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1.30.08 | Auster (day 1)

1.30.08 | Auster (day 1). Business? Poe’s Mysteries Mystery and metafiction Naming, Authorship, Identity HW Responses due for Friday. Read through chapter 9 for tomorrow. We are looking to finish this book by Monday. Poe wrap-up.

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1.30.08 | Auster (day 1)

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  1. 1.30.08 | Auster (day 1) • Business? • Poe’s Mysteries • Mystery and metafiction • Naming, Authorship, Identity • HW • Responses due for Friday. • Read through chapter 9 for tomorrow. We are looking to finish this book by Monday.

  2. Poe wrap-up. • The ideal world of meaningful evidence, calculating reason, and swift justice . • Poe’s stories: • Tell-tale Heart • Rationality put to irrational ends. • Cold, precision emotionally executed. • The Murders on the Rue Morgue • Suggests that rational, inventive mind can solve anything, but the mystery is impossible to solve from the reader’s perspective. • What would it mean to practice the kind of ‘open-mind-consider-everything-treat-each-case-anew’ mentality as a reader? • Enter Paul Auster.

  3. First impressions • What do you think of the Auster so far? • What do you expect will be important as you keep reading?

  4. The Mystery • Mystery stories come up often in the first few chapters. • Where is reference made to mysteries? • What is said about them? • How do you take this?

  5. Meta-fiction. • Wikipedia • Metafiction is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction. It is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually, irony and self-reflection. In a sense, it can be compared to presentational theatre, that does not let the audience forget they are viewing a play; metafiction does not let the reader forget he or she is reading a fictional work. What do you know… “Contemporary author Paul Auster has made metafiction the central focus of his writing and is probably the best known active novelist specialising in the genre”

  6. Meta-fiction • What elements in these first few chapters qualify as meta-fiction, as referring to fiction itself?

  7. Names Who is the narrator of City of Glass? • Daniel Quinn • William Wilson • Max Work • Paul Auster [familiar?]

  8. Identity • One has to ask then, what is essential about “Daniel Quinn?” • How do we know that is his real name? • What does it mean to have a real name? • What does the practice of naming imply about identity? • In just the short bit we have read for today, how is this text addressing identity?

  9. Authorship Each of Quinn’s avatars presented here has some connection with authorship. DQ – Mystery Writer WW – Pen name for DQ MW – Recurring character’s name PA – Author of DQ What is this text doing with authorship? What is potentially interesting about this constellation?

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