A Postmodern Reading of Auster’s Leviathan as an Example ...xajzkjdx.cn/gallery/75-june2020.pdf · Paul Auster’s Leviathan is a postmodern novel which can be read through Linda

A Postmodern Reading of Auster’s Leviathan as

an Example of Historiographic Metafiction

Moutman Hameed Mousa

MA, English Literature,

Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

Email- [email protected]

Dr. Nasser Maleki Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

Abstract- History is a narrative written or documented by human beings, and human beings are never free from their

subjective preferences and their political as well as socio-cultural biases. Postmodern historical fiction, especially the

genre of “historiographic metafiction”, highlights this issue more than traditional historical writings by foregrounding the

subjective nature of historiography, at the same time as it reflects the process of writing about history. Those postmodern

novels which can be called “historiographic metafiction” do in fact awaken readers to the nature of historical events and

their truth values. With the fall of grand narratives, no established historical fact maintains its authority against

marginalized historical events and their importance. Paul Auster’s Leviathan is a postmodern novel which can be read

through Linda Hutcheon’s discussion of the characteristics of “historiographic metafiction” since there are counter-

cultural historical facts in this novel that Auster has tried to highlight. Set in the 1980s United States, Leviathan is the

story of a peaceful writer who becomes a bomber against the Republican policies of the era and tries to deliver his

message by exploding the replicas of the Statue of Liberty. By foregrounding the subculture of the leftists and radicals of

the period, Auster has tried to let his readers know about marginalized groups whose voice could not be truthfully heard

in the face of authorities, meanwhile incorporating several postmodern narrative techniques that contribute to his

postmodern historiography as befits the principles of “Historiographic Metafiction”.

Keywords – Auster, historiograpic Metafiction, identity, Leviathan, Postmodernism.

I. INTRODUCTION

When we talk about history, we should know that it is written by occasional witnesses to certain

events or historians (who might be first-hand witnesses or not). This issue already makes it clear that

history is written by individuals with certain subjective viewpoints towards events, viewpoints which are

not immune from personal biases and faulty interpretations of historical events. Moreover, not all people

on earth experience historicizing the events of the past and it is left to those interested in history,

historians, and historiographers to write what has happened to humankind throughout centuries.

Accordingly, many people and their accounts of past events are left untold, buried under certain

historical accounts which mostly present us with the mainstream events in history that live through

books and are retold over and over, sometimes with exaggeration over certain events, in each historical

era. History as such includes merely the “grand narratives”, as Lyotard (1984) puts it now and then in

The Postmodern Condition, based on which (historical) truth is considered as having only one version

according to those traditional hierarchies which have been transmitted generation by generation in the

form of established facts and principles. As Lyotard says,

if a metanarrative implying a philosophy of history is used to legitimate knowledge, questions are raised

concerning the validity of the institutions governing the social bond : these must be legitimated as well.

Thus justice is consigned to the grand narrative in the same way as truth. (1984 p. xxiv)

Journal of Xi'an University of Architecture & Technology

Volume XII, Issue VI, 2020

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It is only in the postmodern world or through postmodern thinking that such “grand narratives” or

“metanarratives” are dismantled to open some space for all the available versions of truth, whether they

are historically documented, orally transmitted or deliberately produced to serve political, religious,

social, cultural, or even economical purposes. To have all the versions or accounts of history available at

hand, to have all the historical gaps told and exposed to public judgment, postmodernism has given rise

to its own historiography to respect all the local/petit/little narratives of events. In Lyotard’s words:

We no longer have recourse to the grand narratives – we can resort neither to the dialectic of Spirit nor

even to the emancipation of humanity as a validation for postmodern scientific discourse. But . . . , the

little narrative remains the quintessential form of imaginative invention. (1984, p. 60)

This view, when compared to literature in general, contributes to what Horsely says,

Many of those currently interested in exploring the affinities between history and literature have argued

that historical narratives do not derive their authority from a ‘reality’ imitated but merely from the

cultural conventions or subjective preferences which determine the nature of the paradigms constructed.

(1991, p. 1)

Subjective historical constructions account for what in postmodernist fiction has led to the creation of

what Linda Hutcheon calls “historiographic metafiction” in which the postmodern writer’s intrusion into

the text is accompanied by a selection of historical events as the writer considers them important in

helping his/her plot. Postmodernist historical fiction mocks official history but not randomly. Many

novels of this kind “rewrite history from the perspective of groups of people that have been excluded

from the making and writing of history”. Oppressed communities or individuals are thus given central

roles in leading a historical era “as the bearers of a new future”. Accordingly, Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo

Jumbo (1972) and E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime (1974) identify with “American blacks,” Christa Wolf’s

Kassandra (1983) and Gunter Grass’s Der Butt (1977) with women, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s

Children (1981) with “the first generation of a recently liberated India,” and Thomas Pynchon’s

Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) with the Africans who “suffered severely from German colonial rule”

(Wesseling, 1997, p. 206). Since we can find both metafictionality and historiography in postmodernist

novels, those postmodernist narratives which combine both of these elements are called “historiographic

metafiction”. “Historiographic metafiction” denies the natural ways of differentiating between historical

facts and fictional ones. It refuses the view that the truth of history by challenging historiography and

asserting that “both history and fiction are discourses, human constructs, signifying systems, and both

derive their major claim to truth from that identity.” This kind of fiction includes “the extra textual past”

into to the realm of historiography. It also shows that both history and fiction “construct as they

textualize” the past (Hutcheon 2004, p. 93), hence their contingency.

By employing such devices as “unreliable narrators, multiple frames for the narrative, stylistic

transformations, mixtures of magical and realistic events, and parodies of earlier literary and historical

works,” this sort of postmodern fiction tries to challenge traditional ways of narrativizing history

(Malpas 2005, p. 101). By intruding into the main body of his/her novel, the postmodernist writer

contributes to the metafictional aspect of postmodernist fiction and at the same time allows himself or

herself to talk about and comment on a selection of historical events to deliver a special message to

readers. This message is somehow alienating and defamiliarizing – “the ‘metafictional paradox’ of self-

conscious narratives that demanded of the reader both detachment and involvement” (Hutcheon 2004, p.

ix) – since it is not to follow what “grand narratives” have to say about history but what they refrain

from saying or alter while saying. Hutcheon believes that “historical discourse and its relation to the

literary,” as manifested in its postmodern sense in “historiographic metafiction,” is concerned with:

issues such as those of narrative form, of intertextuality, of strategies of representation, of the role of

language, of the relation between historical fact and experiential event, and, in general, of the

epistemological and ontological consequences of the act of rendering problematic that which was once

taken for granted by historiography – and literature. (2004, p. xii)

By “historiographic metafiction” Hutcheon means “those well-known and popular novels which are both

intensely self-reflexive and yet paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages.” In

many of such critical works on postmodernism, “it is narrative – be it in literature, history, or theory –

that has usually been the major focus of attention.” “Historiographic metafiction” includes all three of

these domains: “its theoretical self-awareness of history and fiction as human constructs (historiographic

metafiction) is made the grounds for its rethinking and reworking of the forms and contents of the past”

(2004, p. 5).



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Hutcheon in this regard cites several novels, or “paradoxical works” like García Márquez’s One

Hundred Years of Solitude, Grass’s The Tin Drum, Fowles’s A Maggot and The French Lieutenant’s

Woman, Doctorow’s Loon Lake and Ragtime, Reed’s The Terrible Twos, Kingston’s The Woman

Warrior, Timothy Findley’s Famous Last Words, Rushdie’s Shame and Midnight’s Children, William

Kennedy’s Legs. As Hutcheon says, “the list could go on” (2004, p. xii). This list can also incorporate

Paul Auster’s Leviathan which not only incorporates metafictional elements in its narration but also has

much to say about the history of the United States in the 1980s.

