In adapting Paul Auster’s postmodern detective story City of Glass
as a graphic novel, Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli succeeded in
producing a visual translation of an often non-visual text. Focussing on
Auster’s text rather than Auster’s story, it is argued, the artists
make inventive use of visual metaphors, visual styles, and comic
conventions to translate Auster’s words into pictures. The text’s
investigation into, and interrogation of, language is brought to bear on
the comic version’s own visual language, and City of Glass: The Graphic
Novel emerges as valuable source material for a future poetics of
comics.