Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy TTHE QQUEST FOR IIDENTITY:: SSELF VERSUS OOTHER IN PPAUL AAUSTER’’S TTHE NNEW YYORK TTRILOGY Supervisor: ROZA LAMBRECHTS Dr. Andrew King English Literature Dpt. Verhandeling voorgelegd aan de faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte voor het verkrijgen van de graad van 2008-2009 Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am greatly indebted to Dr. Andrew King for his dedicated supervision of this dissertation. His constructive criticism has helped me to focus and develop my research in a more concrete direction. Every comment and moment of feedback has served this work to reach the state, in which it lies before you. Also, I would like to thank Dr. Melissa De Bruyker for helping me with “Das Unheimliche” and retrieving a bibliographic reference, that I feared to be untraceable. A special mention for Timo and Dieter, for proofreading this work. Finally, thanks to my parents, and my friends Wim, Simon, Dieter, Iris and Sofie, for their support and distractions. CONTENTS • INTRODUCTION 1 • CHAPTER ONE: BAKHTIN AND THE CHRONOTOPE 5 1 General Overview 5 2 Bakhtinian concepts in The New York Trilogy: relevance and function 13 • CHAPTER TWO: AUSTERIAN DETECTIVE FICTION 17 1 Genre conventions of traditional detective fiction 17 2 Role and function of traditional features in The New York Trilogy 21 Cyclical pattern Eccentricity of the characters Observation and rationality Narration • CHAPTER THREE: DOPPELGANGERS AND IDENTITY: THE UNCANNY AND THE OTHER 29 1 The Uncanny – Sigmund Freud 29 2 Workings of the Uncanny in The New York Trilogy 32 3 Jacques Lacan: the mirror stage and the Other 33 4 Self versus Other 35 City Of Glass Ghosts The Locked Room • CHAPTER FOUR: QUEST FOR IDENTITY 44 1 Structure of the Quest 44 Stasis before mysterious event Mysterious event Complication of mystery (+peripeteia) Climax and unraveling of the mystery Lack of resolution 2 Time and space in The New York Trilogy: an Austerian chronotope 48 • WORKS CITED 51 INTRODUCTION ―WHEREVER I AM NOT IS THE PLACE WHERE I AM MYSELF.‖ PAUL AUSTER. CITY OF GLASS This statement, written down by Quinn in the first story of Paul Auster‘s The New York Trilogy, incorporates the existential problem that holds all the main characters of this novel in its grip. They do not feel like themselves, they are at loss. Also, the structure of this sentence foregrounds the connection between self and place. Therefore, it would seem to suggest that, in order to truly get to know oneself, one must embark on a quintessential quest for identity. This is exactly what the characters of Auster‘s stories try to accomplish. The New York Trilogy was first published in 1987 as a whole, though before this moment the three stories, City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room, had been published separately already. At first, the stories appear to be rather straightforward detective stories, but a closer inspection learns that ―thematically Auster‘s trilogy is a meditation on the problematic of self-identity, in which ‗textual‘ sense of the self undermines our commonsense, essentialist notions of selfhood.‖ (Alford, Space 615) This problematic of self- identity becomes even more complicated, as the stories introduce multiple doubles. These doubles further undermine any form of a stable sense of self, as ―[d]oubles proliferate repeatedly not to disseminate the notion of subjectivity, but rather to underscore the notion that these characters each reflect different ontological dimensions of the self. (Dimovitz 625) Many different dimensions of the self complicate not only the development of plot, but also the search for answers the ―detectives‖ embark upon. It is not wonder, then, that amongst all these complications the protagonists seem to have lost their notions of selfhood and are confronted with doppelgangers. Despite their attempts to escape the existentialist maze their lives have become, they find themselves to become more and more stuck in nothingness. In this dissertation, I will try to reconstruct the complex quest for identity in each story. In order to gain insight into the structure, different steps in the process need to be identified. The use of a quest is generally associated with the genre of the epic, the picaresque and adventure novels. How can the use of the term ―quest‖ be justified then? I will argue that the theories of Mikhail M. Bakhtin support the use of a quest in other genres as 1 well. He introduces a way of looking at literature that allows the identification of specific elements of one genre and explains how these can be applied in other genres as well. Through his development of the chronotope this mingling of features can be easily reconstructed and traced. What is the chronotope and how does it function? How is this concept connected to the