The Anti-Detective Narrative In Paul Auster's New York Trilogy

Paul Auster is a rising star in contemporary American literary world. This paper is intended to discuss the"anti-detective"narrative in his postmodern fiction New York Trilogy. It examines the fiction's subversion of classical detective stories in its narrative motif, narrative structure and narrative language. By means of subversion, Auster expresses his deep concern about human nature, literary creation and the living predicaments of modern men.Auster harnesses the inquiring spirit any reader could have towards a mystery story and then redirects reader's focus from the intellectual game of finding a wrong-doer to the epistemological search for self. He employs the trappings of crime fiction to introduce the detective and a mystery only to frustrate the reader's expectation of an acceptable solution.While the classic detective arrives at a solution to a crime, each protagonist in The Trilogy finds himself confronting the insoluble mysteries of the assigned case and his own identity. Actually, the mystery has nothing to do with the crime. The narrative motif has been shifted from locating a missing person or solving a murder to the frustrated search for meaning of existence in the postmodern world and insoluble mystery of language, identity and literary creation.Whereas traditional detective narratives present the progress of the investigation all the way towards its final fulfillment of the desired object, the fictional journey of Auster's wanderers has no temporal progress and the passage of time brings no change. Thus motion becomes stasis and active pursuit becomes stubborn waiting. The disjointed narrative structure is the form that best expresses the individual's isolation from society and his existence in a chaotic universe, filled with absurdity of chance.In detective fiction, a faithful description of the settings, the characters and the complicated interpersonal relationships within the society being investigated plays an essential part in the appreciation of the story. However, in Auster's literary world, communicating among people is impossible for language cannot perform its expressive or symbolic function any more. The narrative language is marked by its fragmentation and inconsistency, uncertainty and instability. Auster even treats the incorrespondence between signifier and signified as one of the major themes. All the three stories start with the conventional plot gimmicks of detective fiction, but turn out to be a radical breakthrough from the traditional development. Through deconstruction of the prescriptive conventions in a detective fiction, Auster wants to present the living predicaments of modern people. To some extent, Auster himself is also a"detective", seeking ways of breakthrough in literary creation and in helping trapped people out. If the original hierarchy and order become dated in"new times", the traditional modes of writing could not represent the capriciousness and unpredictability of modern life, when and where could people see the coming of a new system of ideology and the rhetoric corresponding to this system?...