Moon Palace - post-modern narrative techniques
First of all it is necessary to partially understand the concept of post-modernity in order to apply post-modern concepts to Moon Palace. So the first question to be answered is, what is post-modernism ?Post-modernity is an expression to describe our contempory time, much like the word Classic describes an epoch. However the post-modern concept is very divers as there is not even a common definition of post-modernism. I'll point out the most important definitions. 1. Post-Modernism is a further development from the age of modernity2. Post-Modernism breaks with modernism3. Post-Modernism comes before modernity4. (Post-Modernism is only a mental construct form crazed French philosophers)5. (Post-Modernism has never existed)The three common definitions share many characteristics of post-modernity. Most important the post-modernity rejects the existence of one objective reality or truth. This theorem is called constructivism and forms the basis for the post-modern concept."Meaning is imposed on the world by us, rather than existing in the world independently of us. There are many ways to structure the world, and those are meanings or perceptions for any event or concept."
The combination of a realistic setting with post-modern style elements is often called Neo-Realism. Furthermore with everything being subjective, there is no high or low culture, but everything becomes pop culture, and according to the French philosopher Francois Lyotard who stated in the first philosophical book about post-modernism, that nothing new can ever emerge, everything will always be a collage of something which has existed before. That are some main points of the post-modern theorem, obviously there would be a lot more to tell, however as time is limited I will continue with the evaluation of Moon Palace as a post-modern novel. An example for this, is the self-interpretation of the text, so Marco's name is interpreted by the text itself in surface text, as is the meaning of the number of Books in his apartment. Radical constructivism even rejects the existing of a reality without someone to perceive it, there the universe would cease to exist with the last being dying, moderate constructivists are of the opinion that an outer world exists but can never be perceived in an absolute objective way. They prefer however small narratives explaining small pieces rather than a great concept. So are Tesla, Blakecloke and Edison as fictional as Effing ?Is Moon Palace a historical novel ?Does history exist ?Are we the authors of our own life ?This leads us to another field : the constructivism Marco is a great example for the constructivist principle of the book, since his quest of identity is a quest to construct his own reality, which is as we learn made of various pieces like a puzzle This puzzle-like structure makes it possible that the book is non-linear and can be read from basically every point. So society's matters of judgement don't apply to him, as his reality in the park is pleasant one. And what if Effing's story is mental construct like Marco's feverish dream or Barber's story Kepler's Blood ? Therefore it very hard to say what is real and what is not, leading to ultimate conclusion that it is impossible to even define what reality is. He does not care for the attitude of other's towards him, believing his reality to be as valid as the one of others. By taking a closer look, we are to experience that Moon Palace however breaks with the a great narrative of modern literature : the surface and subplot structure. This point of view has had great impact on the development of post-modernism. The negating of hierarchy also leads to the conclusion that Moon Palace cannot be categorized in a genre, instead Auster works with parodies of other genres, so within this book there is Effing's Western story, Solomon and Marco's road story, Cyrano de Bergerac, and many other styles. However we still have to question his view of reality as it is made up of stories, whose accuracy is questionable, Effing's tale is good example for it, as we never know in how far the he tells the truth, because his story sounds much like a cheap western and we only see Marco's interpretation of the story. This raises some interesting questions :Effing is fictional, but he encounters "real" historical persons like Tesla.
Common topics in this essay:
Moon Palace,
Solomon Marco's,
Bergerac Zimmer's,
York Trilogy,
Francois Lyotard,
Kepler's Blood,
moon palace,
,
Blakecloke Edison,
Effing's Western,
cyrano de bergerac,
de bergerac,
cyrano de,
low culture,
grand narratives,
post-modern concept,
surface subplot,
existing world,
mental construct,
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Acceptance Essays
