y no hizo demasiadas preguntas, aunque sospechara desde un principio que Blanco no era el hombre que decía ser. Lo que el detective no sabía era que el caso duraría años, y que cuando desvelara el misterio, o le pusiera un final, si es que a aquello puede llamársele un final, lo que descubriría sería quizá su propio misterio, lo que atisbaría sería su propio final... Situada entre los laberintos detectivescos de Chandler y los páramos existenciales de Beckett, Fantasmas comienza con todos los requisitos de una novela policíaca, pero adquiere muy pronto, y sin perder nada de su suspense, una dimensión metafísica. Y el lector se desliza de un misterio policíaco a un enigma metafísico, de la pregunta «¿quién es el culpable?», a otra mucho más difícil de responder, «¿qué es ser culpable?»

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, American, Crime, Novels, 20th Century, Literature

128 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Paul Auster was the bestselling author of 4 3 2 1, Bloodbath Nation, Baumgartner, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature. Among his other honors are the Prix Médicis Étranger for Leviathan, the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke, and the Premio Napoli for Sunset Park. In 2012, he was the first recipient of the NYC Literary Honors in the category of fiction. He was also a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions), the PEN/Faulkner Award (The Music of Chance), the Edgar Award (City of Glass), and the Man Booker Prize (4 3 2 1). Auster was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He died at age seventy-seven in 2024.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update - This is my very favorite Paul Auster novel. Paul Auster died this past week at age 77. He was a true light on the American literary scene.

-------------

Paul Auster's Ghosts (1983) reads like the square root of a hard-boiled detective noir novel, an off-the-wall, bizarre mystery where there is no crime and the whodunit is replaced by a meditation on the nature of identity. Here are the opening few line: "First of all there is Blue. Later there is White, and then there is Black, and before the beginning there is Brown. Brown broke him in, Brown taught him the ropes, and when Brown grew old, Blue took over."

Blue is a detective and it is Blue we follow on every page of this sparse (less than 100 pages) novel set in 1947 New York City. Actually, this is the 2nd of the author's The New York Trilogy, bookended by City of Glass and The Locked Room.

To gain an initial feel for the novel, please go to Youtube and watch a snippet of one of those 1940s black-and-white noir films, like The Naked City. You will see lots of hard-talking tough guys in gray suits and gray hats running around city streets socking one another in the jaw and plugging one another with bullets -- plenty of action to be sure. And that's exactly the point - a world chock-full of police, detectives, crooks and dames is a world of action.

But what happens when one of those 1940s detectives is put on a case where all action is stripped away, when the only thing the detective has to do is look out his apartment window and keep an eye on a man across the street in another apartment sitting at his desk reading or writing? This is exactly what happens in Ghosts. So, rather than providing a more detailed synopsis of the story (actually, there is some action and interaction), I will cite several of Blue's musing along with my brief comments on Blue's relationship to literary and artistic creation:

"Until now, Blue has not had much chance for sitting still, and this new idleness has left him at something of a loss. For the first time in his life, he finds that he has been thrown back on himself, with nothing to grab hold of, nothing to distinguish one moment from the next. He has never given much through to the world inside him, and through he always knew it was there, it has remained an unknown quantity, unexplored and therefore dark, even to himself."

So, for the first time in his life, Blue is given a taste of silence and solitude, the prime experience of someone who is a writer.

"More than just helping to pass the time, he discovers that making up stories can be a pleasure in itself."

Removed from the world of action and building on his experience of silence and solitude, Blue is also given a hint of what it might mean to be a fiction writer, one who sits in isolation, exploring the inner world of imagination in order to create stories. And, on the topic of stories, the unnamed narrator conveys how Blue reflects on many stories, including the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, stories from the lives of Walk Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, and several stories Blue reads in his all-time favorite magazine: True Detective. Auster's short novel is teeming with stories.

"For the first time in his experience of writing reports, he discovers that words do not necessarily work, that it is possible for them to obscure the things they are trying to say."

Blue discerns it is possible that words cannot adequately articulate the depth and full range of human experience. And what is true of a detective's report is truer for works of great literature: there is a rich, vital, vibrant world of feeling and imagination beyond the confines of words and language.

"Finally mustering the courage to act, Blue reaches into his bag of disguises and casts about for a new identity. After dismissing several possibilities, he settles on an old man who used to beg on the corner of his neighborhood when he was a bog - a local character by the name of Jimmy Rose - and decks himself out in the garb of tramphood ."

During the course of the novel, Blue takes on a number of different identities and with each new persona he experiences life with a kind of immediacy and intensity. Spending a measure of his creative life as a screenwriter and director, Paul Auster undoubtedly had many encounters with actors thriving on their roles, energized and invigorated as they performed for the camera. I suspect Auster enjoyed placing his detective main character in the role of actor at various points.

Ghosts can be read as a prompt to question how identity is molded by literature and the arts. How dependent are we on stories for an understanding of who we are? In what ways do the arts influence and expand our sense of self? Do we escape purposelessness and boredom by participating in the imaginative worlds of art and literature?

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the drudgery of a private eye, there is no romance… To spy is a burden…

But the present is no less dark than the past, and its mystery is equal to anything the future might hold. Such is the way of the world: one step at a time, one word and then the next.

