Christian P
Ghosts by Paul Auster
Reading Response:

The novel Ghosts by Paul Auster is a story of which I have never read before. From early on, I knew that one of the many charms of this story would be the act of decrypting everything Auster threw at me. A striking facet of Auster's method of storytelling is that all characters had colors for names. Written as a detective tale, the noir-esque feeling throughout the book was essential as it made everything I imagined to be filtered in black and white.

As a fan of detective, mystery and dramatic films, I found myself envisioning the unraveling story that much better to the point where it was hard to put down. But even deeper than mystery, Ghosts can be interpreted as a story of identity and self-belonging where Blue cultivated himself through studying Black and vice-versa. When Blue decided to investigate Black first-hand as Snow, he realizes Black has been toying with him and that Black may even know exactly what Blues up to (Auster 73). Furthermore, it seems as if there is a duality where they are reflections of each other: "My job is to watch someone, no one in particular as far as I can tell, and send in a report about him every week. Just that. Watch this guy and write about it. Not one damned thing more" (Auster 73). On the same page, Black hits the nail on the head when he says he is close to losing his mind, Auster demonstrates the twist as if this was a Stanley Kubrick film.

All Blue knew of himself was his job of learning the life of Black's; it gave Blue a sense of purpose: However, when Blue realized he had been lead on the entire time, he loses his grasp on his own identity and eventually reality itself. This can be attributed to him believing he knew and understood Black for years until everything caved in at the climax of the story. To conclude, my main pet-peeve with Paul Auster's Ghosts relies with his decision to end on a cliffhanger. From experience, the most memorable and impactful of stories of the genre give readers a sense of closure. I know that this is the second in a trilogy, but I think it consists of only spiritual successors and not sequels. The fact that the story ends on the line: "And from this moment on, we know nothing" only leaves me a bit empty when half of a great story is how it ends.