City of Glass, by Paul Auster

I don't think I can say anything about this book without ruining the ending. And I'm not sure it's worth reading if you know the ending in advance. I suppose the very abridged version is that the book is on crack and/or was/is messing with my mind.

Summary: Daniel Quinn receives a call late at night for someone requesting detective Paul Auster's help. He finds himself investigating an eccentric man who had locked up his son in an effort to learn God's language.

Comments: Even after what, 2 hours, I still can't think properly. The book messed with my head that much. Auster is definitely on par with Gaarder in his ability to do that. What is reality? Who are the characters and how many of them are real? And what level of reality?

I found myself especially drawn to Quinn and Auster's discussion of Don Quixote in light of later events of the book, ie once the first person narrator made an appearance. Isn't that character much the same as Cervantes: the person who is passing the story along to the reader? Having never read Don Quixote, I didn't get as much out of that discussion as I might have, but it definitely drew my attention to the appearance of the "I" individual, whoever he(?) may be.

I also found myself wondering how many of the characters actually existed in Auster's world (ie in the same world as the character Auster). What happened to Quinn between the end of the notebook and when Auster/I found it? If he was only imagining the food, where did his body go? If someone really was bringing him food, who? Why?

What happened to Peter and Virginia? Why was their apartment empty, and why did their check bounce (and did it really)? Were they real people, or were they just playing a role? I would postulate that they were figments of Quinn's imagination, but that seems too complex.

What's the connection between Auster the author and Auster the character? Was the character's discussion of Don Quixote the author's way of explaining what he was doing? Did any of this actually happen anywhere other than the author's mind? The ending fits with that interpretation. I'm not sure if it supports it, but it certainly doesn't deny it. That certainly explains the fact that the purported author claims that everything in the book is true, mostly coming from the red notebook, but there's things that he couldn't possibly have known. I doubt anyone other than Quinn would know about any of the dreams he had, for example. Especially the dreams he didn't remember.

I wonder if I have anything here that could possibly work for a paper topic for my Detective Fiction class (that class being why I read the book in the first place)? But I haven't really considered any of the detective-y aspects of it. I suppose I should look at the paper prompt to answer that question.