To watch a man from day to day is a tedious onus… Especially if a man does practically nothing. Then the watcher begins to imagine stories to make the life of the watched and one’s own more interesting.
However, the main thing is to find out who watches the watcher… And that’s where all the psychological games begin...

[Nick Grammos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel renewed by the lovely prose and uncanny ability of Paul Auster, now from the grave, to retell that our existence is still a mystery. Ghosts is a little like reading Kafka using Camus as a guide, set in New York 1940s with a gumshoe protagonist. Blue (everyone is a colour) is a detective, given an assignment without clarity of purpose. Camus’ absurd came to mind. We seek purpose and meaning from the universe. But when we ask it a question, we receive silence in return. That yawning gap, that chasm in understanding is the Absurd. I find it a comforting notion when I read it and it helps to know that there are no answers. Less energy is expended that way.

Blue’s assignment is to watch a fellow called Black. Black, he discovers is a writer. He follows Black for a few days when he wanders around New York and then watches him from the window opposite. Writing is a dull, repetitive business and the unglamorous side is well expressed since all Blue does is watch Black hunched over his desk. All the time for days and weeks. That much effort watching very little is exasperating and that is where I am reminded of the endless pursuit of answers by Joseph K in The Trial; or, the helpless efforts of Gregor Samsa as an insect, lying on his back in bed, rendered helpless and incapable of moving apart from flailing about with his new legs.

The day continues to pass. Once again, Blue falls into step with Black, perhaps even more harmoniously than before. In doing so, he discovers the inherent paradox of his situation. For the closer he feels to Black, the less he finds it necessary to think about him. In other words, the more deeply entangled he becomes, the freer he is. What bogs him down is not involvement but separation. For it is only when Black seems to drift away from him that he must go on looking for him, and this takes time and effort, not to speak of struggle.

Blue’s task seems pointless. He writes reports every week and duly gets paid for his time. But he does gain insights. He sees a mirror of himself in Black.

he finds himself thinking about things that have never occurred to him before, and this, too, has begun to trouble him. I thinking is perhaps too strong a word at this point at this point, a slightly more modest term- speculation, for example- would not be far from the mark. To speculate, from the Latin speculates, meaning to spy out, to observe, and linked to the word speculum, meaning mirror or looking glass. For in spying out at Black across the street, it is as though Blue were looking into a mirror, and instead of watching another, he finds that he is also watching himself.

I read this because it’s short and filled in tired hours travelling and after reading Glenn Russell’s tribute soon after Auster died a few days ago it seemed just right. Reading a dead author’s words, having read them before, is like seeing a phantom passing by. Or like seeing again what I didn’t see the first time.

Lucid prose with fine ideas.

[Peiman · Rating 3 out of 5]

سه‌گانه نیویورک
جلد دوم: ارواح
داستان کتاب دوم از سه‌گانه‌ی نیویورک جایی شروع میشه که آقای سفید به آقای آبی که یک کارآگاه خصوصیه مراجعه می‌کنه و ازش میخواد که آقای سیاه رو تحت تعقیب و مراقبت قرار بده و به صورت هفتگی گزارش کار براش بفرسته و برای راحتی کار یه آپارتمان روبروی منزل آقای سیاه براش اجاره کرده. خب ابتدای کار به نظر میاد با یک داستان جنایی-کارآگاهی سر و کار داریم اما هر چی جلو میریم از جنبه‌ی کارآگاهی داستان کم و به جنبه‌ی فلسفی داستان افزوده میشه. جلد سوم رو هم باید بخونم برای نظر دادن.ه

[David Carrasco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagínate a un hombre encerrado en una habitación durante meses, vigilando a otro hombre que no hace nada. No, no es Gran Hermano, ni otra sátira burocrática de Kafka. Es Fantasmas, la segunda novela de la Trilogía de Nueva York de Paul Auster, y sí, es exactamente lo que acabo de decir: un hombre mirando a otro, día tras día, sin saber bien por qué. Como un Wakefield moderno, pero sin la dignidad decimonónica: aquí no hay bigotes, ni sotanas, ni una esposa esperándole al otro lado de la calle. Solo el ruido blanco del tiempo pasando. Y el abismo que se abre cuando uno lleva demasiado tiempo mirando.

La premisa es sencilla, casi infantil en su planteamiento: el detective Azul es contratado por un tal Blanco para vigilar a un hombre llamado Negro. Azul se instala en un apartamento al otro lado de la calle y comienza su vigilancia. Lo que empieza como un relato detectivesco se disuelve pronto en una espera sin propósito, un limbo narrativo en el que el detective —y el lector— van perdiendo lentamente la noción de qué se está investigando exactamente. Como si el caso se evaporara en el aire junto con los días. Como si lo importante no fuera la resolución, sino el desgaste.

Y cuando uno ya se ha acomodado en la silla esperando pistas, sospechosos y un final cerrado, Auster se levanta, apaga la lámpara y cambia las reglas del juego. Se quita la máscara de la novela de género y empieza a jugar abiertamente con el simbolismo, con el lenguaje como trampa y con la identidad como un juego de espejos rotos. Más que un relato, Fantasmas es una pieza minimalista, seca como una página en blanco, donde lo realmente importante es esa tensión sorda entre lo que se muestra y lo que no termina de cobrar sentido.

