Title: The Fictionalizing Act in 4321: Neo-Realistic Narrative of Private and Collective Histories

Abstract: Paul Auster fictionalizes two kinds of reality in 4321. One is of the alternative personal lives that may well be real in the parallel worlds, the other is about the real-life American history that spans seventy years of the twentieth century. The former accords with the many-worlds theory and its conception of reality, stressing on the ideas of multilayered being and ontological indeterminacy and fortuity. The latter highlights the anti-war movement and the rebellion at Columbia University in the 1960s. It exposes the fictionality and dark sides of American dominant ideology and reveals Auster’s new-leftist political position. The fictionalizing act in this novel enables the author to integrate realistic principles of writing with postmodern narrative devices and interweave private histories with collective ones. In this way he illustrates the infinite potential possibility of personal life and the social critical function of contemporary American Neo-realistic fiction as well as its fundamental narrative features.

Keywords:: fictionalizing act, alternate private history, collective history, neo-realistic narrative, Paul Auster

Author: Qiong Li, Associate Professor, College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2024.03.009