On The Spatial Writing Of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy

Paul Auster is one of the most famous contemporary American writers,and has attracted considerable attention for his unique postmodern narrative techniques ever since the publication of his debut novel The New York Trilogy in 1987.His works often explore major motifs in serious literature through the formula of popular novels,integrating postmodernist literary theories and the philosophy of existentialism to discuss profound questions about semiotics,destiny,contingency and the search for identity.This has endowed his novels with substantial philosophical depth rare in contemporary American fictions.At the same time,he is also a diligent and prolific writer,and has published nearly 40 works including novels,scripts,essays,reviews,autobiographies,etc.Set in New York,The New York Trilogy is composed of a series of novellas originally published sequentially as City of Glass(1985),Ghosts(1986)and The Locked Room(1986).New York in these novels is a broken endless labyrinth of noises and crowds,its meaning unknown to the urbanites.And in this intricate but boring postmodern city,people have lost the desire to explore the logic and meaning of its mechanism or function.Most urbanites will only lose themselves in the exploration like Quinn in City of Glass,have their identities reversed in the process of monitoring others and being monitored like Blue in Ghosts,and finally become the obscure protagonist of The Locked Room who gives up the quest for meaning and truth completely,and in the meantime loses his identity,with nowhere to come from or go to.This thesis attempts to analyze the spatial writing of Auster’s New York Trilogy from the perspective of spatial criticism,and includes five chapters.The first chapter gives a brief introduction of Paul Auster and his career as a writer,as well as the plot of The New York Trilogy,and summarizes the research results and achievements of Auster studies at home and abroad.After introducing the origin and development of spatial criticism,it explains the feasibility of studying the spatial writing of the novel through relative theories.The second chapter discusses in detail the spatial writing of the novel from the two dimensions of the forms of spaces and the characters’ experience of each space,and divides them into the physical,urban space,the cognitive,mental space,and the heterotopia where the past and the present,the real and the unreal interweave.In addition,this chapter also analyzes how the three kinds of spaces interact,and discusses the experience of the different spaces.The third chapter analyzes how the novel achieves its unique spatial writing and spatial construction in the postmodern context through the spatialization of time,the use of intertextuality and changing the focal point of the narrative.The fourth chapter focuses on the functions of spatial writing in the novel,pointing out that on the one hand,space has played an important role in promoting the development of the plot and shaping the characters in involving itself into the narrative.On the other hand,the uncertainty of identity,theme and plot brought about by the interlacing and juxtaposition of space also fits Auster’s artistic belief in indeterminacy.The fifth chapter is the conclusion,which summarizes the whole thesis and points out the positive significance of the spatial writing of The New York Trilogy in solving the predicament confronted by humans in the postmodern city.