Auster parece escribir como quien se desliza por un pasillo ajeno, dejándote con la certeza de que lo más importante ya ha ocurrido… pero fuera de plano. Aunque no en un sentido melodramático o conspirativo, sino más bien el hecho de que no pase nada sustancial y que eso sea deliberado. Hay una economía extrema del lenguaje y de la acción, y el peso está en las repeticiones, las dudas, la erosión del tiempo. Azul observa, describe, anota… pero cuanto más mira, menos entiende. Y eso se traslada al lenguaje: frases contenidas, gestos mínimos, todo parece estar encerrado en un silencio narrativo que no esconde nada: solo confirma que quizás no hay nada que descubrir. Es el vacío lo que inquieta. Como si Samuel Beckett y Raymond Chandler se hubieran emborrachado juntos y escrito una novela de un solo personaje que cree ser dos.

Hay un desapego casi clínico del narrador —que se mantiene en tercera persona con un foco muy estrecho sobre Azul— pero eso es solo la superficie. Poco a poco, van apareciendo migas de pan hacia algo más profundo, una inquietud que no se llega a nombrar pero que está siempre ahí. Es, en cierto sentido, el narrador perfecto para una novela de vigilancia: parece limitarse a describir lo que ve, como si redactara un informe frío, pero la mirada se va contaminando con sospechas, repeticiones y una claustrofobia creciente.

El juego de los nombres por colores —Blanco, Negro, Azul— no es una rareza gratuita. Es una depuración casi obsesiva. Como si Auster quisiera despojar a los personajes de toda biografía y anécdota para que no se nos escape lo importante: que son roles intercambiables, figuras en un tablero, fantasmas. El detective termina pareciéndose tanto al hombre que vigila que uno ya no sabe quién espía a quién. Azul proyecta sobre Negro sus miedos, su soledad, sus dudas existenciales. Y lo más inquietante es que no está claro si ese otro realmente existe o es solo una coartada narrativa para hablar de sí mismo.

Por momentos, Fantasmas parece una relectura posmoderna de Wakefield, el cuento de Hawthorne donde un hombre se marcha de casa para observar su vida desde fuera, sin intervenir en ella. Pero donde Hawthorne trazaba un retrato moral del autoexilio, Auster lo convierte en una meditación desolada sobre la identidad como construcción artificial. Si Wakefield regresaba, era porque aún creía tener un hogar. Pero aquí no hay regreso posible. Solo un presente dilatado hasta el delirio, como una habitación mal ventilada donde los días se oxidan.

Bajo la superficie, lo que Auster parece estar contando es el vacío que queda cuando uno pierde las coordenadas que lo atan al mundo: el nombre, la ocupación, el deseo. Fantasmas es un descenso a ese lugar donde ya no hay sujeto, ni objeto, ni propósito. Solo una vigilancia estéril. Un narrador atrapado en su propio lenguaje. Un personaje que se ha convertido en autor de su propia vigilancia. Si Ciudad de cristal jugaba con la disolución del yo a través del lenguaje, aquí Auster va un paso más allá: nos muestra al yo atrapado en la mirada. Porque mirar sin actuar también es una forma de desaparecer.

Por eso esta novela, que a primera vista puede parecer un ejercicio de estilo o una ocurrencia formal —lo es, y muy bien hecha—, acaba resonando más de lo que uno espera. Es como una pesadilla suave, sin sobresaltos, donde todo parece en orden pero nada encaja. Y de pronto uno descubre que lleva páginas enteras leyendo sobre un hombre que mira por la ventana y que, sin saber cómo, está atrapado con él. Como si el propio lector fuera también Azul. O Negro. O el que escribe. ¿Y si Auster nos estuviera vigilando a nosotros desde la página siguiente?

Es difícil saber cuál es la intención última de Auster, y sospecho que ahí está parte del juego. Pero si hay una tesis escondida, una intuición que recorre las páginas como un susurro, tal vez sea esta: que escribir y vigilar son lo mismo. Que la ficción es una forma de espionaje existencial. Que leer —como Azul frente a Negro— es mirar hacia algo sin saber si está vivo, si es real o si somos nosotros proyectando nuestras ansias sobre un cuerpo inmóvil. Y eso tiene algo de estremecedor.

A diferencia de otras novelas de Auster, aquí la abstracción es más pronunciada, el anclaje emocional más tenue. No hay giros espectaculares ni tramas secundarias. Fantasmas se sostiene sobre su propia rareza. Es un relato que se niega a cerrar, como una puerta entreabierta por donde uno solo ve niebla. Y, sin embargo, es precisamente esa negativa a dar respuestas la que lo convierte en una lectura hipnótica, casi adictiva. Uno sigue leyendo porque necesita saber si algo va a cambiar. Pero lo que cambia no es la historia. Es uno mismo.

Fantasmas no es una novela de sobremesa. Es más bien ese tipo de relato breve que te lanza al vacío y te deja colgando, preguntándote si lo que acabas de leer era una historia o un sueño con forma de ensayo filosófico. Lo dejo en cuatro estrellas, no por falta de admiración —la tengo—, sino porque su inteligencia no siempre encuentra un eco emocional en mí. Me pasó también con Ciudad de cristal : la fascinación intelectual es enorme, pero a veces siento que los personajes ya no sufren, solo significan. Lo que Auster propone es fascinante, sí, pero también desestabilizador. Hay que leerlo sabiendo que aquí nada se resuelve, que los personajes son sombras con nombre de color y que todo —el apartamento, el narrador, incluso tú como lector— parece estar al borde de desintegrarse. Fantasmas funciona más como una pieza de cámara experimental: brillante, perturbadora, pero también más fría y esquiva. Es una obra que impacta más en el plano intelectual que en el visceral.

