Skepticism and Responsibility: Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions

TLDR: In this paper, the authors of The Book of Illusions present a meditation on assuming responsibility for one's own actions and their sometimes tragic consequences, rejecting any claim to an unsatisfying relativism of “anything goes.”

Abstract: Paul Auster’s novels evoke with staunch sincerity what the American philosopher Stanley Cavell calls “the responsibility you bear” for your words and actions alike. I argue that Cavell’s ongoing inquiry into topics such as community and skepticism, informed by nineteenth-century Transcendentalist philosophy, can be extended to Auster’s fiction to help illuminate the ethical underpinnings of his metaphysical work. In my analysis of the author’s 2002 novel, The Book of Illusions, I show how Auster subverts the postmodern paradigm of deconstructing the humanist subject as a locus of ethical conflicts and choices. A meditation on assuming responsibility for one’s own actions and their sometimes tragic consequences, the novel rejects any claim to an unsatisfying relativism of “anything goes.” In a story obsessively occupied with guilt and penance, characters are held accountable for their mistakes and neglects. Shaped by chance events, unanticipated encounters, and deadly accidents, The Book of Illusio...