West Tisbury resident and New Yorker cartoonist Paul Karasik’s new book, a graphic novel adaptation of Paul Auster’s classic “The New York Trilogy” (Penguin Random House), is racking up rave reviews.
Released in April 2025, Publishers Weekly called the book a “spectacular graphic adaptation.” But even more noteworthy was The Guardian review by Rachel Cooke, who wrote: “I don’t know if it’s acceptable to admit that I would rather read this version of the trilogy than the original novels, but there it is: in my eyes, this is a stone-cold masterpiece, an instant classic that will be read for decades to come.”
“The New York Trilogy” is a collection of three interconnected stories by Auster published individually in the 1980s: “City of Glass,” “Ghosts,” and “The Locked Room”; they were collected into the Trilogy shortly after, which has remained in print ever since. The stories contain elements of postmodernism and existentialism wrapped in classic detective fiction. It’s a reading experience that moves quickly while also inspiring contemplation. Auster, who has been called “one of America’s most spectacularly inventive writers,” passed away on April 30, 2024, but not before he saw and approved Karasik’s graphic novel version.
Karasik first got involved with Auster’s work when he was tapped to oversee the graphic novelization of the first volume, “City of Glass,” in the 1990s. For the newly published “New York Trilogy” graphic novel, he again served as art director, working with illustrators Lorenzo Mattotti and David Mazzucchelli on two of the stories, while Karasik illustrated the third.
Karasik’s career has taken him from earning a graphic design degree from the Pratt Institute, and working briefly as a graphic designer, before turning to teaching at a secondary school. (That’s where he first met Auster, at a parent-teacher conference.) Karasik also studied cartooning at the School of Visual Arts with legendary cartoonists like Art Spiegelman, author of “Maus” which until 2025, was the only graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize. (Tessa Hulls recently won the 2025 Pulitzer for “Feeding Ghosts.”) Those SVA connections had a profound effect on Karasik’s graphic-novel career.
Besides the new “The New York Trilogy,” Karasik’s books include “I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!” (2008); it won him his first Eisner Award, the cartooning world’s version of the Oscar. He won his second Eisner for “How to Read Nancy” (2017), which has since become a seminal text in cartooning education programs worldwide. He’s also published in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Vineyard Gazette.
Paul Karasik will be speaking at Islanders Write on Monday, August 18. He will also be signing books at the event. “Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy” is available at Bunch of Grapes and Edgartown Books.
