Postmodernism features in City of Glass By Auster:
The essay should discuss postmodernism features in City of glass by Auster. Use the sources that are in the abstract, and add more 4 sources to make the argument strong. THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF SOURCES ARE 8. If you find my sources are not useful in your argument you can replace one or two but not all of them.
In addition of the abstract, here are some questions to help you to build the argument.
1-what exactly make Auster’s novel is postmodern ?
2-does anyone or would anyone disagree with this characterization of the novel?
3- provide both views for critics who agree and disagree with your argument.
4- how might returning to Auster’s postmodernism novel provide insight into possible answers to the question of how we might define the contemporary literature?
(you have to include QOUTES from the novel to support the argument) it is really important.
Postmodernism features in City of Glass by Auster:
City of Glass is a perfect example postmodern fiction work. Fredrick Jameson posits that the aspect of representation in works of literature, film and poetry is the distinguishing element of the postmodernism. The postmodernism ideology is well portrayed in Paul Auster’s mystery novel, City of Glass. This novel portrayed some significant idealistic aspects of postmodernism such as reality and identity, which I will discuss in more details on my paper.
In addition, in the City of Glass, Auster explores various themes such as ambiguity, confusion and paranoia. He uses techniques of detective form to discuss the question of identity. The novel has a story about Quinn, the protagonist, Peter Still man senior and junior, Auster all of who have varied and doubtful identities. Auster succeeds in weaving the postmodernism themes together to explain his ideas in City of Glass.
The book also depicts the modern world as full of confusion, discontinuity and disorder in line with the modern philosophy and science (Malmgren, 24). The novel particularly explores the concept of truth and depicts New York in a very elaborate way. The characters in the novel are confused about their identities, which drive some of them to madness. Quinn for instance, becomes so confused and is unable to retain his initial identity after he gets absorbed in investigating Stillman. The junior Stillman is also confused that about his identity and believes he can change his name at will depending on his emotions. The themes in the novel go in tandem the issues of differences, truth textuality, plurality, skepticism as well as playfulness with the language that most postmodernism theorists proposed as the signs of the era. Furthermore, Auster uses metafiction or “self-conscious narrator”, which is one of postmodernism features in his novel. For instance, when the narrator tells the readers that he meets the writer. Other metafication aspects will be discussed on my paper.
Some theorist view will take place in this essay, Jean Baudrillard he posits that the media is the hallmark of postmodernism. Baudrillard also said that nothing new is bound to happen and that the truth is usually obtained through negotiations. The philosopher believed that science is merely a symbol that people use to describe certain occurrences (Bishop, 47). The theorist focuses a lot on defining the truth; similarly, the novelist has also centered his story on the truth or lack thereof and the resultant confusion. Lyotard (89) in his book on the postmodern condition, he argued that the postmodern era is characterized by new ways of writing literary materials of all genres from the artistic one, to scientific and philosophical texts. All these changes signified the revolution of culture that was experienced in Europe in the late 20th century and early 21stC. Auster’s novels depict this when the author includes himself in the novel as one of the characters; a style that has not been used before by other writers and it is one of the important postmodernism features in his novel.
Foucault (94) is also another influential philosopher who unlike Baudrillard believed that what people take as the truth, reality or knowledge can change over time since it is dependent on history. City of Glass shows tried to bring out the aspect of change by showing how the characters were struggling to define the truth and whether it was important or not. New York City is also seen to be dealing with new challenges, as well as achievements. The city has new infrastructure coming up every day but besides the progress, the residents’ have new evils to contend.
The illustrated novel portrays what Jameson had proposed in 1984, which further proves that the novel contains postmodernisms ideologies. The postmodernism theories are widely criticized though they are still useful in explaining the period after the capitalism era. Some of the criticisms leveled against these theories are based on believing that the theories were proposed for the sake of it, merely to oppose the modernist theories. McKinley (2000) for instance argued that the postmodernism is somewhat a religion rather than a science since it has a hidden agenda of the western promoting individualism and refusing to acknowledge cultural diversity. This study will further explore the postmodernism features in City of Glass.
Refrences:
Foucault, M. (1994) The Subject and Power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777-795. Print
Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Print
MiKinely, Fredric. Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 2000. Print.
Bishop, Ryan (1996) Postmodernism. In David Levinson and Melvin Ember (eds.), Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Malmgren, Carl D. Detecting/writing the Real: Paul Auster’s City of Glass. London, England: City U, 2004. Print.