Paul Auster and the Influence of Maurice Blanchot

Poet, writer and filmmaker Paul Auster is one of the great contributors to American postmodern literature. Influenced by authors like Poe and the hardboiled detective stories of the 1950s, Auster’s novels represented a new genre of “anti-detective fiction,” in which the case itself loses direction and is overshadowed by existential questions. Analyzing three of his novels—Ghosts (1986), The Music of Chance (1990) and Mr. Vertigo (1994)—this critical study explores the intertextual relationship between Auster’s work and the oeuvre of French writer and critic Maurice Blanchot. The author explores Auster’s work as a fictionalization of Blanchot’s concept of inspiration and the construction of imaginary space.

María Laura Arce teaches English and North American literature at Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. She is the author of numerous academic articles on Paul Auster’s fiction.

María Laura Arce
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 176
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2016
pISBN: 978-1-4766-6361-6
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2490-7
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
1. Paul Auster and Maurice Blanchot: An Intertextual Relation 7
2. The Gaze of Orpheus: A Theory of Inspiration 56
3. Ghosts: The Writing Inspiration of the Other 74
4. The Music of Chance: Inspiration for the Construction of a New Universe 93
5. Mr. Vertigo: The Inspiration of the Created Object 125
Afterword 145
Chapter Notes 149
Bibliography 157
Index 165

Winner, Javier Coy Research Award—Spanish Association for American Studies