The accumulation of events one upon the other is a key feature in Leviathan – the title alludes to Thomas

Hobbes’s book and “a word taken from the Hebrew leviath” which means “What is joined or tied

together.” These related events gives us Benjamin Sachs at work “on his own to right a perceived

wrong” which is, in his case, “America’s venality and its inability to fully appreciate the impact of

history on the events that follow” (Parini 2003, p. 33). Peter Aaron the narrator, like a third detective

besides the two FBI agents, tries to unveil what had actually caused the explosions and whether Sachs

might have had anything special to contribute to those events. It is in Aaron’s historicizing about Sachs’s

life that another layer of historicizing is surfaced – that of the United States in the 1980s. The present

study is thus an attempt to examine the treatment of a part of the history of the United States, the 1980s,

through a historiographical analysis of Paul Auster’s Leviathan (1992), in the light of Huthcheon’s

postmodern concept of “historiographic metafiction.” In this political novel, Auster has tried to

problematize the representation of the 1980s in the United States in an effort to subvert the reliable and

authentic nature of data passed on as absolute truth down the decades. Benjamin Sachs, the protagonist

of the novel, is an American citizen who goes through a political change of attitude against the

presidency of Reagan in the 1980s by beginning to blow up the replicas of the Statue of Liberty all over

the country. By highlighting Benjamin Sachs’s radicalism, which is linked to American Marxists and

radicals of the era, Auster has tried to show what courses of thought actually lied against the political

mainstream of the era and how American citizens with understanding of their political subjugation really

lived under political corruption. As Auster says,

By the time I wrote Leviathan in 1990 and 1991, we’d had eight years of Reagan and were already two

years into Bush One. Ten years of right-wing leadership. It was terrible – the dismantling of everything

we had fought for in the sixties. (Auster and Siegumfeldt 2017, pp. 167-168)

It is enough to read any biographical record of Reagan to recognize that such criticism against the

Republicans is not overtly mentioned by anyone opposing Regan and his presidency. Auster’s novel can

thus be read an attempt in “historiographic metafiction” since it has many features which make it a good

nominee of the genre.

II.. Literary Review

When we talk about Leviathan, not only postmodernist narrative techniques but also historical issues play significant

roles in the total meaning of the book. Leviathan is full of historical references which have been put alongside the

main plot of the story, as it unfolds within the borders of the United States. Auster seems to be pointing to the fact

that that, in Ibarrola-Armendariz’ words, “the cultural “Other” is doomed to appear always trapped in the

monological and allegedly “transparent and universalistic” historical discourse of Western culture” (2008, p. 26). In

other words, as Arnold Krupat has complained, “the cultural history of America was written pretty exclusively from

the point of view of those who triumphed . . . with the result that the voice of the Other was simply silenced, not to

be heard” (1989, p. 3). As such, in the company of certain postmodernist techniques, the novel seems to have certain

features which make it part of what Hutcheon calls “historiographic metafiction”. Before going to the main

discussion in the following chapters, here are several former studies which have tried to peer into this aspect of the

novel, although they are rather vague in this regard.

Hardy (1999) argues that Leviathan refers to the State (as defined by Hobbes) and its symbol in the United States,

the Statue of Liberty, but also to the Biblical monster that swallowed Jonah. The body of the State is built from the

bodies of the citizens and the initial social contract was originally to protect them. Leviathan, however, proposes that

the contract has failed and the symbol has lost its significance, justifying therefore “an aesthetic form of terrorism”

based on Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.” The bombs at the center of the novel pervade the theme, vocabulary, and

metaphors of the novel. However, Hardy argues that “the explosive message of Leviathan” must be put into

perspective since the text proves to be “a destabilizing network of secrets, lies, contradictions and errors” (p. 153).

Varvogli (2001) considers Leviathan as a sample of the genre of “historiographic metafiction”. In his view,

Leviathan highlights both Auster’s subjective concerns as the creator of a fictional world and the fact that, following



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Hutcheon’s arguments on “historiographic metafiction,” the past of the USA has been given a chance to be further

analyzed through narrative, even if that is historiographical than fictional (p. 117). Varvogli does not continue his

discussion on the topic anymore.

D’Urso (2006) briefly argues that Peter Aaron’s ability to recount Sachs’s story is in a way that can be seen as

“historiographic metafiction”. D’Urso, in a very brief discussion of a couple of paragraphs, holds that Aaron’s

rewriting of Sachs’s life follows Hutcheon’s formula that “historiographic metafiction” raises questions about the

common-sensical and the natural process in human affairs but it never offers answers except provisional and

contextual ones (p. 70).

Thévenon (2012) explains in detail how Auster’s historical concerns shift as his career unfolds. According to her,

Auster’s earliest writings testify to a strong preoccupation with the author’s own personal history, and his later

works reveal how, as time unfolds, he becomes more and more interested in collective history.

Deshmukh (2014) holds that several critics have dealt with the representation of historical events in Auster’s

writings, of how the personal history of Auster’s characters is influenced by the collective history of the real world.

Deshmukh further argues that “real-world disasters of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are rarely an

inspiration for Auster’s fiction.” For Deshmukh, instead of focusing on “historical time or the collective history of a

society, Auster’s writing is articulated around storytelling,” and consequently, it mostly focuses on “the realities or

the histories within which his characters are born and exist” (p. 132).

Sesnic (2014) argues that the nineties were obliged to search for some alternative modes of conceptualizing the past

that would revise and supplement the extant historiography. Leviathan “works with the processes of memory, both

collective and individual,” while showing how mixed they are with “the questions of identity, individualism, society,

politics, ethics, and art,” as Auster’s “characters-as-writers” self-consciously investigate the meaning of social

covenant “in late twentieth-century, post-Vietnam, and post-Cold War America” (p. 67).

It is thus clear that Leviathan has not been the subject of any deep historiographically metafictional reading and thus

it gives us the opportunity to analyze the novel in more details concerning its metafictional aspects in so far as they

have been historically rendered by Auster.

III. Discussion

When used in contemporary writing, “historiographic metafiction” is mostly significant in the form of detective

story. In metafiction, as Waugh says, “the detective-story plot is useful for exploring readerly expectation” since it

provides “that readerly satisfaction which attaches to the predictable.” Moreover, in detective fiction, the tension is

created “by the presentation of a mystery and heightened by retardation of the correct solution.” The characters are

mostly “functions of the plot,” and as in metafiction, “it foregrounds questions of identity” (Waugh 1984, p. 82).

These features, in so far as they serve solving a mystery, are exactly what we see at work in a work of

“historiographic metafiction.” Understanding that history is full of gaps and that those who have written or write

historical narratives have certain motivations which are mostly hidden from readers can help us investigate historical

narratives regarding their truthfulness. It is as if the readers are invited by writers of “historiographic metafiction” to

participate in rereading certain historical events and find out what is missing in them.

Those “very simple accounts” in which “the relationship of fact to story can at least in some cases be ‘indisputable’”

will not really challenge us with “an understanding of the cultural practices of writing history.” For example, if we

want to know more about such events as “the relationship of American historical writing to beliefs about the Cold

War, or of the left-wing history of dissent and opposition, or whether the Rosenbergs were guilty, or how Kennedy

came to be shot in Texas” (Butler 2002, p. 34), official historical writings have nothing to tell us. Even the media

might have mostly remained silent due to political reasons. However, a postmodern historiographer or even a writer

of “historiographer metafiction” is not bound to anything to hide his/her motivations. The “unwritten (invisible)

history,” although it is less known and scarcely uncovered in books or records, exists “as an obscure alter ego of the

recorded one” and is always there in the history of humankind (Ibarrola-Armendariz 2008, pp. 26-27).

