On Indeterminacy In Paul Auster’s Works

Paul Auster is an American postmodernism author whose first work was published in 1980s. Just as other postmodernism authors, Paul Auster’s works reflect the characteristic of indeterminacy, which is also one of the prominent characteristics of postmodernism works. Paul Auster’s works explain the indeterminacy through genre, narration and language.Auster’s novels express the indeterminacy of theme, the indeterminacy of character, the indeterminacy of factual and fictional writing. Indeterminacy is a core characteristic of Auster’s novels and it deviates the traditional literature’s model. This thesis is consisted of three parts. The first part is about the anti-genre. Auster used parody and collage to explain anti-genre that is also a feature of postmodernism works. Parody and collage would lead to the textual openness and communication between different texts.At the same time, parody and collage invite readers to join the interpretation of texts and that would lead to the indeterminacy of text meaning and theme. The second part is about metafiction narration.In Auster’s novels, metafiction narration include intervening narration, juxtaposition of fiction and reality, fragmentary narration. Intervening narration is often used by postmodernism metafiction. Its purpose is to take the author’s sound to intervene in fictional text. In order to realize this purpose, Auster often used embedded structure and alternation of narrative perspectives. When the author appears in his fictional novel as a narrator, the novel’s fictional nature will be revealed. Then juxtaposition of fiction and reality——it means that Auster puts the real things into the fictional text——which would make the readers unable to discern which part of the novel is fictional and which part is reality. As a result, the readers will get a sense that the text is indeed just a fiction, and they will lose in a sense of doubt whether the world we live in is real or not. Fragmentary narration is characterized by fragmentization of plot which is the second reason that makes the indeterminacy of the theme. The third part is about language. Auster’s works consistently pay attention to the contemporary languages’ transform. Contemporary languages can’t express the accurate meanings of texts because of that the connections between signifier and signified is breaking up. That means languages will also deconstruct the character’s identity and the noumenon. In conclusion, contemporary languages will result in indeterminacy of text meanings and openness of readers’ interpretation. Despite the contemporary language is dereliction of duty. large amount of it is still flooding in contemporary. society. In view of these. Auster admits that language has the ability to construct the reality, but he also points out that the so called "reality" would become non-rational and indeterminate.Paul Auster is an author who is brave in innovation and practice on novel’s forms. Through this series of formal experiments, the writer deconstructing character images, confusing fiction and reality, and taking his works into a realm of uncertainty. Apart from this, the readers’ participatory interpretation would exacerbate the indeterminacy into the works.