Y sí, Auster está afinadísimo, pero aquí el lector tiene que poner mucho de su parte, y eso puede dejar fuera a quienes buscan un tipo de novela más envolvente o emocionalmente intensa. Es deliberado, claro, pero eso también le resta algo de alcance. No es una lectura para quien busque emoción o trama, sino para quien se atreva a habitar la incertidumbre. Y aun así, o precisamente por eso, hay algo en esta segunda entrega que se queda dando vueltas en la cabeza, como un eco. Sí; como un fantasma.

Así que sí, es una novela rara. Una novela breve y extrañamente densa. Una de esas historias que parece no avanzar pero que te dejan con la sensación de haber cruzado un umbral. Como si alguien te hubiera vigilado mientras leías y ahora supiera algo de ti que tú aún no sabes. Fantasmas no es solo la historia de un hombre que observa, sino un espejo roto que te devuelve mil imágenes distorsionadas de ti mismo. Leerla es aceptar que, a veces, ser espectador no significa estar afuera, sino estar perdido en un laberinto sin mapa. Y cuando crees haber encontrado la salida, descubres que la verdadera sombra acechante está justo dentro, susurrándote que quizás, en esta novela, el verdadero fantasma… eres tú.

[Keith Bruton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I preferred 'City of Glass'. The story felt slow, long winded and repetitive most of the way through as if Auster wanted to reach his word count.

The characters names are Blue, Black, White... which made it annoying at times. Auster is a brilliant writer and the ending is good but you could see it coming. I wished it had more dialouge and action.

[Nad Gandia]

“Desear haber dicho no es ya haber dicho si”

“Los libros hay que leerlos tan pausada y cautelosamente como fueron escritos”

“Escribir es una actividad solitaria. Se apodera de tu vida. En cierto sentido, un escritor no tiene vida propia.”

“No estoy hablando de deseo, tanto como de conocimiento, del descubrimiento que de dos personas, a través del deseo, pueden crear algo más poderoso de lo que ninguno de ellos podría crear solo. “

La segunda parte de la llamada “Trilogía de Nueva York” me ha encantado. No tiene una estructura demasiado común.
Auster, es otro de esos escritores que utiliza la literatura para jugar. No a modo de desprecio, sino todo lo contrario. Para jugar con la literatura se precisa de una mano de cirujano, de un dominio de la cadencia y la narrativa casi absolutos. Lo va consiguiendo con el paso de los años, toda su bibliografía es muestra de ello.
Paul Auster, al igual que muchos otros escritores, se dedicaba a mejorar su calidad de vida de la mejor forma que podía, en este caso, traduciendo algunos libros del francés. Anduvo probando con mucha clase de historias hasta que al final, nunca mejor dicho, dio con la tecla adecuada. Lo que hizo fue una novela de corte popular, pero con una estructura muy de su estilo, una novela negra. Y es que, precisamente, esa mezcla de género con metaliteratura convierte a Paul Auster en todo un maestro en hacer lo que le da la gana con las palabras, también con el lector.
Me quedan muchos libros por delante de este autor, a propósito de esta segunda entrega, para quien le guste escribir, casi que viene como anillo al dedo, ya que habla del oficio de escribir y como uno de esos personajes puede cobrar vida a través de un imaginario muy concreto. Imaginación a raudales con este Auster.

[Nickolas B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ο Γουάιτ προσλαμβάνει τον Μπλου για να παρακολουθήσει τον Μπλακ. Ο Μπλακ είναι μαθητής του Μπράουν και έμπειρος ντετέκτιβ, όμως θα εμπλακεί σε μια ιστορία στην οποία θα αρχίσει σιγά σιγά να διαπιστώνει πως από κυνηγός μετατρέπεται σε θύμα μέσα σε μια πολύ περίεργη ιστορία...
Σε γενικές γραμμές αυτή είναι η ιστορία αυτού του διηγήματος στο οποίο ο Όστερ μας δίνει όλα τα στοιχεία για να λύσουμε έναν περίεργο αλλά γοητευτικό γρίφο. Όσο η υπόθεση εκτυλίσσεται τόσο ο αναγνώστης ταυτίζεται με τον Μπλου αλλά και αγωνιά για την λύση του μυστηρίου αλλά και την κατάληξη της ιστορία.
Απλή γραφή, έξυπνα στημένη υπόθεση και νουάρ ατμόσφαιρα. Χρειάζεται κάτι άλλο ένα βιβλίο για να τραβήξει την προσοχή μας;
4/5

[Bob Redmond · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the first volume of the NY trilogy (CITY OF GLASS), Auster explored identity and language. In this second, his fractal inquiry turns towards the question of authorship and, by necessity, readership.

The plot runs on one level (like the first book) as a detective story, summarized neatly from the back cover thus: "Blue, a student of Brown, has been hired by White to spy on Black. From a rented room on Orange Street, Blue keeps watch out his window, making notes about his subject, who sits across the street in another rented room, staring out of _his_ window."

Auster spins a plot marked typically (for him) by doublings, parallels, erasures, Mobius twists and a dramatic conclusion. The ultimate whodunit, meanwhile, resides with existential questions raised by Pascal (a favorite source of Auster's), and Thoreau. The former figures in a previous book of essays, called INVENTION OF SOLITUDE, in which Auster quotes him numerous times: "All the unhappiness of man stems from one thing only: that he is incapable of staying quietly in his room."

Auster's inquiry gets more dramatic treatment in the fictional Trilogy; in GHOSTS, Thoreau's work makes a prominent appearance, as Blue discovers while snooping that Black is reading WALDEN. For most of rest of GHOSTS, Blue grapples with WALDEN, both the experience of reading it and the questions it raises.

Why do we do the things we do, particularly suffer destructive encounters with other humans? Why don't we all move out to the pond and live as satisfied hermits? "Because," says one of Auster's characters in a climactic scene (p.75): "Because he needs me… he needs my eyes looking at him. He needs me to prove he's alive."

But if this proof resolves one thing, it unearths multiple more unknowns. In less than 100 pages, Auster makes these phantoms visible, with thrilling and unsettling results.


*

WHY I READ THIS BOOK: I'm re-reading the New York Trilogy. See Volume 1 (CITY OF GLASS) for the whys and wherefores.

[Jim Leckband · Rating 4 out of 5]

Auster is playing with you from the start. When you are given characters name Black, White and Blue, you know you are in a realm of unreality. Since I just finished the first book in the New York Trilogy (City of Glass) I knew Auster was really infatuated with the author/reader/book "space" where what was of interest to him was not the plot/characters/"point" of the novel, but in how the reader responds to what he reads of the author's words, in how the reader re-formulates the story/characters in his head. This re-formulation is where Auster has staked his claim. He no longer wants it be the elephant in the room, he is dragging it out in front of it by the trunk!

The wonder of the book is that his sentence to sentence writing is somehow magically interesting. The danger is that this type of conceited (i.e. it has a trick or "conceit") writing can leave the reader with a big case of the "who cares?". But I think he pulls it off with his writing.

As far as the book - well, my running hypothesis was that the book was a metaphor for the act of reading and writing a novel, with one character being the writer, one the reader, and one the publisher - the one who actually sends it out into the world. More than "City of Glass", this one got me thinking of the act of creation as I was reading it.

And once again, I start out giving the book three stars, and then once I write the review, I find out I've really written a four star review...I guess I really liked it.

[Paria · Rating 5 out of 5]

دومین جلد از سه گانه ی نیویورک
یه اثر پست مدرن و بسیااار خاص و متفاوت از پل استر. کتابی که ظاهر کاراگاهی داره ولی درون مایه ی کاملا متفاوتی داره. یک کاراگاه خصوصی برای زیر نظر داشتن یه شخص و حل یه معما استخدام میشه، معمایی که هرگز حل نمیشه. اما همه چیز شکل متفاوتی به خودش میگیره، تا حدی درون طرف مقابل غرق میشه که اون شخص رو در درون خودش حس میکنه و حتی گاهی شک میکنه آیا کسی که اون رو زیر نظر گرفته واقعا وجود خارجی داره یا نه.. 

فرم و شکل داستان انقدر خاصه که نمیدونم چطوری باید توصیفش کنم. بسیار کتاب جذاب و متفاوتیه. با وجود اینکه پایان کتاب بازه، نه تنها جذابیت کتاب رو کم نمیکنه بلکه بیشتر هم میکنه. از طرف دیگه نحوه ی نام گذاری توی کتاب خیلی جالبه. شخصیت های کتاب با اسم رنگ ها شناخته میشن. در کل اثار پل استر فضای کاملا متفاوتی دارن.

[Harun Ahmed · Rating 5 out of 5]

গোয়েন্দা গল্পের নিরীহ মোড়কে শ্বাসরুদ্ধকর মনস্তাত্ত্বিক ও দার্শনিক উপাখ্যান। মারাত্মক!

[merixien · Rating 4 out of 5]

İlk kitap çok daha ilgi çekiciydi ama bu da bir yere kadar peşinden sürüklemeye devam ediyor. Zaten oldukça kısa bir kitap o yüzden üçlemeyi bozmadan okumaya değer.

[Joshua Gonsalves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Auster follows up what I believe to be a near flawless masterpiece with a poignant tragi-something that plays out like one extended...something. There is no denying that the book really IS something.

With its own style of wit, mystery, and tragedy, Ghosts largely consists of the most intentionally boring and bland detective story ever. A guy named Blue has just been hired to spy on this other guy named Black. He sits in the apartment from the opposite side of Black's and observes him, often getting bored and exhausted and all that. Sometimes, Black actually (GASP) leaves his home and takes a walk, maybe visits a bookstore. Auster gets the reader so pumped when his characters actually step outside. And yet the book is never really boring. As a matter of fact, these extended stretches of time that depict minimalist tendencies bordering on their most extreme are kind of fun to read in a unique way only an author like Auster can really pull off.

While more mature and perhaps less flawed overall, Ghosts unfortunately doesn't come close to matching the brilliance of its predecessor. However, that's really just me. Plenty of people who hated City of Glass would probably be able to at least tolerate this. After all, it isn't even one hundred pages!

