Paul Auster's Specters

Extract

When the prophetic seer was asked whether this boy [Narcissus] would live to a ripe old age, he replied: ‘Yes, if he does not come to know himself.’

Unwittingly, he [Narcissus] desired himself, and was himself the object of his own approval, at once seeking and sought … But he could not lay hold upon himself … Poor foolish boy, why vainly grasp at the fleeting image that eludes you?

For knowledge comes slowly, and when it comes, it is often at great personal expense.

There is more than one specter haunting Paul Auster's Ghosts. The novel is, indeed, riddled with specters (puns intended): Auster, as writer, haunts a text where reader and critic alike hopelessly strive to catch an equally elusive meaning. I intend to show, in this paper, how Auster, following a lineage going back to the metafiction writers of the late 1960s, passing by others loosely grouped under the term “post-structuralists,” more importantly heralds a new era, and manages to present, in one novel, a full-fledged allegory of how postmodern writing and reading can successfully negotiate the new challenges presented by the dawning virtual age, focusing on the twin concepts of the mirror and the double and the resulting spectral image(s) produced.