Post Modernism and 'City of Glass'
There is no clear definition of what postmodernism is. However, City of Glass is considered to be the by far the text which is most visibly postmodernism. This is precisely because it “offers the kind of narrative that zigzags visibly, deliberately missing at all angle the sense of a foundation.” The postmodernist discourse remains central to the understanding of City of Glass. Perhaps the only thing that makes the story alluring is the fact that it is steeped in postmodernist features. Otherwise, it would have been just a cold and ambiguous story about too many coincidences. To understand the novel’s play with predictability, we must have recourse to the post modernist discourse about it. Aristotle primarily argued in “Poetics” that:
“art is ordered by a strict structure comprising of beginning, middle and end. The arrangement of the particular elements in its structure is governed by the universal principle to which everything must correspond.”
This is in deep contrast with postmodernism. In relation with this, D. Nikolic argues that the postmodernist fiction seems to reflect the fact that the writer “has become tired of trying to explain a disjointed and godless universe.” She cites Peter Brooke who advocates that the narrative has gradually turned into a vital means “of organising and interpreting the world as a consequence of the ideological failure of the ‘sacred masterplot”. Paul Auster borrows this postmodern version of narratology to characterize his novel. However, according to D. Nikolic, Paul Auster uses “conventions of popular fiction in order to foil them” . Laws of random events and unpredictable chance characterize the novel. All throughout the novel, we find that the author plays with the concept of predictability. There is a sense of ‘déjà vu’ to the story. However, there is a kind of newness to this very ‘déjà vu’. The readers find themselves lured by this sense of a new story which has already been told. There is both the comfort
“art is ordered by a strict structure comprising of beginning, middle and end. The arrangement of the particular elements in its structure is governed by the universal principle to which everything must correspond.”
This is in deep contrast with postmodernism. In relation with this, D. Nikolic argues that the postmodernist fiction seems to reflect the fact that the writer “has become tired of trying to explain a disjointed and godless universe.” She cites Peter Brooke who advocates that the narrative has gradually turned into a vital means “of organising and interpreting the world as a consequence of the ideological failure of the ‘sacred masterplot”. Paul Auster borrows this postmodern version of narratology to characterize his novel. However, according to D. Nikolic, Paul Auster uses “conventions of popular fiction in order to foil them” . Laws of random events and unpredictable chance characterize the novel. All throughout the novel, we find that the author plays with the concept of predictability. There is a sense of ‘déjà vu’ to the story. However, there is a kind of newness to this very ‘déjà vu’. The readers find themselves lured by this sense of a new story which has already been told. There is both the comfort
Bibliography: 1. Aristotle. 'The plot is the basic princile, the heart and soul, as it were, of tragedy ', Poetics, Univ of Michigan Ppress,p28 2. http://www.bluecricket.com/auster/articles/aristotle.html 3. Beckett, interview. 4. Baudrillard. Chance, Culture and the Literary Text. 5. Benjamin Walter, Illuminations, Fontana Press, 1973 6. Lyotard, Jean Francois, The Postmodernist Condition, Manchester Univ. Press, 1979 7. http://www.bluecricket.com/auster/articles/dawson.html 8. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkely: U of California, 1988. 9. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholsan-Smith. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991.