Fictional Poetics and Imaginary Journeys in City Of Glass by Paul Auster

Abstract

n the three stories that constitute The New York Trilogy–City of Glass,

 

2Ghostsand The Locked Room–Paul Auster uses and deconstructs the conventionalelements of the detective novel, developing a recurrent investigation of nature, function and meaning of language, but also of loneliness, closure and the identity problematic. Paul Auster’s narrative production evokes traditional logocentric ghosts (such as presence, reality and truth), which echo the indissolubilityprinciple between word and meaning, only to dupethis identity through a textual guidance for marking the fiction and consequent reinforcement of the illusory significance effects. Auster alters themechanismsdeceiving the readers’expectations regarding the epilogue and the textual transparency,which a mimetic pact would suggest. The resulting empty spacegives the text a multi-meaning freedomwhich scatters all certainties and conveys the power of creating a chaos.Under the semblance of narrative fluency, Paul Auster’s writing hides a subversion of the basic premisesof the realist literature and of symbolsin a self-reflective poetic fictionalized on the structuring of imaginary universes.