THE NEW YORK TRILOGY: CITY OF GLASS, GHOSTS, THE LOCKED ROOM by Auster, Paul - 1994

New York City, NY: Sun & Moon Press, 1994. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Sun & Moon Press, 1994. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 465 pages. The Complete Omnibus Edition of the author's trilogy. Paul Auster's early masterpiece. The Sun & Moon Press First Omnibus Edition. Described as "The First Cloth Edition" by the publisher on the Copyright Page. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, of which there are innumerable. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only by a small fine press that sold out upon publication. The First Omnibus Edition is now rare. Presents, in an elegant clothbound edition, Paul Auster's "The New York Trilogy". His three self-contained yet intertwined novels, "City of Glass", "Ghosts", and "The Locked Room", in one 465-page volume. "Evokes the atmosphere of film noir. Lured into the trap of Auster's meticulous present-tense prose, the reader becomes a victim of the narratives' irresistible force" (Publisher's blurb). The story of each novel is claustrophobically simple: To cite just one example, in "Ghosts", a private detective named Blue is hired to follow a man named Black, in a game of hide-and-seek that ends unpredictably - and satisfyingly - with a twist that is anything but generic. The doubling, "doppelganger" trope, by now a standard fare of both American crime noir and European post-modernist fiction, is appropriated and transformed by Auster to haunting, mesmerizing effect. In his "Paul Austere" prose style, he shows humanity ("what it means to be human") to be about the tension between same-ness and difference. Quentin Tarantino subsequently paid homage to "Ghosts" with "Reservoir Dogs", his best film, where all of the characters' names are Colors, making them identical to and yet different from each other at the same time, appropriating Auster's central insight. An absolute "must-have" title for Paul Auster collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on a 3 X 2 inch bookplate (that is neatly pasted on the front free endpaper) by Paul Auster. The bookplate is affixed to the page, not loose. This title is a great book. As far as we know, this is the only copy (with Signed Bookplate) of the 1994 Sun & Moon Press First Omnibus Edition/First Printing ("The First Cloth Edition" Statement with complete number line that includes the Number 1 on the Copyright Page) available online and is in fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Precedes and should NOT be confused with all other subsequent editions, which are innumerable. Copies of individual volumes of "The New York Trilogy" First Edition available online command many hundreds to thousands of dollars, perhaps rightly so. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. One of the iconic writers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER PAUL AUSTER TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 155713166X.