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Apophenia: the Postmodern Trap in Auster's Fictions

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Apophenia: the Postmodern Trap in Auster's Fictions Master’s Degree programme – Second Cycle (D.M. 270/2004) in European, American and Postcolonial Language and Literature Final Thesis Apophenia: The Postmodern Trap in Auster’s Fictions Supervisor Prof.sa Pia Masiero Co-supervisor Prof.sa Francesca Bisutti Graduand Luca Barban Matriculation Number 847317 Academic Year 2015 / 2016 Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................................... 3 1. The mechanics of postmodern reality 1.1 Chance and necessity ..................................................................................................................................... 6 1.2 A brief history of chance ............................................................................................................................... 7 1.3 Chance in postmodernism ......................................................................................................................... 11 1.4 Paul Auster and the centrality of chance ............................................................................................ 14 2. Order in Chaos 2.1. Seriality and Synchronicity .................................................................................................................... 24 2.2. Apophenia ...................................................................................................................................................... 27 2.3. Order in chaos .............................................................................................................................................. 33 2.3.1. External chaos: the city .................................................................................................................... 35 2.3.2. External chaos: the wilderness ..................................................................................................... 41 2.3.3. Internal chaos: the self ..................................................................................................................... 49 2.3.3.1. Fragmented characters: elusiveness ............................................................................... 53 2.3.3.2. Fragmented characters: inconsistency .......................................................................... 56 3. Meaning in meaninglessness 3.1. Auster’s absurdism ..................................................................................................................................... 59 3.2. Detectives in The New York Trilogy ........................................................................................................ 60 3.2.1. Quinn in City of Glass ............................................................................................................................. 62 3.2.2. Blue in Ghosts ............................................................................................................................................ 66 3.2.3. Unnamed Narrator in The Locked Room ...................................................................................... 68 3.3. Other detectives ........................................................................................................................................... 71 3.3.1. Fogg in Moon Palace .......................................................................................................................... 74 3.3.2. Nashe in The Music of Chance ........................................................................................................ 81 3.3.3. Sachs in Leviathan .................................................................................................................................. 86 1 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................................... 91 Final reflection .............................................................................................................................................................. 96 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................................. 98 2 Introduction In 1995, in his by now well-known anthology on Paul Auster entitled Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster, Dennis Barone lamented the lack of critical materials available on the New York author. Barone in the same introductory chapter also predicted that “just as he burst on the world scene in the late 1980s Auster scholarship will witness an exponential growth in the late 1990s” (1). Looking backwards now, we cannot dismiss it as just a mere hypothesis, but rather as a statement that has proven its validity during time. Since the publication of City of Glass (1985), the first installment that is comprised in The New York Trilogy, many critics, in fact, have left their contributions both on Auster’s fictional and autobiographical production. In dealing with all the themes touched by these following works, some of them went so far and deep in the discussion to highlight new and sometimes very innovative perspectives. Among these perspectives we find investigations that concern primarily the affinity some of Auster’s novels share with the detective genre, and the considerations that encourage some critics to include them in the so called category of anti-detective fictions. We can find also important articles about those topics that recur more often than others such as: the solitude and isolation of the characters, that sometimes results in an extreme form of ascetism; the psychological analysis of the protagonist’s shifting personality which is directly linked with the theme of duplicity; the centrality of space and the always present dichotomy between urban scenery and wilderness; and the insistence on metafictional aspects and intertexuality. Important as well is the political dimension, which is often relegated in the background, even though it plays a central role in many novels. Nevertheless one of the themes that has been regarded with much more attention in respect with the others is the theme of chance, which many novels share as a common denominator. Auster himself has repeatedly maintained in past and recent interviews and autobiographical materials the great importance this phenomenon plays not only in his life, but also in his writing. In his novels he pays particular attention to the condition of the human being, whose frailty and weakness are always at the center of his stories. Auster’s characters are destabilized by the uncertain and the unpredictable, which are perfectly expressed by the power of contingency, the uncanny regularity of coincidences and the unfolding of random events. This viewpoint is made manifest by the protagonist of In the Country of Last Things, Anna Blume, who 3 says: “Our lives are no more than the sum of manifold contingencies, and no matter how diverse they might be in their details, they all share an essential randomness in their design: this then that, and because of that, this” (143 - 144). Marco Stanley Fogg reiterates this same idea in a passage of Moon Palace: “our lives are determined by manifold contingencies and everyday we struggle against these shocks and accidents in order to keep our balance”(78). The same assessment is heard again in The Locked Room, where it is a thought made by the anonymous narrator: “each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose”(219). Chance therefore, as we can see by these excerpts, is one of the pivotal forces that determines, shapes, affects and conditions many of Auster’s protagonists and their stories. But what is important to point out here is the fact that this notion does not remain a single and distinctive trait only in fictional worlds. Chance is first of all a predominant feature in Auster’s everyday life as well as in every individual’s daily experience. Hence my objective with this paper is to point out the importance that this concept, together with other ones to whom it is related (randomness, chaos, etc), have in influencing not only characters’, but sometimes even ours fundamental choices and decisions. The first introductory chapter aims essentially at tracing down a brief history of the notion of chance from the ancient times to postmodernity and secondly at attesting, with references to interviews and autobiographical works, the predominance of this theme in Paul Auster’s life. This, I hope, will provide useful tools for the second and central part of my work, where I will analyze the relation that does exist between the four novels that constitute the corpus of the present study. The main part of this paper, that comprises the two central chapter (II and III), revolves around the idea of the existential quest, and in particular around the idea that the life of the protagonists of these novels is assumed to be a draining journey in search for stability and purpose. After a brief introductory paragraph, in which Auster’s world is presented as essentially chaotic, the second chapter examines characters’ attempt to relate with that chaos and their endeavors to retrace a glimmer of order in it. 4 In chapter III I will concentrate upon the protagonists’ second quest, which proceeds in parallel with the first one, but
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