It is in this context of subjugated or silenced historical accounts that Paul Auster’s Leviathan (1992) can be

interpreted. Set in the 1980s United States, Leviathan recounts the story of a leftist/partly communist, although it is

fictional, who represents all those who were against the policies of the Republicans and, above all, Ronald Reagan’s

presidency in that era. By investigating into the private life of Benjamin Sachs and his mentality and social relations,

Auster has tried to let us know what an American citizen, who is against the current policies of his country, might

have had to contribute to the history of his country through his “historiographic metafiction.”



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3.1. REWRITING THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE 1980S

IT CAN BE ARGUED THAT EACH HISTORICAL RECORD IS A REWRITING OF AN HISTORICAL EVENT. IN THIS VIEW, NO

DOCUMENTED RECORDS CAN ABSOLUTELY TELL US WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED ONCE UPON A TIME.

TRADITIONALLY, THE “LINEAR CAUSALITY OF NARRATIVE AND ITS TELEOLOGICAL ORIENTATION TOWARDS

REVELATION AND CLOSURE” WERE SEEN AS PRINCIPLES WHICH STRUCTURED A SET OF RANDOM EVENTS. IN THE

CONTEMPORARY ERA, THE DEVELOPMENT OF “A SELF-CONSCIOUS HISTORIOGRAPHY” WENT ALONG THE

“POSTSTRUCTURALIST CRITIQUE OF NARRATIVE EXPLANATION” (CURRIE 2013, P. 13). ONCE THE BOUNDARIES

BETWEEN HISTORY AND FICTION WERE BLURRED IN POSTMODERN HISTORICAL NARRATIVES, THE “SELF-CONSCIOUS

NOVEL” ALSO CONTRIBUTED TO REWRITING HISTORY. THE “SELF-CONSCIOUS NOVEL” HAS THE POWER TO

INVESTIGATE NOT ONLY “THE CONDITIONS OF ITS OWN PRODUCTION” BUT ALSO THE “IMPLICATIONS OF NARRATIVE

EXPLANATION AND HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION IN GENERAL.” IN THIS REGARD, THE “SELF-CONSCIOUS RE-

ENGAGEMENT” WITH HISTORY IN “HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION” ACKNOWLEDGES THE POSTMODERN CRITICAL

CONTRIBUTION OF THE NOVEL FORM TO “QUESTIONS OF REPRESENTATION AND THE PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION

THROUGH WHICH HISTORY BECOMES KNOWABLE” (P. 14). IT IS THUS MEANINGFUL TO SAY THAT “HISTORIOGRAPHIC

METAFICTION” SELF-CONSCIOUSLY REWRITES HISTORY.

WHEN WE SAY “REWRITING” SOMETHING, IT IS NOT TO WRITE SOMETHING NEW. IT IS RATHER WRITING WHAT HAS

ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN IN A NEW FORM. CALINESCU ARGUES THAT “REWRITING WOULD INVOLVE A REFERENCE

OF SOME STRUCTURAL SIGNIFICANCE (AS OPPOSED TO A MERE MENTION OR PASSING ALLUSION) TO ONE OR MORE

TEXTS OR, IF WE WANT TO UNDERLINE THE CONNECTION, INTERTEXTS” (1997, P. 245). “HISTORIOGRAPHIC

METAFICTION” IS “OVERTLY AND RESOLUTELY HISTORICAL,” MEANWHILE ACKNOWLEDGING THAT HISTORY IS NOT

“THE TRANSPARENT RECORD” OF ANY TRUTH (HUTCHEON 2004, P. 129). SUCH FICTION HIGHLIGHTS THE VIEWS OF

HISTORIANS LIKE DOMINICK LACAPRA WHO ARGUE THAT “THE PAST ARRIVES IN THE FORM OF TEXTS AND

TEXTUALIZED REMAINDERS—MEMORIES, REPORTS, PUBLISHED WRITINGS, ARCHIVES, MONUMENTS, AND SO

FORTH” (1985, P. 128). IN THIS WAY, THESE TEXTS “INTERACT” WITH EACH OTHER IN INTRICATE WAYS (HUTCHEON

2004, P. 129), REPEATING OR PARODYING EACH OTHER, THUS REWRITING FORMER DOCUMENTATIONS IN CERTAIN

FORMATS.

SOME OF THE TRADITIONAL STRUCTURES OF HISTORIOGRAPHY CAN SUCCUMB TO THE PRINCIPLES OF REWRITING.

ACCORDING TO CALINESCU, WE CAN REWRITE HISTORY IN THE FORM OF “IMITATION, PARODY, BURLESQUE,

TRANSPOSITION, PASTICHE, ADAPTATION, AND EVEN TRANSLATION.” CRITICAL COMMENTARIES SUCH AS

“DESCRIPTION, SUMMARY, AND SELECTED QUOTATIONS FROM A PRIMARY TEXT” CAN ALSO BE INCLUDED (1997, P.

243). WHILE MOST OF THESE FORMS ACT INDIRECTLY TO REWRITE HISTORY AND ARE INHERENTLY FAR AWAY FROM

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED, GIVING QUOTATIONS PLAYS A VERY LARGE AND IMPORTANT ROLE IN POSTMODERN

LITERATURE IN SO FAR AS IT INVOLVES DIRECT WORDS FROM CERTAIN PEOPLE WHO MIGHT HAVE WITNESSED

HISTORICAL EVENTS FIRSTHAND. IN CALINESCU’S WORDS, QUOTATION IN POSTMODERNIST TEXTS, AS THE

“SIMPLEST FORM OF REWRITING”, FACES “A LARGE VARIETY OF MANIPULATIONS” (1997, P. 246). AT THE SAME

TIME, EVEN THOSE SOURCES WHICH CITE QUOTATIONS MAY NOT BE RELIABLE, A FACT WHICH MAKES US DOUBT

MANY HISTORICAL SOURCES OF OUR INFORMATION ABOUT HISTORICAL EVENTS.



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LEVIATHAN, AS MARTIN ARGUES, IS “A COMMENTARY ON THE ETHOS OF LATE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICA,”

AND CAN BE CONSIDERED AUSTER’S “MOST OVERTLY POLITICAL WORK.” THROUGH THE CHARACTER OF SACHS,

“AUSTER HIGHLIGHTS THE LACK OF SPIRITUALITY EVIDENT WITHIN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA” AND EMPHASIZES

“INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE”. CAPITALISM HAS DOMINATED AUSTER’S VERSION OF THE UNITED STATES AND “THE

NOTION OF SELFHOOD” HAS BEEN RELEGATED TO MEMORY. THE “REVOLUTIONARY HERITAGE OF THE EARLY

USA,” ONCE CONCERNED WITH “LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY,” HAS BEEN NOW SUBSTITUTED BY “AN

UNQUESTIONING ACCEPTANCE OF APATHY, CORRUPTION AND MATERIALISM” (MARTIN 2007, P. 177). RONALD

REAGAN WON THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN 1981, RAN HIS OFFICE FOR TWO TERMS, AND WAS FOLLOWED BY G.

