The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster

There are a whole bunch of one liners I want to get out of the way. Paul Auster is a badass. This is the only type of post modern literature that I like. Toronto is scary.
Ok now we can get down to business. This is a trilogy of dectective like mysteryish novels that use the idea of a private eye or detective as a literary tool. Auster takes the idea of shadowing someone, really delving into their lives, and makes a really hard hitting commentary on modern life. A lot of other post modern fiction that I've read (Don DeLillo in particular) is brutally depressing and gives life a sense of pointlessness. This is said to be characteristic of post modernism, and something that I really don't like. Modernism was supposed to be the age of perfectibility. The idea that there is right and wrong, a god who knows all, a meaning to our lives. What I understand of post modernism is that there is more of an emphasis on how unoriginal and entirely original each of our lives can be. There is also often self reference within these novels, and a playful element (and Auster does this brilliantly) that makes the reader wonder if in fact the events that are occurring were actually real and happened to the author.
New York, and in my Canadian equivalent of Toronto, exemplify this sort of disconnected, disaffected view of life. In a place like Toronto, there are so many people that it's very hard to know many, let alone anywhere near, all of the inhabitants. If all of the inhabitants can't communicate, the modern ideals fall apart and you get more post modern, seemingly unimportant lives. Each person goes about their own business. Lonely in a lot of ways because if you aren't part of the initiate, its hard to get entrenched in all the happenings that you know are going on right outside your door in the metropolis.
What this trilogy highlights, is that each person's life is important only to themselves. That they are in a sense distinct and untouchable to the outside world. In the trilogy, the protagonists (all men) try desperately to form bonds with the women they love but find that their true passions lie in their individual pursuits and ambitions. They find that they are the only ones that they are ultimately answerable to.
The reason I say Paul Auster is a badass is because he really seems to empower his characters, and in some ways, his readers, into doing what they want with their lives. Reminds me a bit of Neal Stephenson in the way that his writing style answers to know one. In an interview once, Stephenson, when asked how he did the research for his historical novels, he responded "Oh I make most of it up." Pure Badass.
Extremely esoterical look into how we live our lives, and the idea of "spending" our time doing something "worthwhile."
Another example that convinces me that we get out of a book exactly what it is that we're looking for.

eight haphazard detectives out of nine. an author to look into.

Andrew