Salmela Markku | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

The dissertation examines spatiality and the significance of different physical spaces in the works of American writer Paul Auster. According to the main argument, in Auster’s fiction textualisation of space is a central method of creating meaning. The literary text itself and the act of writing ­ important concerns especially in the author’s early works ­ are also consistently represented through spatial metaphor. The evolving text finds an analogy in the figure of the closed room, the creative process in a random pedestrian itinerary; journeys of larger scope unfold towards mythic meanings. The chosen methods of representation illustrate that instead of mere background material for fiction, space can be textualised to fulfil several other aesthetic, cultural, and political functions. The analysis utilises terminology from several different disciplines, including sociology, urban studies, history, and postmodern cultural theory. Research material comprises all of Auster’s prose texts, from essays written in the early 1970’s to recent novels. The main emphasis falls on six books ­ five novels and one autobiographical text ­ released between 1982 and 1992. I exclude The New York Trilogy, also published during this period, from detailed examination because those three texts have been analysed elsewhere rather exhaustively. The first chapter establishes the field of inquiry and introduces the texts as well as relevant previous scholarship on Auster. The second examines leading theories of space in more detail, with a particular focus on the dynamics of urban space in New York City. The conceptual intertwining of text and space is illustrated in the figure of “city as text,” whose metaphoric force Auster has also exploited in his fiction. I analyse this figure as a type of cognitive map combining the privileged bird’s-eye perspective with the urban pedestrian’s visual angle. This duality of viewpoints is based on Michel de Certeau’s ideas and contains an assumption of specific power relations. Auster’s typical protagonist ­ an itinerant writer-figure or street person ­ rarely has the opportunity to enjoy the perspectives of the powerful. The junctions of text and space from the point of view of literary creation form the nucleus of the third chapter. After briefly analysing two models of urban textuality found in Auster’s novels, I look more closely at the role of spatiality in the mental process of the writing subject. The author’s prose texts create a specific spatial continuum that expresses the effects of various methods of movement on consciousness and textual meaning. The Bakhtinian concept of chronotope helps to explicate the spatial experiences of the writer in the closed room, the walker wandering in the streets, and the driver en route towards the unknown. Especially in The Invention of Solitude (1982), Auster creates an image of the writer’s room as virtually a magical space which, despite its closed door, opens unrestricted access for the creative mind to both outward to the external world and inward, towards the layers of memory and identity. The fourth chapter gives centre stage to characters of the urban margin, street people who use space creatively but also suffer from spatial restrictions set by society. Two major themes emerge here: asceticism, material scarcity, irreversible movement toward the zero; and political meanings stemming from regulation of space. Asceticism renders the human body a vehicle of meaning, whereas spatial obstacles erected in the fictional world reflect real boundaries within society. In the dystopic novel In the Country of Last Things (1987), obstacles function as spatial embodiments of totalitarian government. In the last two main chapters, the investigation moves towards the macro level of space, the geographical dimension. This shifts the disciplinary emphasis more firmly into the field of American Studies. In US culture, westward travel from the city to wilderness activates mythic narratives that stem from the national history of expansion; by reformulating this journey, Auster’s novels recreate mythological American geographies and nomadic traditions. These ideological structures operate with particular poignancy in the novels Moon Palace (1989) and The Music of Chance (1990), which I explore in the fifth chapter. The last chapter remains within the theme of American spatial mythology, examining first the significance of baseball in the pseudonymous detective novel Squeeze Play and then the theme of the fall and the myth of the American Adam in Leviathan (1992). The analysis shows that Auster’s literary output can be seen to exemplify what is often, in the postmodern context, referred to as the spatial turn ­ an added focus on the spatial dimension in cultural processes. Simultaneously, the importance of representations of space as central elements of the literary text and its interpretation is emphasised. In the texts analysed, consciousness appears to be spatially anchored; characters’ physical environment and ways of moving in that context reflect cognitive processes, personal choices, and states of mind. Through his spatial imagination, Auster also attaches himself firmly to national cultural traditions.