A Shifting Self of a Postmodern Detective in City of Glass
CLIT 7013 Postmodernism
Student: Liang Dongli, Cherry (12912061)
Instructor: Dr. Winnie Yee
Date: Oct 17, 2012
A shifting self of a postmodern detective in City of Glass
The City of Glass is an anti-detective novel that subverts the conventions of a modern detective story. The detective represents a de-centering subject that challenges reading. This paper focuses on the fragmented self of this character in the novel, and shows the destabilizing subject as a postmodern concern.
Lewis argues that in Auster’s work the disruption of the detection process is always associated with a breakdown of the self (60). The main character in City of the Glass has a split subjectivity and is presented to the readers at the first beginning as having multiple identities. “In the triad of selves that Quinn had become, Wilson served as a kind of ventriloquist. Quinn himself was the dummy, and Work was the animated voice that gave purpose to the enterprise” (Auster, 6). Quinn publishes under the pseudonym William Wilson and lives through Max Work, the novel hero he creates. William Wilson is only “an invention” that serves as the “bridge” for him to walk into Work’s detective voice (Auster, 4). Quinn is solely the puppeteered “dummy” – an empty husk. His thinking and interior voice is substituted by Max Work, who gives life to Quinn in his solitude.
As is written in the novel, “the writer and the detective are interchangeable” (Auster, 8). The “private eye” looks into objects and events in search of ideas, in order to make sense of them, leading to an ultimate truth. For Quinn, the “private eye” holds “a triple meaning” (Auster, 8). Throughout the story, we as readers are engaged in the split of ‘I’ when we look into the case with the three eyes. One is of an “investigator”, probably Max Work who discerns details and traces of facts; two is from the lifeless “self” within Quinn, who keeps a distance from the outer world; and the last
Student: Liang Dongli, Cherry (12912061)
Instructor: Dr. Winnie Yee
Date: Oct 17, 2012
A shifting self of a postmodern detective in City of Glass
The City of Glass is an anti-detective novel that subverts the conventions of a modern detective story. The detective represents a de-centering subject that challenges reading. This paper focuses on the fragmented self of this character in the novel, and shows the destabilizing subject as a postmodern concern.
Lewis argues that in Auster’s work the disruption of the detection process is always associated with a breakdown of the self (60). The main character in City of the Glass has a split subjectivity and is presented to the readers at the first beginning as having multiple identities. “In the triad of selves that Quinn had become, Wilson served as a kind of ventriloquist. Quinn himself was the dummy, and Work was the animated voice that gave purpose to the enterprise” (Auster, 6). Quinn publishes under the pseudonym William Wilson and lives through Max Work, the novel hero he creates. William Wilson is only “an invention” that serves as the “bridge” for him to walk into Work’s detective voice (Auster, 4). Quinn is solely the puppeteered “dummy” – an empty husk. His thinking and interior voice is substituted by Max Work, who gives life to Quinn in his solitude.
As is written in the novel, “the writer and the detective are interchangeable” (Auster, 8). The “private eye” looks into objects and events in search of ideas, in order to make sense of them, leading to an ultimate truth. For Quinn, the “private eye” holds “a triple meaning” (Auster, 8). Throughout the story, we as readers are engaged in the split of ‘I’ when we look into the case with the three eyes. One is of an “investigator”, probably Max Work who discerns details and traces of facts; two is from the lifeless “self” within Quinn, who keeps a distance from the outer world; and the last