And the result is that the narrator is soon presiding over "a small industry" of acclaimed Fanshawe works he also marries wonderful Sophie (she gets a quickie divorce from Fanshawe, who's presumed dead), adopts her baby son, and begins work on the definitive biography of this mysterious, hitherto-unknown genius named Fanshawe. So the narrator, who was Fanshawe's childhood friend/soulmate, agrees to follow Fanshawe's wishes: he'll evaluate the manuscripts, arranging either for their publication or their incineration. The unnamed narrator here is a reasonably successful young book-critic circa 1976-when he answers a plea from lovely Sophie Fanshawe: her writer-husband has disappeared, leaving Sophie with a baby, a closetful of unpublished manuscripts, and instructions on how to proceed. writer finds happiness, then despair, by taking over the life and work of his more gifted alter ego. This concluding book offers more straightforward treatment of similar material-as a middling N.Y. The first two volumes of Auster's "New York Trilogy"-City of Glass (1985) and Ghosts (1986)-used mystery-fiction formulas as the basis for avant-garde explorations of identity crisis, death wish, and other existential traumas.
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