40in40 – City of Glass
It’s been a while since I’ve written something in the key of wonq. This drought has actually been quite frustrating for me. I’ve been eager to put something down on paper, but my mind has been rigid and empty. I read Maus and journaled a couple of pages, but nothing was coherent or worth sharing. I reread Watchmen, but couldn’t find any depths to explore. Daredevil and The Phoenix Saga were both great novels, but nothing moved me enough to blog. Regrettably, an entire autumn season came and went without any fruit from my blogaphorical tree.
Then, funnily enough, in the middle of a real winter (the coldest winter I’ve ever experienced in my life) my brainfreeze finally begins to thaw. Tucked away in a café on the other side of the world, I find some words to share… from a city of snow, here are my thoughts about City of Glass.
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In my opinion, there’s a formula to mystery novels: you start by setting up the questions/abstracts/intangibles/generalizations, then you focus in on something solid/concrete/real/true. Mysteries often follow a cadence; they progress and have a sense of completion by the end. In many ways, mysteries have the ideal story arch that we hope our own lives will have, eventually ending with answers to all our questions.
City of Glass starts off like a typical mystery novel, with promise to answer questions and solve a mystery, but before long we’re tail-spinning into a narrative that we’re unsure of. Nay, I say I was downright creeped out by the narrative and the direction it was headed.
In this mystery, instead of clues and revelations, we witness the deterioration of the main character, our hero, Detective Quinn. The man slowly loses everything – his detective case goes cold, his home becomes residence to some stranger, and quickly he loses his grasp on reality and sensibility. All throughout the book, we are led through sequences that only end in darkness. Again and again, the pages are terminated by black frames, incomplete thoughts, and more questions than answers.
Yet, still we follow the hero to the very depths of his inane and insane dribbles. Why? To be entertained? To try to find some deeper meaning? To hopefully find some answers? That happy ending? Whatever the reason, we are never consoled. Alas, at the end, instead of anything concrete, we are literally left with nothing but memories and desperate hope.
This graphic novel did not follow the formula of a mystery. It followed the formula of something else – real life?
I guess that depends… what do you expect from life? Do you approach each new day like a storybook: full of characters and adventures eventually culminating in a happy ending? What happens at the end of each day when nothing has really concluded? Are you happy, then, with incomplete thoughts and more questions? After everything, can you be content with just memories and hope?
Thanks to d’oh for the recommendation. I hope you find your voice and then lose yourself in the city of bright lights.
Filed under: 40in40 | 1 Comment
Tags: city of glass, doh, life, mystery, new york
this novel made me reassess the meaning of language, and how everything, no matter how broken or slurred, has some type of meaning.
by the way, your drunken cousin is spouting nonsense and i’m trying to make sense of it. it’s pretty fun.