quest? Moreover, questions also arise about the detective genre. What are the typical characteristics of this genre? Why is The New York Trilogy not a straightforward detective story? Also, what is the relevance of the notion of selfhood? What role do the many confusing doppelgangers play? What is their function? I intend to answer these questions in four chapters. In what follows I will give an outline of each chapter. The first chapter focuses on the theories of Mikhail M. Bakthin, as posited in his The Dialogic Imagination. Bakhtin is a Russian literary critic, usually associated with the school of Russian Formalism. Because of his controversial ideas, Bakhtin was arrested in 1929 and sent to live in exile Kazakhstan, where he remained until 1936. It was there that a lot of his work was composed. During Soviet reign Bakhtin‘s theories did not reach a wide audience. It was not until the 1980s that his theories became popular in the West and have gained critical acclaim ever since. From The Dialogic Imagination, I will discuss one essay, entitled ―Forms of Time And Of The Chronotope In The Novel‖, in which Bakhtin introduces his concept of the chronotope. The word chronotope, derived from Greek chronos + topos, literally means ―time-space‖. For Bakhtin, these concepts are inextricably linked to one another and, what is more, it is the chronotope that defines genre conventions. He then moves on to chronologically discuss different forms of chronotopes in literary history. I will try to discern exactly what concepts and novelties Bakhtin introduces in this essay. By shedding light on the essay in its totality I hope to establish a broad understanding of his theories, which, in turn, I will link to Auster‘s Trilogy. What concepts introduced by this Russian critic can be of relevance for the three stories under investigation here? How do Bakhtinian concepts function in these stories? In order to answer these questions, I first will discern what aspects the essay deals with and explain them in their contexts. Then, I will move on to identify the relevant elements for Auster‘s fiction and explain how they function within The New York Trilogy. 2 The second chapter deals with the genre of detective fiction. As, according to Bakhtinian concepts, chronotope defines genre conventions, I deem it worthy to look at these conventions in more detail. Even though the features of ―typical‖ detective fiction remain contested, I will attempt to discern a few elements worthy of discussion. In order to so, I turn to an essay by W.H. Auden, entitled ―The Guilty Vicarage‖. This work is one of the key texts often cited in discussions of this genre. Auden establishes a parallel between Aristotle‘s theory on the structure of ancient tragedy and the structure of the detective story, which is of particular interest to this research. Next to this link, three other features will be discussed in greater detail. Also, as Auster‘s Trilogy is not an example of traditional (British) detective fiction, but rather of the American hardboiled tradition, a brief discussion of a specific feature of the hardboiled is included. However, taking into account the postmodern tradition, in which Auster‘s stories came into existence, it is not my intention to analyze his works as examples of traditional detective fiction. Therefore, I will identify traditional elements and discuss how Auster turns these right on their heads. In An Art of Desire: Reading Paul Auster, Bernd Herzogenrath writes that Auster ―subverts the genre from within‖ and in doing so, ―[uses] traditional conventions.‖ (Herzogenrath 2) A third chapter is concerned with the use of the doppelganger, in combination with the concepts of ―The Uncanny‖ and the Other. In this part, I will discuss the effect the doppelganger has on the quest for identity. In order to do so, an overview of Sigmund Freud‘s concept of ―The Uncanny‖ is of the essence. Next, the relevance of this essay for The New York Trilogy is established. The discussion then moves to an explanation of the term, ―the Other‖ in light of Lacanian theories on the mirror stage. Herzogenrath deems the use of Lacan worthy indeed, as ―Lacanian psychoanalysis […] goes from the assumption of a fundamentally split subject and thus comes up with a model of subjectivity that grounds itself on a constitutive lack rather than a wholeness.‖ (Herzogenrath 6) In the final part of this chapter previous insights are combined as the polarity between self and other is discussed in greater detail for each story. The question central to this part of the research is what function the doppelganger and the other have in the quest and what the results are of the confrontation between the protagonist and his double. The last part of this dissertation is an attempt to combine all insights to reconstruct the quest for identity more specifically in each story.