Entropy and Loss: Paul Auster's In the Country of Last Things

Abstract

Abstract This paper aims at understanding the postmodern victim's struggle for survival in a post-apocalyptic, unnamed metropolis depicted in Auster's novel In the Country of Last Things. It is a story about the loss of a known, recognizable world and the struggle to stay alive in a dystopian space. On the city streets, Auster's characters experience loneliness, disconnection and personal disintegration; individual memory is of no consequence in a place where everything is constantly shifting. With his depiction of a city in ruin, Auster offers a critique of Western civilization: this country of last things is what remains of an affluent society. The ruins, the inhumanity, the gradual disappearance of language all create a sterile urban landscape which is the result of hundreds of years of civilization. The lives of these urban individuals do not belong to them anymore, but to ‘the city being’ which has given up on its dwellers, on its history and on its language; everything is left to chance and the outcome can be surprising: the beginning of nothingness or of utopia. This article will explore issues such as the (post)apocalyptic paradigm, the entropy of space in an urban novel, the labyrinth as ‘central metaphor of postmodern fiction’ and the loss of identity through the loss of words.