Another fun thing to note:

The book is filled with literary and otherwise art-based references, whether they be to Walt Whitman or Robert Mitchum. Most notably, Thoreau's Walden plays a very similar role to that of Don Quixote in the previous novella in the trilogy. It helps reestablish many of the novella's central themes, concepts, plot points (although the plot of this book is clearly quite loose), and so on. Really, this book is just about some guy alone observing what (the Walden pond/Black) inhabits the outside of his apartment (cabin) and writing it all down, including all sorts of records of philosophical thoughts or encounters, any event that could possibly be noteworthy.

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading Ghosts, I had the bizarre feeling, the whole time, that I'd read the story before. That I'd read about this premise being played out somewhere else. In any case, I think I've got more of a handle on the kind of story Paul Auster is telling. It's definitely not a clear-cut detective novel -- I didn't expect it to be, but some people tried to read it and the first book, at least, in that way.

It's oddly absorbing despite the quiet feel of it; I read it more or less in one sitting. It's very odd. Quiet, like I said, with lots of space to think.

[Marisol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Como simulando un ejercicio de algún taller de escritura creativa, Paul Auster en esta segunda parte de su trilogía de New York, utiliza nombres de colores para sus personajes:

Azul para el detective 🕵🏻
Café para el antiguo jefe de Azul.
Blanco para el que contrata a Azul.
Negro para el que persigue Blanco.

Azul es detective y ha batallado para mantener a flote el negocio a partir de la jubilación de café, pero Blanco aparece para encargarle un trabajo bien remunerado y fácil, tiene que vigilar todo el día a Negro, inclusive vivir en un lugar frente a la vivienda de Negro, mandará reportes semanales y así mismo recibirá un cheque semanal hasta nueva orden.

Un trabajo que en inicio parece fácil se va convirtiendo en una pesada carga que llevar, hora tras hora, sobre todo porque la mayor parte del tiempo Negro se la pasa escribiendo, sin recibir visitas y saliendo a lo indispensable, día tras día Azul empieza a aislarse, debido a esta vigilancia constante, también conforme los meses pasan, empieza primero a cuestionarse, luego a cuestionar el fin de toda esta vigilancia, hasta convertir el asunto en una investigación personal: .¿quien es blanco y porque investiga a negro?, ¿quien es negro?

Hay muchos temas que van emergiendo con el relato y que obsesionan al escritor, la escritura, siempre la escritura, presentada en este caso como un ejercicio monótono y cíclico, este ejercicio de Azul viendo día tras día a Negro en el acto de escribir ✍️ nos enfrenta a la realidad del escritor, a la soledad que representa perderse en sus palabras, oraciones, párrafos, en como este acto, te aísla de todo y de todos.

También nos habla de la existencia, en cómo todos los distractores que tenemos, desde las personas, las cosas, los entretenimientos, sirven para que no cuestionemos nuestra existencia y el sentido de la misma, que pasaría si durante meses no pudiéramos tener esos recursos, como reaccionaríamos, seríamos diferentes, más conscientes de nosotros mismos o no, y otra reflexión es que existimos debido a qué hay otro que confirma nuestra existencia, por qué nos ve, por qué nos escucha o simplemente porque a través de sus ojos podemos vernos y saber que realmente estamos aquí.

Aunque los temas son buenos, y el desenlace está bien armado, me fui desconectando de la historia, no encontré un valor agregado en la narración, ni en los acontecimientos, para mi eran aislados y no me aportaban nada. Tampoco encontré en que conectaba la historia con Nueva York, podría haberse ambientado en cualquier ciudad y hubiera funcionado igual, tampoco hacía uso de la ciudad como instrumento o herramienta.

Empecé muy arriba con Ciudad de cristal, el primero de la trilogía, pero este segundo me ha parecido menor en calidad y en expresividad.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I jumped straight from City of Glass into this second part of the NYC Trilogy, and it suffered by comparison. It is not a sequel per se, because it has different characters and is set in the late 1940s instead of the early 1980s, but it shares some of the same concerns (with literature, identity, doubling, the essential otherness of the writer, and so on) and again is a sort of metafictional mystery.

Part of why I couldn’t take this novella entirely seriously is the silly naming: White hires Blue to trail Black (really; all of the secondary characters are named after colors, too). It turns out Black is a writer who does little besides sit in his apartment, writing. Only when Blue disguises himself as a tramp and then as a salesman and meets Black in various other contexts does he realize that Black, too, is an investigator ... writing up a case of following a writer who hardly leaves his desk.

While I appreciated the circularity and the uncertainty over whether these accidental twins would destroy each other, as well as the literary references to Whitman, Thoreau and Hawthorne, the whole felt slightly inconsequential (“Blue watches Black, and little of anything happens.”). Plotlessness is part of the point, but makes for only a moderately interesting read.

There is one coded reference to Auster here: the fact that the book opens on February 3, 1947, the day he was born.

[Bruno · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Escribir es una actividad solitaria. Se apodera de tu vida. En cierto sentido, un escritor no tiene vida propia. Incluso cuando está ahí, no está realmente ahí.

Otro fantasma».

Esta es la historia de un detective que es contratado, de manera bastante misteriosa, para vigilar a un hombre aparentemente anodino y solitario. Este caso se va convirtiendo en una dura prueba de paciencia e introspección, mientras se genera un vínculo estrecho entre el acechador y el acechado. Auster se sirve de esto para crear una especie de relación lúdica entre ambos, en donde la persecución parece virar a un juego de espejos que se puede prestar a mil interpretaciones.

