Out of the Ordinary: The Event and its Repetition in Paul Auster’s Prose
Out of the Ordinary: The Event and its Repetition in Paul Auster’s Prose

Summary/Abstract: Devoid of metaphors, conventional in its syntax, and resolute in its ordinariness, Paul Auster’s prose is centered around nothing less than the extraordinary. However, the extraordinary in his narratives—which often takes the form of unexpected, chance events—originates and remains rooted in the mundane, the routine, the domestic, the trivial. The ordinary, in his writing, is the condition of possibility for the extraordinary, and in so doing, calls into question this very dichotomy. This paper attempts to examine what happens when this inversion of categories repeats itself within a narrative, and throughout Auster’s work.

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