Explore the Significance of the Use of Names in Auster's City of Glass in Relation to Intertextuality.

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Explore the significance of the use of names in Auster's City of Glass in relation to intertextuality. When you look at a spiders web, you can see perfectly woven threads, all perfectly linked and also used to catch its prey. Looking at Paul Auster's, City of Glass, his use of intertextuality through out his novel, is like that web. Everything perfectly woven and linked to outside texts and by doing this, he grabs your attention from the start. In the City of Glass, Daniel Quinn writes murder mysteries but under the pseudonym of William Wilson. This is also the name of the character in Edgar Allan Poe's, doppelgänger short story, William Wilson. This is the first of intertextuality that we see in the novel, which happens on the first page. Some critics believe, that Auster's work also relates to Poe's detective genre, which began with, The murders on Rue Morgue (Russell 71; Sorapure 72). Daniel Quinn's wife and child died. He had once been a ambitious writer. Once he gave up writing under his own name, his friends wondered what he would do for a living. He just said he inherited money from his wife, but this was not the case, as his wife did not have any money. By introducing William Wilson, Quinn was able to earn enough money, working six months of the year. Quinn could remain anonymous. Living in New York suited Quinn, “ a labyrinth of endless steps” (Auster's, “City of Glass”, 3). Once he walked out his front door and didn't have to write, he could loose himself “lost, not only in the city, but within himself as well” (Auster's, “City of Glass”, 4). Max Work is the name of the detective character used in Quinn's books. Then Quinn himself becomes a real detective, by the name of Paul Auster, after taking an accidental phone call from the Stillman's. Peter Stillman, Jr. and his wife Victoria, wanted Paul Auster to follow his father Peter Stillman, Sr. He had

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