W. H. BUSH. AS AUSTER SAYS, IN 1991, THESE “TEN YEARS OF RIGHT-WING LEADERSHIP . . . WAS TERRIBLE” SINCE

“EVERYTHING WE HAD FOUGHT FOR IN THE SIXTIES” HAD BEEN THEN DISMANTLED (AUSTER AND SIEGUMFELDT

2017, PP. 167-168). AS MARTIN POINTS OUT, “THE RADICALS OF THE 1960S PROVED TO BE ONLY A PARTIALLY

EFFECTIVE OPPOSITION” (2007, P. 5). IN FACT, “THE COUNTERCULTURE OF THE 1960S” LIED IN SEVERE CONTRAST

TO “THE EMERGENT CONSERVATISM OF AMERICA UNDER REAGAN IN THE 1980S” (COPESTAKE 2010, P. 9). BERMAN

REFERS TO “THE RISE OF CORPORATISM AND TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES ASSOCIATED WITH THE 1980S AND THE

POLICIES ADVOCATED BY RONALD REAGAN’S GOVERNMENT” (QTD. IN MARTIN 2007, P. 108), AND CLAIMS THAT

NEW YORK CITY HAD BECOME “A PLACE WHERE CAPITAL FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD” WAS AT HOME, WHILE

“EVERYBODY WITHOUT CAPITAL” WAS “INCREASINGLY OUT OF PLACE” (BERMAN 1989, P. 21). HOWEVER, ONE

WONDERS TO WHAT EXTENT AUSTER WAS TRYING TO REWRITE THE HISTORY OF THAT ERA IN LEVIATHAN AND

WHAT DID HE WANT TO HIGHLIGHT THAT WAS LACKING IN THE HISTORICAL RECORDS OR MEMORIES OF PEOPLE IN

THAT TIME?

THE NOVEL’S “KEY THEMES,” INCLUDING “HISTORY” AND “ILLUSION VERSUS REALITY” (PARINI 2003, P. 34), ARE

OVERT FROM THE BEGINNING SINCE AARON, THE NARRATOR, BEGINS HIS STORY ON JULY 4, 1990, THE

INDEPENDENCE DAY, SEVERAL DAYS AFTER SACHS’S DEATH. SACHS HAS RATHER MADE A MODEL OUT OF HIMSELF

IN AARON’S MIND, BUT HIS LIFE WOULD BE PRESENTED THROUGHOUT THE MEDIA AS A TERRORIST. AARON SAYS

THAT “SACHS WAS DEAD, AND THE ONLY WAY I COULD HELP HIM WAS TO KEEP HIS DEATH TO MYSELF” (AUSTER

1992, P. 3). BY DECIDING TO WRITE ABOUT SACHS, AARON WANTS NOT ONLY TO CLARIFY HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH

HIM FOR THE FBI BUT ALSO TO PRESENT HIM TO THE AMERICAN CITIZENS AS HE REALLY WAS – THAT IS, NOT A

TERRORIST BUT AN OPPONENT OF THE CONTEMPORARY POLICIES OF THE TIME.

AARON’S BIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL, JUST LIKE OTHER BIOGRAPHIES, IS FROM THE POINT OF THE VIEW OF THE

BIOGRAPHER. A BIOGRAPHER IS ACTUALLY NARRATING BASED ON THE FACTS HE HAS HEARD OR SEEN FROM HIS

OBJECT OF STUDY, FACTS WHICH HAVE BEEN SUBJECTIVELY RENDERED. ANY BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, JUST LIKE

HISTORY, IS SUSCEPTIBLE TO BLIND SPOTS AND HISTORICAL GAPS AND CAN NEVER COVER ALL THE MOMENTS AND

OPINIONS OF THE PERSON UNDER STUDY. AARON’S BIOGRAPHY IS THEREFORE ANOTHER PIECE OF HISTORY MAKING,

ALTHOUGH IT IS FICTIONAL, AND SHOWS US HOW HISTORICAL RECORDS MIGHT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN FROM THE

VIEWPOINTS OF THOSE WHO WERE MORE DIRECTLY INVOLVED WITH AN EVENT THAN OTHERS.

AARON’S NOVEL IS NOT A GREAT PICTURE OF THE 1980S IN THE UNITED STATES WHERE WE CAN FIND MANY

UNWRITTEN HISTORICAL RECORDS OF THE TIME. HOWEVER, EVEN THE DETAILS WITH WHICH HE PRESENTS US CAN

HELP US DISCOVER WHAT WAS HAPPENING IN THE 1980S THAT WAS AGAINST THE POLITICAL MAINSTREAM. IN THIS

MANNER, THE FBI AGENTS ASK AARON TO TELL THEM THE NAME OF HIS BOOKS, MAYBE THEY CAN FIND CLUES IN

THEM AS THEY SUSPECT AARON AND SACHS’S CLOSE RELATIONSHIP. WHAT THE FBI AGENTS ARE WRITING WILL

UNDOUBTEDLY BECOME HISTORY AND, THEREFORE, WHATEVER THEY WRITE IS BASED ON THEIR OWN

PRESUMPTIONS ABOUT SACHS’S MOTIVATIONS AND LOCAL REPORTS. SO THEY CAN NEVER BE TRUE TO WHAT

REALLY HAPPENED. ON THE CONTRARY, AARON’S BIOGRAPHY, ALTHOUGH IT IS IN THE FORM OF A NOVEL, IS

CLOSER TO WHAT REALLY HAPPENED.



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AS PARINI ARGUES, “SACHS’S IMMERSION AND PARTICIPATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY LENDS ITSELF TO HIS

PASSION IN (RE)WRITING THAT HISTORY.” IN OTHER WORDS, HIS ONLY PUBLISHED NOVEL, THE NEW COLOSSUS,

“CIRCUMSCRIBES AMERICAN HISTORY FROM 1876 TO 1890 AND, MUCH AS AUSTER’S OWN WORK DOES,

INTERWEAVES REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS AND FICTIVE CREATIONS WHO LIVE IN THE MARGINS OF THEIR

SOCIETY.” THE LINK BETWEEN SACHS’S OWN VIEWS ON HISTORY AND AUSTER’S ATTEMPTS AT DISMANTLING THE

“TRADITIONAL” FICTIVE NARRATIVE STRATEGIES ARE CLEAR (2003, P. 34). THE POINT IS THAT THE NEW COLOSSUS

HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH 1960S, NOTHING TO DO WITH VIETNAM OR THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT WHICH BOTH

AARON AND SACHS SUPPORT; IT IS INSTEAD A HISTORICAL NOVEL, “A METICULOUSLY RESEARCHED BOOK SET IN

AMERICA BETWEEN 1876 AND 1890 AND BASED ON DOCUMENTED, VERIFIABLE FACTS” (AUSTER 1992, P. 37).

SACHS’S “LITERARY UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORY AND REALITY” IS GIVEN EXPRESSION IN THIS NOVEL (KELLY

2013, P. 62). IN AARON’S WORDS, IT IS “ONE OF THOSE THINLY VEILED ATTEMPTS TO FICTIONALIZE THE STORY OF

HIS OWN LIFE” (AUSTER 1992, P. 36); IT IS “A PRECOCIOUS MIX OF FACT, FICTION, AND INTERTEXTUALITY (KELLY

2013, P. 62). ALTHOUGH SACHS’S PERSPECTIVE IS DELIVERED TO US THROUGH AARON, AARON HAS TRIED TO BE

CAREFUL “TO REMAIN COMMITTED TO A DISTINCTION BETWEEN LITERATURE AND LIFE, TO SEE THE FORMER AS

MERELY A MEANS TO SUPPORT THE CONTINUANCE OF THE LATTER.” HE SOMEHOW POINTS TO “THE POTENTIAL

ENDLESSNESS OF THE LITERARY PROJECT” TO NARRATE EVENTS BY POSING MANY SCENARIOS, AND HOW “LUCKY”

THE WRITER MIGHT BE “TO TESTIFY TO THAT ENDLESSNESS BY NEVER FINISHING HIS BOOK”. IT IS ONLY THROUGH

THE ENFORCEMENT OF AN AUTHORITY, HERE THE FBI, THAT AARON HAS TO DECIDE THE END OF HIS WRITING

PROCESS (KELLY 2013, P. 75), WHETHER THAT END IS SATISFYING ENOUGH OR NOT. IT SHOWS HOW ANY

HISTORICAL RECORD COULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BETTER AND MORE COMPREHENSIVELY IF NOT BOUND BY TIME

OR THE HISTORIAN’S CIRCUMSTANCES.

