The Power of Books in Post-9/11 Era in Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark
1
조회
0
다운로드
0
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
Spatial insecurities are one of the salient features Paul Auster employs to represent the ontological crises his characters undergo. Thus, finding the right place in time and space leads the characters to constructing unified and coherent selfhood, and unless this is done, survival cannot be guaranteed. Auster’s perception of the world has been dark, dismal, and dubious, at best, and his characters become trapped in an ontological maze halfway through their journey, before dying or disappearing. On the one hand, characters like Marco Stanley Fogg or Nathan Glass restore their broken bonds with the world and find their own place in time and space through “the power of books.” This article intends to interrogate the validity of Auster’s longstanding belief in the power of books in the 9/11 era. As the September 11 attacks required different ethics and aesthetics to cope with post-9/11 realities that engulfed postmodernist imagination within mere minutes, Auster puts his belief to the test in his post-9/11 novel, Man in the Dark (2008). By looking into a series of embedded stories, this article confirms the validity of the power of books works, at the same time identifying the shift in its emphasis. Specifically, by focusing on the minor stories of Sonia, Gilbert Ross, the three war anecdotes that have not given scholarly attention they deserve, this article contributes an insight to understanding Auster’s post-9/11 novel from the decentered perspective.
Abstract
Spatial insecurities are one of the salient features Paul Auster employs to represent the ontological crises his characters undergo. Thus, finding the right place in time and space leads the characters to constructing unified and coherent selfhood, and unless this is done, survival cannot be guaranteed. Auster’s perception of the world has been dark, dismal, and dubious, at best, and his characters become trapped in an ontological maze halfway through their journey, before dying or disappearing. On the one hand, characters like Marco Stanley Fogg or Nathan Glass restore their broken bonds with the world and find their own place in time and space through “the power of books.” This article intends to interrogate the validity of Auster’s longstanding belief in the power of books in the 9/11 era. As the September 11 attacks required different ethics and aesthetics to cope with post-9/11 realities that engulfed postmodernist imagination within mere minutes, Auster puts his belief to the test in his post-9/11 novel, Man in the Dark (2008). By looking into a series of embedded stories, this article confirms the validity of the power of books works, at the same time identifying the shift in its emphasis. Specifically, by focusing on the minor stories of Sonia, Gilbert Ross, the three war anecdotes that have not given scholarly attention they deserve, this article contributes an insight to understanding Auster’s post-9/11 novel from the decentered perspective.
참고문헌 (16)
- Auster, Paul, "Moon Palace" (1990), Penguin Books
- Auster, Paul, "The Brooklyn Follies" (2006), Picador
- Auster, Paul, "Man in the Dark" (2008), Faber and Faber
- Auster, Paul, "Conversations with Paul Auster" (2013), University Press of Mississippi
- Barone, Dennis, "Beyond the Red Notebook : Essays on Paul Auster" (1995), University of Pennsylvania Press
- Brown, Mark, "Paul Auster" (2007), Manchester University Press
- Ciocia, Stefania, "The Invention of Illusions: International Perspectives on Paul Auster", pp.1~11 (2011), Cambrige Scholars Publishing
- Gleich, Lewis S., "Ethics in the Wake of the Image : The Post-9", 11 Fiction of DeLillo, Auster, and Poer, 2014, pp.37(3), 161~176
- Herzogenrath, Bernd, "An Art of Desire : Reading Paul Auster" (1999), Rodopi
- Hyvarinen, Matti, "Troupes for the Past", pp.83~94 (2006), Rodopi
- Gonzalez, Jesus A., "‘Another History’ : Alternative Americas in Paul Auster’s Fiction", Comparative American Studies, 9(1), pp.21~34 (2011)[DOI]
- McHale, Brian, "Postmodernist Fiction" (1987), Routledge
- Oster, Judith, "Crossing Cultures : Creating Identity in Chinese and American Literature" (2003), University of Missouri Press
- Simonetti, Paolo, "The Invention of Illusions: International Perspectives on Paul Auster", pp.13~37 (2011), Cambrige Scholars Publishing
- Varvogli, Aliki, "The Invention of Illusions: International Perspectives on Paul Auster", pp.39~53 (2011), Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- White, Hayden, "Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe" (1975), Johns Hopkins University