What Might Have Been

    Lost chances are as much a part of life as chances taken, and a story cannot dwell on what might have been.

Paul Auster
New York Trilogy
1987

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Enrico Marini
reblogged via Noirsville.blogspot.com

New York Trilogy

Exist for Ourselves

         We imagine the real story inside the words, and to do this we substitute ourselves for the person in the story, pretending that we can understand him because we understand ourselves. This is a deception. We exist for ourselves, perhaps, and at times we even have a glimmer of who we are, but in the end we can never be sure, and as our lives go on, we become more and more opaque to ourselves, more and more aware of our own incoherence. No one can cross the boundary into another - for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself.

New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
1987

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Adger Cowans

In the End

         We exist for ourselves, perhaps, and at times we even have a glimmer of who we are, but in the end we can never be sure, and as our lives go on, we become more and more opaque to ourselves, more and more aware of our own incoherence. No one can cross the boundary into another - for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself.

New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
1987
                                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Trilogy

We Come To a Place

        In general, lives seem to veer abruptly from one thing to another, to jostle and bump, to squirm. A person heads in one direction, turns sharply in mid-course, stalls, drifts, starts up again. Nothing is ever known, and inevitably we come to a place quite different from the one we set out for.

New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
1987

James Spader

Crash

Music of Chance

Secretary

Bad Influence

2 Days in the Valley

Lack of Purpose

        In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.

Paul Auster
New York Trilogy
1987

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Thomas Warming

Emmet Walsh

Blood Simple

Blade Runner

Straight Time

Albino Alligator

Clean and Sober

Twilight

Music of Chance

Pope of Greenwich Village

White Sands

The Gambler (1974)

https://fragmentsofnoirblog.tumblr.com/archive

Shadows on the Card Table

Rififi

Hard Eight

Rope of Sand

Le Samourai

Big Heat

Music of Chance

Dark City

The Driver

Stranger on the Third Floor

House of Games

Man with the Golden Arn

The Card Counter

Detour

Croupier

Ever Leaving It

          On his best walks, he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally, was all he ever asked of things ; to be nowhere. New York was the nowhere he had built around himself, and he realized that he had no intention of ever leaving it again.

New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
1987

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Berenice Abbott

Not Where We Are

          We are not where we are ..... but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.

Paul Auster
Ghosts (New York Trilogy)
1986

To Veer Abruptly

              In general, lives seem to veer abruptly from one thing to another, to jostle and bump, to squirm. A person heads in one direction, turns sharply in mid-course, stalls, drifts, starts up again. Nothing is ever known, and inevitably we come to a place quite different from the one we set out for.

New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
1987

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Vivian Maier

Chance Intersections

           I tend to think that everything counts. In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but there own lack of purpose.

New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
1987

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unknown

He is Everything

         According to Paul Auster, Chandler's Marlowe forever changed the eyes with which literature looks at the United States. For Chandler capitalism meant injustice and politics meant corruption. Although Chandler said that the detective " is the protagonist, he is everything", what interested him was to describe his country and his time, and he did so with astonishing clairvoyance.

excerpt from
The Eternal Dream ; The Awakening of a Literary Genre
Enric Gonzales
El Mundo
2016

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Jorge Arevalo
Phillip Marlowe

                https://www.elmundo.es/cultura/2016/08/22/57b724e546163fd5758b4658.html

Nothing Was Real

He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.

City of Glass (New York Trilogy)

Paul Auster

1985

                       https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2434710-city-of-glass

Except Chance

He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.

•  City of Glass
• Paul Auster
• 1985

Underrated Lost Classics #6

Brown's Requiem  James Ellroy
To Have and Have Not  Ernest Hemingway
Deadly Percheron  John Franklin Bardin
The Hustler  Walter Tevis
Stray Dogs  John Ridley
Bluebottle  James Sallis

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan  Georges Simenon

Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death  Tucker Coe
Airtight Willie & Me  Iceberg Slim
New York Trilogy  Paul Auster
Cool Hand Luke  Donn Pearce
Hammett  Joe Gores

Always Left Him

        New York was an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps, and no matter how far he walked, no matter how well he came to know it's neighbourhoods and streets, it always left him with the feeling of being lost.

Paul Auster

New York Trilogy

1983

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unknown

Chance Intersections

       I tend to think that everything counts. In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.

Paul Auster

New York Trilogy

1987

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Drahomir Josef Ruzicka

    https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2343071-city-of-glass-ghosts-the-locked-room