3.2. INTERTEXTUALITY AND PARODY: RADICAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE 1980S

“INTERTEXTUALITY,” MOSTLY DEFINED AS “REFERENCE TO PREVIOUS TEXTS,” HAS COME TO BE CONSIDERED “THE

VERY TRADEMARK OF POSTMODERNISM” (PFISTER 1991, P. 209). POSTMODERN INTERTEXTUALITY, IN A

HISTORICAL SENSE, MANIFESTS THE DESIRE “TO CLOSE THE GAP BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT” AND “TO REWRITE

THE PAST IN A NEW CONTEXT.” MEANWHILE IT IS NOT MEANT “TO ORDER THE PRESENT THROUGH THE PAST” OR TO

MAKE THE PRESENT STRANGE TO THE PAST (ANTIN 1972, PP. 106–14). INTERTEXTUALITY, ESPECIALLY IN THE

POSTMODERN LITERATURE, “DIRECTLY CONFRONTS THE PAST,” WHETHER OF HISTORY OR LITERATURE, TO SHOW

THAT IT “DERIVES” FROM OTHER TEXTS AND DOCUMENTS WHILE REREADING THEM, USING AND ABUSING THEM,

“INSCRIBING THEIR POWERFUL ALLUSIONS AND THEN SUBVERTING THAT POWER THROUGH IRONY”. THE MESSAGE

IS RATHER “THERE ARE ONLY TEXTS, ALREADY WRITTEN ONES” (HUTCHEON 2004, P. 118).

“METAFICTION” AND “HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION” DEPEND ON INTERTEXTUALITY FOR THEIR SELF-

CONSCIOUSNESS. NARRATIVES WHICH HIGHLIGHT THEIR ARTIFICIALITY BY “OBTRUSIVE REFERENCE TO

TRADITIONAL FORMS OR BORROW THEIR THEMATIC AND STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLES FROM OTHER NARRATIVES” FALL

UNDER THIS CATEGORY (CURRIE 2013, P. 4). IT CAN BE ARGUED THAT METAFICTIONALITY ACTS AS AN ALIENATION

EFFECT TO HELP US UNDERSTAND THAT, AS BELSEY ARGUES, WE CAN ONLY “KNOW” (AS OPPOSED TO

“EXPERIENCE”) THE WORLD “THROUGH OUR NARRATIVES (PAST AND PRESENT) OF IT.” THE PRESENT AND THE PAST

ARE “ALWAYS ALREADY IRREMEDIABLY TEXTUALIZED FOR US” (1980, P. 46). ACCORDINGLY, “THE OVERT

INTERTEXTUALITY OF HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION,” SINCE IT REWRITES HISTORY THROUGH THE MANY MEANS

DISCUSSED ABOVE, SERVES AS A TEXTUAL SIGNAL OF SUCH POSTMODERN UNDERSTANDING (HUTCHEON 1989, P. 9).



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WHAT INTERTEXTUALITY DOES IN PRACTICE, ESPECIALLY REGARDING ITS FUNCTION IN POSTMODERNIST FICTION,

IS TO REPLACE THE FORMER “AUTHOR-TEXT RELATIONSHIP” WITH A RELATIONSHIP “BETWEEN READER AND TEXT”,

THAT IS, TO SITUATE “THE LOCUS OF TEXTUAL MEANING WITHIN THE HISTORY OF DISCOURSE ITSELF.” SINCE THIS

OUTLOOK MAKES US UNDERSTAND THAT NO LITERARY WORK CAN ACTUALLY BE TAKEN TO BE “ORIGINAL,”

HUTCHEON SAYS (2004, P. 126), FORMER NARRATIVES AND DISCOURSES BECOME REALLY IMPORTANT IN

UNDERSTANDING ANY TEXT. HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS ACT LIKEWISE AND READING THEM AS DISCOURSE AND/OR

NARRATIVE FOLLOWS THE SAME RULES. IN THIS WAY, “HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION” TELLS US THAT “THERE

ARE ACTUAL HISTORICAL INTERTEXTS . . . MIXED WITH THOSE OF HISTORICAL FICTION” (HUTCHEON 1989, P. 9).

THIS KIND OF FICTION MARKS WITHIN ITSELF “AN INTERNAL BOUNDARY BETWEEN EXTRA TEXTUAL REFERENCE TO

REAL LIFE AND INTERTEXTUAL REFERENCE TO OTHER LITERATURE” TO SIGNIFY “THE ARTIFICIALITY OF THE

FICTIONAL WORLD” AT THE SAME TIME THAT IT OFFERS THE “REALISTIC REFERENTIAL POSSIBILITIES” OF THE

WORLD OF FICTION (CURRIE 2013, P. 4). “HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION” IS PARTICULARLY “DOUBLED” IN ITS

SIMULTANEOUS DEPLOYMENT OF “HISTORICAL AND LITERARY INTERTEXTS.” ACCORDINGLY, “THE ONTOLOGICAL

LINE BETWEEN HISTORICAL PAST AND LITERATURE” IS HIGHLIGHTED IN THIS SORT OF FICTION TO TELL US THAT

ALTHOUGH THE PAST REALLY EXISTED, IT IS POSSIBLE FOR US TO “KNOW” THAT PAST IN THE PRESENT MERELY

“THROUGH ITS TEXTS” WHICH ARE BASICALLY NARRATIVES (HUTCHEON 2004, P. 128)

“HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION” NOT ONLY HAS WITHIN ITSELF INTERTEXTS, SINCE IT REWRITES HISTORY, BUT

ALSO PARODIES. PARODY IS “A KIND OF LITERARY MIMICRY WHICH RETAINS THE FORM OR STYLISTIC CHARACTER

OF THE PRIMARY WORK, BUT SUBSTITUTES ALIEN SUBJECT MATTER OR CONTENT” (KIREMIDJIAN 1969, P. 232).

ALTHOUGH NOT ALWAYS DEALING DIRECTLY WITH HISTORICAL HAPPENINGS, USING PARODIES OF EARLIER WORKS

OF ART OR LITERATURE ALSO HIGHLIGHTS “THE TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL OF POSTMODERN NARRATIVE AND

THE PROBLEMS OF HISTORICAL REPRESENTATION” (MALPAS 2005, P. 103). ALTHOUGH “HISTORIOGRAPHIC

METAFICTION” SITUATES ITSELF WITHIN HISTORICAL DISCOURSE, IT REFUSES TO SURRENDER ITS “AUTONOMY AS

FICTION.” AS SUCH, IT IS A SORT OF A “SERIOUSLY IRONIC PARODY” THAT GIVES RISE TO A CONTRADICTION: “THE

INTERTEXTS OF HISTORY AND FICTION TAKE ON PARALLEL STATUS IN THE PARODIC REWORKING OF THE TEXTUAL

PAST OF BOTH THE “WORLD” AND LITERATURE” (HUTCHEON 2004, P. 124). SUCH NOVELS AS GABRIEL GARCIA

MARQUEZ’S ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE (1967), GUNTER GRASS’S THE TIN DRURN, (1959) OR SALMAN

RUSHDIE’S MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN (1981) MAKE USE OF PARODY “NOT ONLY TO RESTORE HISTORY AND MEMORY

IN THE FACE OF THE DISTORTIONS OF THE “HISTORY OF FORGETTING” (THIHER 1984, P. 202), BUT ALSO TO

QUESTION “THE AUTHORITY OF ANY ACT OF WRITING BY LOCATING THE DISCOURSES OF BOTH HISTORY AND

FICTION WITHIN AN EVER-EXPANDING INTERTEXTUAL NETWORK THAT MOCKS ANY NOTION OF EITHER SINGLE

ORIGIN OR SIMPLE CAUSALITY” (HUTCHEON 1989, P. 12). PARODY HAS ALSO A “CRITICAL FUNCTION” TO DISCOVER

“WHICH FORMS CAN EXPRESS WHICH CONTENTS” AND A “CREATIVE FUNCTION” TO RELEASE THOSE FORMS AND

CONTENTS TO EXPRESS CONTEMPORARY ISSUES (WAUGH 1984, P. 69). BEING CRITICAL OF FORMER DISCOURSE,

EITHER IN FORM OR CONTENT, PARODY BRINGS TO THE FOREGROUND SILENCED OR MARGINALIZED OR MINOR

ISSUES THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF DISCOURSE. AND BEING CREATIVE, PARODY COMBINES ALL THESE ISSUES

INTO A NEW STRUCTURE FOR THE CONTEMPORARY ERA.



