A Study On The Postmodernity Of The Book Of Illusions, A Novel By Paul Auster

Paul Auster (1947—) is a remarkable distinctive American-Jewish writer and the academician of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Nowadays he becomes one of the most toast writers across the world and beloved by numerous readers. Paul Auster is a voluminous writer whose tenth outstanding novel The Book of Illusions (2002) is a story in which the protagonist David Zimmer accidently be attracted by the silent movie actor Hector Mann who has been missing for six decades, and since then his dramatic anfractuous tour of searching and finding. The post-modernist characters of Paul Auster’s novels are mainly about the usage of mass linguistic symbol, the pursue of paradox and aporia, the uncertainty identification and the labyrinth world which can’t find a way out. This paper will discuss the postmodern narrative, intertextuality, black humor, parody and uncertainty of The Book of Illusions from the angle of close reading.The introduction is about the background and literary career of Paul Auster and the synopsis of The Book of Illusions, and then summarizes the researches of the Paul Auster in the world, as well as introduces the analytical method of this paper.The first chapter focuses on the narrative technique of The Book of Illusions. Paul Auster prefers the labyrinthic writing in which the mise en abyme skill can make the characters be reflected in different narrative levels and mess the space and time, fiction and reality. The usage of collage and montage expresses the non-continuity perception of time, shows the chaos and disorder of the text.The second chapter discusses the intertextual characteristics of the novel. Postmodern novels emphasize the inter-reference and play of text. Paul Auster challenges the intelligence of readers and enrich the interpretation of text by intertextuality. The third chapter focuses on the rhetorical arts of postmodernism such as black humor and parody hence by which Paul Auster reveals the pessimism position of the character’s endless researching in the postmodern society. The usage of collage and montage expresses the non-continuity perception of time, shows the chaos and disorder of the text.The forth chapter concentrates on the uncertainty of postmodern novels. The narrative of The Book of Illusions shows an uncertainty world in which the uncertainty lead the protagonist into the difficult position of identity searching and embodied the characteristics of aporia in postmodern trend.The conclusion summarizes the main points of this theses, and induces the literary value and implications of thought about the postmodern characteristics such as labyrinthic narrative, play of intertextuality and uncertainty in The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster.