Daniel Quinn's Identity

In this part I will develop the idea of the main character's identity and I will compare and contrast this novel with the characteristics typical of the classic formula as well as with the ones of the hard-boiled formula, explaining how some of them could be applied to this novel and how some others could not. As I have previously said, Daniel Quinn has four identities; his own one, as Daniel Quinn, a man who lives alone in his house, who has lost his wife and his son and who is a writer of detective fiction, but from the very beginning we see how he does not write under his name but under the pseudonym"William Wilson" so here we have the second identity. In addition, when he decides to investigate the case, he adopts the identity of Max Work,

An idea that should be highlighted is the fact that Daniel Quinn publishes his works under the name of William Wilson, who coincidentally is a character who appears in a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe. But what is more intriguing is the fact that this character, William Wilson is related to the idea of the "doppelganger", he has a double identity, so in here we can see the connection between Poe's character and Auster's protagonist. Before continuing, I would like to say that Paul Auster, while writing City of Glass had Edgar Allan Poe in mind as we have seen, Poe who was the "founder" of the classic formula, so this may be the reason why some of the characteristics of this formula are present in this novel. Moreover, another reference to the classic formula and in particular to Edgar Allan Poe appers when the narrator says that Poe had been in the same place Stillman senior was at that moment: "On this same spot, in the summers of 1843 and 1844, Edgar Allan Poe had spent many long hours gazing out at the Hudson" (City of Glass, pg.