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AS IBARROLA-ARMENDARIZ ARGUES, “RE-CONTEXTUALIZED QUOTATIONS, INDIRECT ALLUSIONS, AND PARODIC

TRANSFORMATIONS OF TEXTS OR SPECIFIC GENRES” ARE COMMON IN POSTMODERNIST HISTORICAL FICTION OR

EVEN IN METAFICTION AND “HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION,” AND INTERTEXTUALITY MOSTLY REPLACES “THE

TRADITIONAL AUTHOR-TEXT RELATIONSHIP” TO SITUATE THE SOURCE OF “TEXTUAL MEANING” IN THE “VERY

HISTORY OF DISCOURSE” (2008, P. 30). AS AARON SAYS, “RONAL REAGAN WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT . . . [IN]

NOVEMBER 1980 . . . IT WAS A BAD TIME IN MY LIFE” (AUSTER 1992, P. 27). AARON’S FIRST MARRIAGE BROKE UP

IN 1978 AND HE WAS IN NEED OF MONEY, WITH A THREE-YEAR-OLD SON TO HANDLE. SACHS’ PERSONAL LIFE

ALSO CHANGES FOR THE WORSE AS HE GRADUALLY FEELS DETACHED FROM HIS WIFE. REGARDLESS OF PERSONAL

AFFAIRS, WHICH ALWAYS HAPPEN, SACHS’S “POSITION BECAME INCREASINGLY MARGINALIZED” IN “THE NEW

AMERICAN ORDER OF THE 1980S.” ACCORDING TO AARON, THE “CLIMATE OF SELFISHNESS AND INTOLERANCE,

OF MORONIC, CHEST-POUNDING AMERICANISM” OF THAT ERA MAKES SACHS AN OUTSIDER DUE TO HIS

“MORALISTIC” VIEWS. AARON CONTINUES THAT “IT WAS BAD ENOUGH THAT THE RIGHT WAS EVERYWHERE IN

THE ASCENDANT, BUT EVEN MORE DISTURBING TO HIM [SACHS] WAS THE COLLAPSE OF ANY EFFECTIVE

OPPOSITION TO IT.” SACHS “CONTINUED TO MAKE A NUISANCE OF HIMSELF, TO SPEAK OUT FOR WHAT HE HAD

ALWAYS BELIEVED IN, BUT FEWER AND FEWER PEOPLE BOTHERED TO LISTEN” (P. 104). THIS WAS ALSO THE TIME

WHEN THE PROPOSED FILM OF THE NEW COLOSSUS WAS DROPPED FROM PRODUCTION, WHICH MADE SACHS FEEL

REALLY DOWN. LATER, “IMMENSE CHANGES OCCURRED INSIDE HIM” TO OPPOSE THE POLICIES OF THE ERA, NOT

THROUGH FICTION BUT DIRECT WORDS TO HIS READERS (P. 105). SACHS’S CHANGE IS BEST MANIFESTED IN HIS

FALL FROM A FIREPLACE ON JULY 4, 1986, WHEN HE IS IN A PARTY. HIS FALL AWAKENS HIM TO HIS MISSION

AGAINST “CAPITALISM” (P. 124); HIS CHANGE LEADS HIM TO A SERIES OF BOMBING ATTACKS AT THE REPLICAS OF

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY TO TELL THE AMERICAN CITIZENS TO “WAKE UP” FROM THEIR IGNORANCE. AARON

THEN CONTINUES THAT THOSE WHO SUPPORTED SACHS “WERE IN THE MINORITY” AND “THEIR NUMBERS WERE BY

NO MEANS SMALL” (P. 216). AUSTER, WHO ONCE SAID THAT HE READ THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO IN THE 1980S

(2005, P. 267), AND WAS ALSO ARRESTED DURING THE TROUBLES AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN 1968 (2005,

174), IS TELLING US HOW THE POLITICAL ATMOSPHERE OF THE ERA WAS. IN FACT, THERE WAS A MINORITY WHOSE

NUMBER WAS NOT FEW AND WHO HAD LEFTIST AND ANARCHIST ASPIRATIONS AGAINST THE REPUBLICANS IN THE

1970S AND 1980S, AS SACHS AND DIMAGGIO SHOW US. DIMAGGIO HAD COME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT

“CERTAIN FORMS OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE” WERE NECESSARY TO SHOW HIS OPPOSITION AND THUS “TERRORISM

HAD ITS PLACE IN THE STRUGGLE” (AUSTER 1992, P. 224). SACHS “WAS IN DEEP TROUBLE” AND TALKED ABOUT

“BOMBS” IN HIS LAST MEETINGS WITH AARON (AUSTER 1992, P. 2). A SUBCULTURE EVEN TAKES PLACE AFTER

THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY BECOMES A BIT POPULAR AMONG HIS FANS. HE BECOMES “THE SUBJECT OF

EDITORIALS AND SERMONS;” HE IS DISCUSSED “ON CALL-IN RADIO SHOWS, CARICATURED IN POLITICAL

CARTOONS, EXCORIATED AS A MENACE TO SOCIETY EXTOLLED AS A MAN OF THE PEOPLE.” SOON “PHANTOM OF

LIBERTY T-SHIRTS AND BUTTONS” ARE ON SALE AND JOKES BEGIN TO CIRCULATE. AARON SAYS THAT SACHS

“WAS MAKING A MARK” (P. 234). BEFORE SACHS’S SUDDEN DEATH, SEVERAL IMPORTANT EVENTS HAPPEN: “THE

BERLIN WALL WAS TORN DOWN, HAVEL [A MAN AGAINST COMMUNISM] BECAME PRESIDENT OF

CZECHOSLOVAKIA, THE COLD WAR SUDDENLY STOPPED [WHICH MANY CONTRIBUTE TO REAGAN’S ATTEMPTS]”

(P. 237). ALL THESE ISSUES WEAKENED COMMUNISM. IT IS AS IF THE WORLDLY ATMOSPHERE ALSO TURNS OUT

AGAINST HIS RADICALISM, ALTHOUGH HIS RADICALISM IS RATHER MORALISTIC THAN REVOLUTIONARY. IF HE

HAD NOT DIED, HE COULD HAVE BECOME SOMEBODY LIKE HAVEL. HAVEL WAS A WRITER WHOSE POLITICAL

PHILOSOPHY WAS ONE OF “ANTI-CONSUMERISM, HUMANITARIANISM, ENVIRONMENTALISM, CIVIL ACTIVISM, AND

DIRECT DEMOCRACY” (CRAIN 2012); HE FOUGHT AGAINST COMMUNISM AND PROVED HIS PHILOSOPHY. IN THE

SAME MANNER, ALTHOUGH IN ITS EXTREME FORM, DIMAGGIO USED TO HANG OUT WITH “A BUNCH OF IDIOT

RADICALS” (AUSTER 1992, P. 165). HE SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN INVOLVED, ALTHOUGH NOT FOR SURE, “WITH A

LEFT-WING ECOLOGY GROUP, A SMALL BAND OF MEN AND WOMEN COMMITTED TO SHUTTING DOWN THE

OPERATION OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS, LOGGING COMPANIES, AND OTHER ‘DESPOILERS OF THE EARTH’” (P.

