A Postmodern Study Of Selected Novels Of Paul Auster

Abstract

The term Postmodern literally means "after what is now," according to Latin etymology. It refers to a philosophical and cultural movement whose basic assumption is the rejection of all "meta-narratives"– modes of thinking that bring together knowledge and experience in the search for, and provision of, a final, universal truth. Postmodernism is famously difficult to describe, in part because understanding modernism is required before understanding postmodernism, and modernism and modernity are difficult to define in and of themselves. According to postmodernists, modernity is defined by a unified mind-set that is hard to preserve in today's culturally varied and divided globe. Postmodernism, on the other hand, accepts a variety of viewpoints and often refuses to favour one "truth claim" over another. Provisional, decentred, local ‘petit recits’ replace utopian aspirations of universally applicable truths, pointing only to other ideas and cultural artefacts, themselves open to interpretation and reinterpretation, rather than to an underlying universal Truth.