Debo decir que, sumando el tinte metafísico de la narración, la especie de niebla que parece empañar toda noción de objetividad y los inteligentes diálogos entre los protagonistas, crean en conjunto una sensación de genialidad que es difícil pasar por alto.

Creo que, en resumen, Fantasmas se podría definir como una pequeña gran genialidad de Paul Auster.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second novella in Paul Auster’s debut New York Trilogy is even more creepy than the first.

“First of all there is Blue. Later there is White, and then there is Black, and before the beginning there is Brown.” This opening sentence already had my head spinning. What do these colors mean? Need I remember them? Like a taxi or limo driver who keeps speeding up and slowing down, Auster does this to the reader’s mind. One is either worried or a bit bored. Neither state lasts long.

I’ll give you a hint, as the author does in the next sentence. Blue is a private detective. White appears and gives him an assignment to follow Black for as long as is necessary. It becomes a long time and following Blue as a reader is about as exciting as it is for Blue to follow Black.

Still the tension mounts for all 72 pages until a startling denouement ends the story. At that point this reader forgot she was ever bored. She felt like she should have seen it coming. Looking back in my mind I could see the whole plot though while reading I was not sure there was a plot.

Now I must read the third soon.

[Darwin8u · Rating 3 out of 5]

An uncanny valley of Gaddis IMHO. 'Ghosts', the second book in Auster's 'New York Trilogy' reminds me what I both like and don't like about MFA writers. Often clever and grammatically precise but they don't say so much. If they were painters their perspective would be perfect and their posters would sell, but the pigment or texture or something between the edges is just missing that undercurrent of something to give a real shit about.

[Shauny Free Palestine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ghosts is the second book in the New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster, and like the first story, it’s a strange detective story, where it’s very hard to distinguish between fact and fiction. The main character is an unreliable narrator, who has been assigned to spends his days observing another gentleman who lives in an apartment across the street.

The story is dream-like and Kafka-esque, and it’s clear Auster was influenced by neo-noir films. At one point, the character even mentions a classic thriller named Out of the Past, starring Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas.

Ghosts is an interesting post-modern exercise that is hard to define or fully comprehend after a single read. Even if I didn’t pick up on every element of its cryptic underlying message, I can confidently say I enjoyed it, especially when the protagonist drops titbits of information, such as how the Brooklyn bridge was made, or some interesting anecdotes reading the writers of Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Overall, not quite as satisfying as City of Glass, but a worthy sequel in the trilogy.

[محمد فرد · Rating 3 out of 5]

یکی از اون کاراست که نوشتن در موردش کمی سخته.
چرا؟ چون عملا با تمام چیزهایی که فراگرفتیم متفاوته و از سویی لذت‌بخش هم نیست. اما کارش رو انجام می‌ده. یعنی توی سیستمی که خلق می‌کنه درست پیش می‌ره.
تو این‌طور مواقع آدم می‌مونه که با توجه به انتظاراتش داستان رو قضاوت کنه یا با توجه به همون چیزی که کتاب سعی در بیانش داشته. به هر حال ما با شیوه‌ی دوم قضاوت می‌کنیم کار رو اما پیش از اون به نظرم لازمه بدونید که با چه نوع اثری سروکار خواهید داشت.

داستان به‌شدت توصیفیه و درونی. خبری از تصویر سازی نیست. فضاسازی تقریبا وجود نداره و مدام این طور حس می‌کنید که دارید تعریفای یه نفر دیگه رو از یه داستان دیگه می‌خونید. این طور بگم که انگار این رو استر نوشته تا بعدا تبدیلش کنه به یه رمان هشتصد صفحه ای مثلا و خب وقتی دیده ملت از کارش استقبال کردن به‌عنوان یه اثر کامل بیرونش داده. در این حد.

اما داستان چند ویژگی جالب داره برای من. اول اینکه داستان فرم جنایی داره اما به هیچ وجه یه داستان چنایی نیست. با اینکه کارآگاه خصوصی و تعقیب و گریز رو توی خودش داره و تمام داستان ماجرای همین تعقیبه، اما بیشتر از اینکه به این تعقیب کسالت‌بار بپردازه به درونیان شخصیت اصلی پرداخته. به افکارش و زندگیش و...
یعنی قرار نیست شما خیلی شخصیت مورد تعقیب رو بشناسید، بیشتر از هر چیزی با خود کارآگاه همراه خواهید شد و اون رو درک می‌کنید.
کنار این اجازه بدید شخصیت‌پردازی واقعا محشر کار رو هم متذکر بشم. نویسنده طوری شخصیت‌ها رو معرفی کرده و توی داستان مدام به لایه‌های بعدیشون ��ارد شده که خواننده بی اینکه بدونه کی در مورد شخصیت‌ها خونده، بعد از پایان کتاب می‌تونه بر اساس منطقشون به سادگی تصمیم بگیره و...

ویژگی های خوب دیگه ای هم کتاب داره اما با این حال اصلا برای خوندن تفریحی توصیه‌اش نمی‌کنم، چون جدا لذت‌بخش نیست و قطعا کلافه خواهید شد. اما اگه یه روزی خواستید یه چیزی شبیه به طرح رمان بخونید شاید بتونید ازش لذت ببرید.
هرچند که تموم کردن اثر برای خود من یه شکنجه‌ی واقعی بود.
یا علی.

