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The Novels of Paul Auster _________________________________________________________________________Swansea University E-Theses The novels of Paul Auster. Curtis, Gareth Wyn How to cite: _________________________________________________________________________ Curtis, Gareth Wyn (2001) The novels of Paul Auster.. thesis, Swansea University. http://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42454 Use policy: _________________________________________________________________________ This item is brought to you by Swansea University. Any person downloading material is agreeing to abide by the terms of the repository licence: copies of full text items may be used or reproduced in any format or medium, without prior permission for personal research or study, educational or non-commercial purposes only. The copyright for any work remains with the original author unless otherwise specified. The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holder. Permission for multiple reproductions should be obtained from the original author. Authors are personally responsible for adhering to copyright and publisher restrictions when uploading content to the repository. Please link to the metadata record in the Swansea University repository, Cronfa (link given in the citation reference above.) http://www.swansea.ac.uk/library/researchsupport/ris-support/ The Novels of Paul Auster Gareth Wyn Curtis M. Phil. 2001 University of Wales Swansea Thesis submitted in part fulfilment of the Requirements Of the University of Wales Swansea for the degree of Master of philosophy ProQuest Number: 10798162 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10798162 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 The Novels of Paul Auster 1982-1994 This thesis offers a critical study of Auster’s novels, explicating individual novels from Auster’s canon and draws out the core theme that runs throughout his work, which is given a sharper focus in that specific text. Chapter 1, addresses The Invention of Solitude. Auster’s most important work. I focus on how this novel serves as source material for the rest of Auster’s literary career. Considerable time is devoted to looking at Auster’s ideas concerning space for expression and ontological exploration. I address Auster’s ideas concerning causality and the way in which he views linguistics as a paradigm for reality, causality and memory. Chapter 2 focuses on The New York Trilogy and Auster’s explorations of masculinity and self-identity. I also focus on the self-conscious and experimental aspects of the text. In Chapter 3 ,1 consider In the Country of Last Things. Auster’s extended letter from a post-nuclear apocalypse society. I focus on the themes of hunger, isolation, disintegration and how Auster addresses his Jewish identity. Moon Palace provides my focus for a discussion on Auster’s critique of America in Chapter 4. I trace how he uses and subverts American history, politics and literature, asserting a personal particular narrative over them. In Chapter 5 ,1 address Auster’s most political novel Leviathan. It includes Auster’s core themes off doubling, space, ontology, causality and genealogy, but focuses more on political impotency, psychology, authentic representation and the culture of consumption. In Chapter 6 ,1 write about what I consider Auster’s lesser novels- The Music of Chance and Mr. Vertigo. I consider in this chapter why these novels are comparative failures, place them in the context of Auster’s career and consider their motivations. Finally, in my concluding Chapter “Meaning. No Meaning.” I summarise all the conclusions from my chapters and draw together all my critical findings, interpret and anlalyse them. The Novels of Paul Auster Contents 1. The Invention of Solitude 2. “Who-dun-it?”: Detective Fiction and the Mystery of Authorship in The New York Trilogy 3. In the Country of Last Things - Thoughts on a Dystopia 4. Moon Palace : Subverting “America” 5. Leviathan 6. The Music of Chance and Mr Vertigo 7. Conclusion Chapter 1: The Invention of Solitude The Invention of Solitude, published in 1982, launched Auster’s career as prose writer. Critically acclaimed at the time, in retrospect it has proved to be Auster’s finest work. It is also his most inventive, complex and personal work; it is as rewarding as it is problematic for casual reader and serious critic alike. Its total concept for Auster’s themes and content is paradox, or rather the space of paradox, that place between two ideas, two poles, Auster is preoccupied, throughout, with the duality of existence and the binary nature of reality. Auster’s conclusions and revelations in this work often stem from the examination of the neutral position between two oppositional forces. Auster cultivates this space in several ways. He achieves this primarily through his cerebral perambulations which involve the consideration of one line of thought and then its counter argument, or interpretation, immediately after. This creates a paralysis in the text as series of thoughts erase each other; this, to borrow a title from Barth, is a ‘literature of exhaustion” in which ideas and prose are overworked creating a literary dustbowl of meaninglessness. Auster’s text avoids this barren literary ground by cultivation the seed of an idea, which can be returned to at a later date, and then planting another idea. This causes the fragmentary structure and the constant subheadings and versions included in The Invention of Solitude. I believe Auster avoids the dead­ end of meaning associated with post-modern texts and opens up imaginative passageways, chinks of light between thoughts and clauses, which allow the reader and the author to enter into the text and explore its meaning. Though “Invention” is not a saturation bomb of meaning, which leads to subjectivity in the face of narrative overload, rather, it tempts with the possibility of an absolute objective meaning to the text and a clear resolution, without providing such satisfaction. 1 As Dennis Barone rightly points out “‘Invention’ may be read as Auster’s chosen and invented mythology” (p. 14). Barone realises that it is profoundly difficult for Auster critics not to confuse his autobiography and his fiction, as the events of his memoirs reappear in his novels. Barone does not realise the ramifications of his claim. “Invention” is mythic in that it tells how Auster has come to this stage of being realistic, but in a paradoxically fictional way. This mythology is “chosen”; Auster selects episodes in his past through the conduit of memory, and edits them in order to emphasise the self-significant parts. It is also “invented” because Auster has created fictitious contexts and situation in which these episodes can sit. In “Invention”, Auster insists it is not the issue of what is autobiography and what is fiction (a question that has preoccupied many critics) that is important, but where the book goes after such boundaries have been destroyed. Auster asks, “How does one write of one’s self?” and realises that the self must be found before it can be written about. It is only through collecting what appears to be relevant evidence, and re-reading, re-appraising and re-interpreting those clues that progress can be made. Auster begins by returning to the source of his ontological itch; the sudden realisation of mortality, that has been triggered by his father’s death. Auster knows that his father’s identity is essentially bound to his own, and so begins his text as his genealogical source. The title “Portrait of an Invisible Man”, is an oxymoron, and encapsulates for Auster the problems he encounters in trying to write about his father. These problems are both emotional and literary. Auster wrestles with the feelings he has for his father (a man who did not engage with him), the more practical difficulties of how to approach this subject and the implications of writing a version of his father. The paradoxical nature of the title pre-empts a later admission by Auster that the essence of this project is failure (p.20), akin to S.’s endless symphony in The Book of Memory. The title presents Auster with a blank canvas for him to fill with a study of his father, but also suggests that the text will explain how an invisible man is created. Auster’s opening quote from Heraclitus: “In searching out the truth be ready for the unexpected, for it is difficult to find and puzzling when you find it”, emphasises that he is engaged on a quest to discover his father’s true self and suggests, as Auster discovers, that the truth is sometimes impossible to discover, let alone understand. The first paragraph serves as a springboard or a catalyst for the following text. In very flat prose, Auster coldly states the facts of our mortality, and the frightening arbitrariness and suddenness that death can take. Auster claims that a sudden death creates nihilism: But for a man to die of no apparent cause, for a man to die simply because he is a man, brings us so close to the invisible boundary between life and death that we no longer know which side we are on. Life becomes death, and it is as if this death has owned this life all along. Death without warning, Which is to say life stops, (p.5) Auster’s depressed mood belies several important themes of his text: he contradicts his claim that death owns life by resurrecting in his prose his father’s life after death.
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