On The Subversion Of The Traditional Genre Of Detective Novels In The New York Trilogy

It is known that the detective novel belongs to a popular literary branch, for whichboth detectives and ordinary beings have deep love. However, this traditional genre isthoroughly overturned by Auster, a newly rising literary star in recent years. Paul Austeris the most impressive and creative contemporary writer in America, who works asnovelist, playwright, poet, film director, as well as translator. His representative worksinclude eighteen novels, three memoirs, a collection of essays, a volume of selectedpoems and four film scripts as well. Among these works, his metaphysical detectivenovel The New York Trilogy, which deserves high international reputation, consists ofCity of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room. These three bizarre but thought-provokingstories combine together to guide the readers on the fantastic road of seeking for human’sidentity and existent meaning.With Auster’s fame increasing in the world, amounts of researches have beenconducted on The New York Trilogy from the perspective of postmodernism,deconstructionism, the searching for identity in the dark, and so on. Having collected andread a lot of materials in these fields, the writer of this paper finds that the issue of thesubversion of the traditional detective novels which reflected Americans’ losing identityand the society’ absurdity and indeterminacy, is permeated everywhere in this novel’snarration. Therefore, the analysis of the subversion theme from the aspects of motif,language, and structure can help us to better understand the profound connotation of thenovel and the writing intention of Paul Auster. As a field worth probing into, Auster’s TheNew York Trilogy not only employs some techniques of postmodernism, but also adoptssome philosophical ideas, such as metaphysics so as to subvert the traditional detectivenovels. Its distinctive metaphysical feature along with its indefatigable quest for human’s“self” and existent meaning endows an infrequent philosophical height to the traditionaldetective novels or even today’s American literary works. Thus, grounded on the“metaphysical” feature, this presented thesis is inclined to an in-depth analysis on thesubversion towards the traditional genre by applying theory of language, identity andnarrative structure to reveal the interior conflicts and exterior confusion.This thesis consists of an introduction, the main body and a conclusion. Its maincontents are as follows: The part of introduction gives a brief presentation of this thesis’ theoretical frame,Auster’s writing experience, his major works, as well as a brief literary review on thisstudy home and abroad, through which the writing purpose of this thesis as well as thistrilogy’s implied significance in today’s industrialized society is pointed out.The part of body is composed of four chapters:Chapter One mainly takes up the brief introduction of traditional detective novelsand the metaphysical detective novels in their principles and features. In order to analyzeAuster’s delicate design that has overturned the traditional detective novels, thephilosophical dimension in these three stories is mentioned firstly before a detaileddiscussion is given. The first part gives a quick review of the traditional fiction’sdefinition, main principles and rules, and the basic logic procedure in the criminal case;in the second part, a stating of metaphysical detective novels is declared from the aspectsof definition and features. Meanwhile, a brief comparison between the traditional genreand Auster’s metaphysical genre is also expounded. In this sense, this chapter is obviousto lay the foundation of the next three chapters.Chapter Two investigates Auster’s subversion of the traditional detective novels innarrative motif, which also proclaims human’s disorientation and silent resistance facingthis meaningless and ridiculous world. This chapter involves three parts: the first partillustrates the protagonists’ indeterminate “self” and their seeking for the true identity;the second chapter respectively narrates the relation between “self” and “other” in threestories, revealing one’s attempts to seek “self” from the gaze of “other”; the third partdemonstrates the change of the narrators. In certain sense, this chapter could be read asAuster’s quest for his own identity and situation.Chapter Three mainly concentrates on Auster’s subversion of the traditionaldetective novels in perspective of narrative structure. In the first part, the traditionaldetective novels’ temporal and spatial sequence is thoroughly disturbed and overturnedby the distinctive temporal and spatial frame of Auster’s three stories; in the second part,the embedment of some mini-stories into the major story is displayed, including Poe’sdetective ideas, Hawthorne’s “Wakefield”, and Thoreau’s Walden; and in the last part, therelationship of cause and effect and “completeness” in traditional detective novels issubverted by the absence of a clear closure, which not only confuses and frustrates the readers but also causes readers to think deeply about the meaning.Chapter Four is mainly devoted to Auster’s subversion of the traditional function oflanguage. The first part presents the transformation of language’s role from the past to thepostmodern age. It points out human’s disability to decode the world through language,and that language also seems to be blocks of literary creation; in the second part, thistrilogy’s language subverts the traditional genre from the aspects of the inadequacy andindeterminacy between the signifier and the signified, as well as the insertion of othercelebrities’ anecdotes, which shows Auster’s pastiche and parody towards the dignifiedgiants’ works so as to overturn the traditional genre’s preaching function.The conclusion of this thesis makes a summary of the preceding critique, and pointsout the main purpose of this thesis，as well as gives some evaluations about this workthrough the study of the three metaphysical detective stories’ subversion of the traditionalgenre. In a word, it is easy for readers to find human’s miserable but unremitting seekingfor “self” and the existent meaning in this confusing and fallen world. This trilogy notonly corresponds closely with the spirit of times and American’s unremitting exploration,but leaves more free space for readers. Meanwhile, Auster’s experiment on the narrativemotif, narrative structure, and language also provides a new source for the subsequentdetective novelists.