Hello Gentle Reader,
Paul Auster is one of the most well known and regarded postmodernists of American literature. Just as cerebral as Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo; Auster became famous for his pastiche and slipstream novels, defying the psychological and realistic narrative premises often associated with literary fiction, and playfully explored themes of identity, chance, coincidence, loss, grief, and one’s sense reality (or their perception of it) being altered, or becoming alienated from it. Styled, the Brooklyn Bard, and though regarded as a New York literary institution, Brooklyn, remained the haunting ground of Paul Austre, in similar fashion to James Joyce’s Dublin, Philip Roth’s New Jersey, or Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul. Brooklyn became immortalized in Auster’s literary universe through his “New York Trilogy,” (“City of Glass,” “Ghosts,” “The Locked Room,”) this trilogy of novels, not only infiltrates the noir mystery genre, but inverts the medium into a postmodern portrait, whereby the nature of identity and reality are deconstructed, examined, and left in a state of post-structuralist disarray. Identity and reality are not static elements in Auster’s work, its palpable, adaptable, and changeable. Throughout “The New York Trilogy,” identity is both lost and replaced. Identity in turn becomes an increasingly metafictional conundrum for the writer, whereby fictional reality and the intrusion of autobiography or reality can become difficult to delineate. The enduring appeal and success of “The New York Trilogy,” showcased the promise of an otherwise brilliant writer and foreshadowed a brilliant career. Auster did not disappoint. What followed suit was a brilliant and prolific literary career, with a variety of interests in different literary mediums, Auster continually returned to the pen and paper out of curiosity, interest, and enduring appreciation for the literary. Paul Auster was always that unique blend of late postmodernism, echoing sentiments of rockstar appeal for being new and exciting, while also being a writer whose literary depth defied superficial criticism challenging his credentials and charging him as an imposter. Throughout the 1990’s and early 2000’s, Auster remained a fashionable and hip postmodernist, never coming to rest on his laurels, and bask on previously treaded ground, and continued to produce on a novel a year, his last one “Baumgartner,” released just last year, and was heralded as a beautiful novel tracing the aches of memory and the spiraling delirium of old age, grief, and loneliness. Of his generation, Paul Auster, is perhaps the most accessible and enjoyable. What both endears and confounds, is perhaps the contrariness of his work. Auster’s language literary language is lucid and agreeable, never twisting itself into an esoteric code or enigmatic linguistic puzzle, but his narratives and plots delight in breaking and warping the conventions of narrative, much to the irritation of critics and theorists. Paul Auster’s death is an immense loss to contemporary American Literature. Truly one of the greatest postmodernist writers of its canon, an unequivocal and unapologetic practitioner of the form and style, while remaining a inherently American sensibility.
Rest
in Peace Paul Auster.
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
M.
Mary
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