[Diego Lovegood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me gustó más que la primera parte. El juego especular entre todos los elementos del mundo es notable. Es muy inteligente Auster y amo las reflexiones literarias que hace. En el 1er libro fue con el Quijote y ahora con Walden.

[10wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Más que una novela policial es una novela sobre la existencia, la soledad y el sentido de la vida. Un relato que no pierde interés y te deja un poco desanimado.

[nazanin · Rating 3 out of 5]

متفاوته.

[Tommy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Could it be possible that Auster learned from his weaknesses? The first thing any reader of City of Glass would notice about this second installment is the sophomore effort is still shorter! Weighing in at only 96 pages, I wondered how many crises of existence Auster would try to cram into this one: love in the twentieth century; how far the hand of God reaches toward earth; life after death? But no, Auster sailed through this more complete and better work by picking up on his earlier theme of the relationship between an author and his subject and just staying on target. The result? A powerful vignette featuring basically anonymous figures (all the characters are named after colors) buoyed by Auster’s clean, compact style and simple plots. The tension here is more detectable to the reader. If the reader is jumping at Auster’s questions, he at least feels confident that he is guessing at answers to Auster’s puzzles, rather than imagining what Auster was trying to do in the first place. This is a vast improvement over City of Glass.
In Ghosts, the protagonist, Blue, another detective, is assigned to simply keep his private eye focused on a man living in a sparse apartment across the street, Black, and record all of his daily moves, down to the minute details. But all Black does all day is write. Bored and soon lost in his new role, Blue surrounds himself with images of his identity: photos of his parents (pre-Blue), reminders of the stories he forever wants to write, a snapshot with his happily-retired mentor, the movie plot he feels his own story should follow, a shot of his hero Jackie Robinson sliding into third, a portrait of Walt Whitman. Nothing of his current life, only where he has been and where he wants to go.
Becoming stir crazy in this absence of a fulfilling present, and although content with his paycheck, Blue decides to engage Black in a serious of plotted encounters, attempting to learn more about this shadowy character, and inevitably about himself in the process. Eventually, the walls between Black and Blue crumble, and Auster tips his hand as to the novel’s internal struggle: the tension between author and character. Which of the two writes and which acts, which records while the other creates?
We are left with a better sense of how an author struggles with his own characters in trying to avoid becoming the subject of everything he writes. It’s an endless circle, and one the author must inevitably travel alone. Black’s hobby turns out to be studying American writers in an “effort to understand things.” (That’s about as much specificity as we can expect out of Auster.) Black and Blue discuss Hawthorne’s shutting himself in his room for twelve years to write The Vicar of Wakefield, an act which prompts Black to comment “Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense, a writer has no life of his own. Even when he’s there, he’s not really there.” To which Blue responds, “Another ghost.” Voila, a title.
One thing is certain: Blue is an author through and through. He tosses Thoreau’s Walden aside as worthless. Who would go live in a forest where there’s nothing to write about, we hear Blue think, as we pity his inability to define himself through anything but his characters. As Black and Blue idly sit and script each other’s lives, the reader can’t help but feel a sense of loneliness descend upon this closed, difficult, two-person world. Are they simply alter egos, or are they author and character (and which one plays which)? By the end, we wonder whether Auster summed up the difficulties of writing best by the way he named his characters: what’s harder for any author to describe than “blue”?
But what profession doesn’t have its troubles. Of course, we can only expect Auster to write with such potency about his own demons (although we get the sense he’d rather do otherwise). We see clearly now the link to City of Glass, the elementary lesson that authors, despite their troubles and torments with identities and characters, simply must live through and by writing. And they are only human. Black’s hobby seems suddenly futile. “We always talk about trying to get inside a writer to understand his work better,” Black confesses to Blue on a Brooklyn stoop beneath a summer sunset. “But when you get right down to it, there’s not much to find in there— at least not much that’s different from what you’d find in anyone else.” Auster better stop inviting us into such intriguing stories, or else we will never be able to stop prying, as any good detective should.

[May Be · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great sequence of questions and a great sequence of events brings a fantastic loop of art and literary identification. A dark post-modern piece of art that makes reader speechless, even in the second reading.
Auster gives so many hints on the way book will end and the way the story will interpret the characters and events; so as the story-line goes, the reader would predict some of the events, but it will not affect the joy of reading such a masterpiece.

[Aletheia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Metaficción hasta las cejas, qué ejercicio tan genial. Te pierdes un poco en el medio, pero el final merece la pena.

[Merdan · Rating 5 out of 5]

New York üçlemesinin 2.kitabı Hayaletler: kurmacanın kurmacası tadı bırakıyor, her olayda bir başka kurmaca metine bağlaması ve en sonunda da kendi kurmacasının da kurmaca olduğunu kurmaca kişiler -ki bu kişiler de kurmaca metinde kurmaca karakter yaratmış olabilir- tarafından anlatması bambaşka...
Sanırım yazarsam spolier vermek zorunda kalıcam.

“Ama kaçırılan fırsatlar da kullanılan fırsatlar kadar hayatın bir parçasıdır ve bir hikaye “neler olabilirdi” üzerinde oyalanmaz.”
Ama bu kitap oyalanıyor sanırım hem de çok fazla...

[Octavi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este me ha gustado mucho. Densito y una fumada del 15. Cojonudo.