Art as a Master Narrative in Paul Auster’s City of Glass

Abstract

The present essay investigates the status of art as a master narrative in City of Glass (1985) by the contemporary American novelist Paul Auster. The study is mainly done on the basis of Lyotard’s philosophical ideology that defines postmodernism as “incredulity towards meta-narratives”. He defines master narrative as a totalizing framework that plays the role of authorizing and legitimizing human knowledge and experience. He asserts that in the absence of meta-narratives of the past, the postmodern world is ruled by mini-narratives or little narratives that create a world of indeterminacy, meaninglessness, and disclosure. Due to the lack of transcendental ideologies of the past, all accepted ideas of the western civilization such as reality, human knowledge, and identity are called into question. Accordingly, the idea of art as a master narrative and as a source of absolute truth is taken into consideration in the current essay. The study is done on the basis of the role of literature and architecture as two significant branches of art in the context of City of Glass as a true representation of postmodern individual with all his worries, beliefs and disbeliefs, his fragmented self, and multiplicity of his philosophical, social, political concerns. Accordingly, the current essay traces the root of fragmentation, pluralism, and loss of contemporary subject to the loss of metaphysical certainties in the contemporary world.