What would happen if the New York Trilogy was set today? The New York Trilogy is made up of 3 short novels, all of them set in New York, in the late 70s. In my opinion if the book was set nowadays, there would not have differences in the plots. First of all City of Glass and The Locked Room are set in a symbolic New York where the city is recognizable only by streets names. Then there would be no differences in the city. Then the plots of two novels follow, to some degree, the formula of the detective fiction where the detective, the main character, loses himself during his quest. This happens to both Quinn and the unnamed character of The Locked Room. Then even in this case there would have no differences. Instead in my opinion we could find differences in the characters behaviours and in the tools used by them. If we think about City of Glass set in New York in 2019, Quinn would not have had a red notebook, he would use a smartphone. He wouldn’t have written anything on the red notebook. He would use the microphone on his smartphone to tell what he wanted to write down. He wouldn’t have looked for Paul Auster through Yellow Pages Directory but he would have used Google or YellowPages app on his smarthphone. Paul Auster and Quinn, as they are writers, wouldn’t have used a typewriter, they would have a pc and so on. Quinn could have traced the Stillman father’s walk using Google Maps very easily. If we think about the Locked Room, nowadays it might be a little bit difficult to disappear as Fanshawe did, without leaving any traces. In addition the main character wouldn’t have received letters by Fanshawe, he would have got emails. Furthermore when he went to Paris to find out about Fanshawe’s past life, he could have kept in touch with his wife Sophie using WhatsApp and sending texts every day and setting up video calls with her every day. In the end I think the main essence of the book wouldn’t change and this represents also the great ability of a writer as Paul Auster.