TY - JOUR

T1 - Paul Auster’s 4 3 2 1. Past Paradigms

T2 - 4 3 2 1 de Paul Auster. Dépasser les paradigmes

AU - Siegumfeldt, Inge Birgitte

PY - 2020/4/1

Y1 - 2020/4/1

N2 - There is something strange about a cast of characters that comes in tetrads centering on duplicate yet different protagonists with identical names, and critics who argue that Auster’s mastodon novel, 4 3 2 1, marks a return to realism fail to take into account the inflated tone of the fabular woven into the texture of the narrative. Auster has worked with alternativity before, but 4 3 2 1 takes his penchant for unknowability to a new level. It installs a constitutive element of heterogeneity at the core of the text and sabotages readerly expectations. It would be far-fetched to argue that 4 3 2 1 forges a literary strategy, in which ‘myth’ and ‘the everyday’ converge, that is consonant with a new type of twenty-first century fiction which critics are currently at pains to define.

AB - There is something strange about a cast of characters that comes in tetrads centering on duplicate yet different protagonists with identical names, and critics who argue that Auster’s mastodon novel, 4 3 2 1, marks a return to realism fail to take into account the inflated tone of the fabular woven into the texture of the narrative. Auster has worked with alternativity before, but 4 3 2 1 takes his penchant for unknowability to a new level. It installs a constitutive element of heterogeneity at the core of the text and sabotages readerly expectations. It would be far-fetched to argue that 4 3 2 1 forges a literary strategy, in which ‘myth’ and ‘the everyday’ converge, that is consonant with a new type of twenty-first century fiction which critics are currently at pains to define.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Paul Auster

KW - 4321

U2 - 10.4000/lisa.11459

DO - 10.4000/lisa.11459

M3 - Journal article

VL - 18

JO - Littératures, Histoire des Idées du Monde Anglophone

JF - Littératures, Histoire des Idées du Monde Anglophone

IS - 50

ER -