170). THERE WERE EVEN RUMORS THAT HE BELONGED TO PLO OR IRA OR THAT HE WAS A CIA OR FBI SECRET

AGENT (PP. 238-239). LIKEWISE, SACHS IS INITIALLY FOND OF ENVIRONMENTALISM AND AGAINST

INDUSTRIALISM AND CAPITALISM. HIS INITIAL CONCERN COMES FROM READING THOREAU AND HIS CIVIL

DISOBEDIENCE. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE DETAILS “THOREAU’S CONCERNS WITH THE NATURE OF INSTITUTIONAL

POWER.” IN HIS VIEW, THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT “HAS SUPPRESSED RESPONSIBLE INDIVIDUALITY” AND

“STRIVES TO ACCENTUATE THE VALUES ASSOCIATED WITH MATERIALISM AND MERCANTILISM.” THOREAU

COMMENTS UPON THE PRESENT “INEQUALITIES” IN THE AMERICAN SOCIETY AND BELIEVES THAT “THE

INDIVIDUAL MUST BECOME A COUNTERBALANCE TO THE INFLUENCE OF THIS FLAWED AND NEGATIVE SYSTEM”

(MARTIN 2007, P. 205). SACHS’S CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS MANIFESTED IN HIS NOT GOING TO VIETNAM WAR AND

GETTING IMPRISONED INSTEAD IN “THE FEDERAL PENITENTIARY IN DANBURY, CONNECTICUT” FOR SEVENTEEN



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MONTHS. AARON REVEALS THAT MANY CHOSE TO LEAVE USA FOR “CANADA, SWEDEN, EVEN FRANCE” TO

ESCAPE IMPRISONMENT, WHILE SACHS STAYED AND CHOSE IMPRISONMENT (AUSTER 1992, P. 19). SACHS SAYS, “I

FELT I HAD A RESPONSIBILITY TO STAND UP AND TELL THEM WHAT I THOUGHT” (PP. 19-20). IT IS THEN THROUGH

DIMAGGIO THAT SACHS TRIES TO PRACTICE HIS DISOBEDIENCE IN A SEVERE FORM BY EXPLODING THE REPLICAS

OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY. AS THE SYMBOL OF THE USA, THE STATUE OF LIBERTY, AS AARON SAYS, “STANDS

FOR: DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM, EQUALITY UNDER THE LAW” (P. 216). THESE ISSUES ARE EXACTLY WHAT SACHS

DOES NOT SEE IN THE ERA AND HIS RADICALISM DERIVES FROM HIS ANGER AT THE FAILURE OF THESE IDEALS. IN

MARTIN’S WORDS,

WHILE PROGRESS AND CONFORMITY ARE LAUDED AS CHARACTERISTICS ASSOCIATED WITH THE NATION’S WELL-

BEING, THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM HAS BEEN GRADUALLY ERODED. DESPITE OUTWARD AMERICAN EXPANSION,

ENCROACHING COMMUNISM WAS VIEWED AS A MAJOR THREAT. THESE ATTACKS UPON THE STATUS QUO WOULD

BECOME EVIDENT IN THE 1960S. THE ADVENT OF THE ‘COUNTERCULTURE’ RESULTED IN WIDESPREAD

RESISTANCE TO THE VIETNAM WAR. (2007, P. 202)

AND NOT ONLY AUSTER HIMSELF BUT ALSO DIMAGGIO AND SACHS RESISTS GOING TO THE VIETNAM WAR.

MARTIN EXPLAINS THAT IN HIS ARTICLES AND ESSAYS SACHS HOLDS THAT THAT HIS COUNTRY “HAS BEEN BUILT

UPON REVOLUTION AND REACTION TO A CORRUPT SYSTEM OF GOVERNANCE” AND, THEREFORE, THESE VALUES

WILL CONTINUE EXIST IF THE NATION WANTS TO SURVIVE. THE RIGHT INSISTS THAT “THE CONCEPTS OF

REVOLUTION AND INDIVIDUALITY ARE DETRIMENTAL TO AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT” AND THUS “DISSENTING

VOICES ARE CONSIDERED NEGATIVE INFLUENCES” AGAINST NATIONAL HARMONY. SUPPRESSING THESE

“REACTIONARY, YET ARGUABLY ‘AMERICAN’ VALUES” GUARANTEES THE REINFORCEMENT OF RIGHTIST

PRINCIPLES. THUS, WHILE SACHS LAMENTS THE “LOST SPIRITUALITY” OF HIS COUNTRY, “THE HIERARCHY” OF

THE SYSTEM, “AS REPRESENTED BY FBI AGENTS HARRIS AND WORTHY,” LABEL SACHS AS “A THREAT” (2007, P.

207). ALTHOUGH THE FBI AGENTS NEUTRALIZE SACHS’S ATTEMPTS AND IDEOLOGY, IT IS ONLY AARON THAT

APPEARS TO SUPPORT HIM OR SYMPATHIZE WITH HIM.

AUSTER ALSO TALKS ABOUT THE CONFLICTS IN THE 1980S IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD TO SIGNIFICANTLY

BLUR THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION. “THIS WAS THE 1980, . . . THE KHMER ROUGE ATROCITIES

IN CAMBODIA, THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN” (AUSTER 1992, P. 90). MARTIN ADDS THAT,

THE CONCERTED ATTACKS UPON THE NATIONAL SYMBOL ARE SYMPTOMATIC OF IMMENSE GLOBAL CHANGES.

STUDENT PROTESTS OCCURRED IN TIENANMEN SQUARE IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA IN 1989, WHILE

EASTERN EUROPE WITNESSED THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM IN 1990 AND 1991. THE PHANTOM BRINGS THE

CONCEPT OF LIBERTY INTO THE PUBLIC ARENA, AND HIS INFLUENCE EXTENDS BEYOND AMERICA. HIS MESSAGE

REACHES ALL THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED BY CORRUPTED INSTITUTIONAL POWER. (2007, P. 209)

AS HUTCHEON NOTES, “HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION, LIKE THE NON-FICTIONAL NOVEL, ALSO TURNS TO THE

INTERTEXTS OF HISTORY AS WELL AS LITERATURE” (2004, P. 132). WHEN AARON WANTS TO INTRODUCE SACHS

TO US FOR THE FIRST TIME, HE DESCRIBES HIM AS SUCH: “HE RESEMBLED ICHABOD CRANE, PERHAPS, BUT HE WAS

ALSO JOHN BROWN” (AUSTER 1992, P. 12). BOTH CRANE AND BROWN WERE FAMOUS MILITARY OFFICERS IN THE

19TH-CENTURY UNITED STATES. ICHABOD CRANE IS ALSO THE NAME OF THE PROTAGONIST OF WASHINGTON

IRVING’S THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. USING BOTH HISTORICAL AND LITERARY INTERTEXTS, LEVIATHAN

GOES ON WITH LISTING OTHER HISTORICAL PERSONAGES AND EVENTS TO HIGHLIGHT ITS INTERTEXTUALITY AND

HOW HISTORICAL EVENTS ARE RELATED TO EACH OTHER. ISOLATING CERTAIN HISTORICAL EVENTS MAY FILL

THEM WITH CERTAIN MESSAGES, IGNORING THE SO-CALLED MINOR EVENTS WHICH IN REALITY CONTRIBUTED TO

THE MAJOR ONES. IN THE CASE OF LEVIATHAN, IT “CAN BE READ AS RESPONSES TO TERRORISM AND

CONTEMPORARY POLITICS AND AS STUDIES OF THE ROLE OF THE AUTHOR IN LIFE AS WE KNOW IT TODAY”

(BARONE 1995, P. 10).

