从《幻影书》看嵌套叙事的艺术革新和文化功能

Approaching the Embedded Narrative in Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions: Its Innovative Strategies and Cultural Functions

奥斯特的小说具有很强的实验性和鲜明的时代气息。在《幻影书》中,他运用嵌套叙事结构营造出一个叙述相互影射、时空交错并置的迷宫世界,同时又通过各种消解式表现手法来瓦解叙述层之间的本体界限,凸显话语的虚构性和模糊性,使文本进入一种无限循环、无穷嵌套的开放状态。这种革新体现的是后现代主义写作的不确定性原则,它不仅改写了传统嵌套叙事的常规特征,也在很大程度上折射出当代嵌套叙事艺术的新走向。从文化的角度看,它反映了当今社会对语言、现实、真实等概念的重新界定及其在人们意识中的感应。不过,它与时代的关系不仅仅是反映与被反映的关系,它还以自己的叙事策略参与并构成了现实内爆的文化现象。

Paul Auster is known for his experiment with writing that reflects the cultural sentiment of his era. In The Book oflUusions, he invents some strategies for embedded narrative and creates a fictional maze in which different spatial and temporal parts jostle together and various levels of embedding echo each other. Its self-negating narrative deconstructs the ontological boundaries between the embedded worlds and highlights the fictitiousness and non-closure of the discourses. The artistic innovation in the novel embodies the fundamental principle of indeterminacy in postmodern writing and reveals some striking features of embedded narrative in avant-garde fiction. Judging from a cultural perspective, it reflects new views of such concepts as language, reality and truth and their consequent influence on public mentality. However, its relationship with the times is more than reflecting and being reflected. It also plays a positive role in reconstructing the postmodern concept of reality.