THE ROLE OF WRITER, IN NARRATING PAST EVENTS TO US, BECOMES EXTREMELY IMPORTANT IN GIVING CERTAIN

SIGNIFICANCE TO CERTAIN HISTORICAL EVENTS. AARON TELLS US THAT SACHS’S FIRST NOVEL, THE NEW

COLOSSUS, “IS FILLED WITH REFERENCES TO THE STATUE OF LIBERTY” (AUSTER 1992, P. 35). SACHS IS WELL-

READ AND FINDS CONNECTIONS BETWEEN HISTORICAL EVENTS. HE IS SOMEONE WHO IS NOT BLIND TO THE

INTERRELATIONSHIP OF HISTORICAL EVENTS, EVEN THOUGH SIMULTANEOUS EVENTS MIGHT HAVE NO

CONNECTION WITH EACH OTHER. IT IS IMPLIED FROM AARON’S WORDS THAT ANY KNOWLEDGEABLE PERSON WHO

HAS SOME HAND IN HISTORY IS ABLE TO INTERPRET EVENTS SUBJECTIVELY, EVEN IF EVENTS IN THEMSELVES

HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER AND ARE PURELY ACCIDENTAL.



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3.3. SELF-REFLEXIVITY: SACHS WRITING THE NEW COLOSSUS AND AARON WRITING LEVIATHAN

“SELF-REFLEXIVITY” IS DEFINED AS “THE EXPOSURE OF THE AUTONOMY OF THE NARRATIVES ABOUT HISTORICAL

EVENTS WITH RESPECT TO THE EVENTS THEMSELVES” (WESSELING 1991, P. 120). “SELF-REFLEXIVE FICTION”

TOOK SHAPE, ACCORDING TO FEDERMAN, IN THE 1960S TO FILL “THE LINGUISTIC GAP CREATED BY THE

DISARTICULATION OF THE OFFICIAL DISCOURSE IN ITS RELATION WITH THE INDIVIDUAL” (1988, P. 1152). APART

FROM GIVING “A SELF-CONSCIOUS TREATMENT OF HISTORY AND FICTION,” TEXTS THAT TEND TO BLUR THE

BOUNDARY BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION ARE NOT “CLOSED AND SELF-SUFFICIENT ARTEFACTS.” THEY ARE FULL

OF “FRAGMENTS, RECONSTRUCTIONS, REFRACTIONS, INDIRECT CONNECTIONS AND UNEXPECTED TURNS” NOT

ONLY TO TEASE READERS IN THE ACT OF READING (IBARROLA-ARMENDARIZ 2008, P. 29), BUT ALSO TO

CONSTANTLY REMIND THEM THAT WHAT THEY ARE READING IS NOT UNIFIED AS ABSOLUTE FACT. INSTEAD OF

BESTOWING READERS WITH “THE FINISHED PRODUCT OF A WELL-MADE STORY”, POSTMODERNIST NOVELISTS

MAKE “THE PRODUCTION PROCESS” OVERT (WESSELING 1991, P. 119). SELF-REFLEXIVITY THUS SERVES A HIGHER

PURPOSE OF INFORMING READERS OF HOW ANYTHING IS WRITTEN TO BE ANNOUNCED SO THAT READERS CAN BE

CRITICAL OF WHAT THEY READ.

IN MANY TRADITIONAL HISTORICAL NOVELS, AS HUTCHEON ARGUES, CERTAIN HISTORICAL FIGURES ARE

FICTIONALIZED “TO VALIDATE OR AUTHENTICATE THE FICTIONAL WORLD BY THEIR PRESENCE, AS IF TO HIDE THE

JOINS BETWEEN FICTION AND HISTORY IN A FORMAL AND ONTOLOGICAL SLEIGHT OF HAND” (2004, P. 114). IN

ORDER TO “FOREGROUND STRATEGIES FOR HISTORICAL RESEARCH AND NARRATION,” THAT IS, TO MAKE THEIR

HISTORICAL RENDERING SELF-REFLEXIVE, POSTMODERNIST WRITERS USE “HISTORIAN-LIKE CHARACTER[S] OR

EXTERNAL NARRATOR[S]” WHO COMMENT ON THEIR HISTORICAL OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECT “THE

JUXTAPOSITION OF DIVERGING VIEWS ON THE SAME HISTORICAL SUBJECT MATTER” (WESSELING 1991, P. 119).

ACCORDINGLY, IN POSTMODERNIST FICTION, “THE MAKING OF HISTORY IS ANALYZED AS IF IT WERE THE WRITING

OF A STORY” (P. 120). IF WE PEER INTO POSTMODERNIST HISTORICAL NOVELS, WE OBSERVE THAT, THROUGH

SELF-REFLEXIVITY, THEY TRY TO PRESENT US WITH THE FACT THAT RANDOM EVENTS IN HISTORY HAVE BEEN

GIVEN AN ORDER THROUGH DISCOURSE TO BECOME AN UNDERSTANDABLE NARRATIVE.

ACCORDING TO HORSELY, “THE REALISTIC HISTORIOGRAPHER OFTEN SHOWS HIMSELF TO THE READER IN THE

ACT OF ANALYSIS” (1990, P. 118). BY EXPLAINING HOW THE NEW COLOSSUS IS, AARON IS TELLING US HOW

HISTORICAL FICTION BECOMES METAFICTIONAL, HENCE “HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION” AND IT SELF-

REFLEXIVE ATTITUDE. AARON TELLS US THAT THE NEW COLOSSUS IS “A HISTORICAL NOVEL, A METICULOUSLY

RESEARCHED BOOK SET IN AMERICA BETWEEN 1876 AND 1890 AND BASED ON DOCUMENTED, VERIFIABLE

FACTS.” MOST OF THE CHARACTERS ARE REAL AND REALLY LIVED IN THAT ERA. THE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

ARE FROM OTHER LITERARY WORKS, A FACT WHICH HIGHLIGHTS THE INTERTEXTUALITY OF THE NOVEL. ALL THE

EVENTS IN THE BOOK ARE “TRUE IN THE SENSE THAT THEY FOLLOW THE HISTORICAL RECORD – AND IN THOSE

PLACES WHERE THE RECORD IS UNCLEAR, THERE IS NO TAMPERING WITH THE LAWS OF PROBABILITY.” SACHS’S

OWN HISTORICAL NARRATIVE CAN BE SEEN AS AN EXAMPLE OF “HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION” AS DEFINED BY

HUTCHEON IN A POETICS OF POSTMODERNISM (MARTIN 2007, P. 206). WE KNOW THAT NO NOVEL BY THE NAME

OF THE NEW COLOSSUS EVER EXISTS IN REALITY; HOWEVER, PARTS OF THE EVENTS REALLY HAPPENED AND

SERVE AUSTER’S USE OF SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN LEVIATHAN. WE ALSO KNOW THAT SACHS’S SECOND NOVEL,

WHICH WAS TO BE CALLED LEVIATHAN, IS NEVER PUBLISHED AND AARON CALLS HIS BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD OF

SACHS LEVIATHAN. ALTHOUGH THESE TWO WORKS SEEM TO HAVE NO CONNECTION WITH EACH OTHER, THEY

BOTH REFER TO ONE THING AND THAT IS AUSTER’S LEVIATHAN AND ITS WRITING PROCESS AS A POSTMODERN

HISTORICAL FICTION OR A PRACTICE IN “HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION.”



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3.4. THE REFUTATION OF TRUTH CLAIMS AND THE UNRELIABLE NARRATOR: IS PETER AARON RELIABLE?

“HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION” PRIVILEGES TWO MODES OF NARRATION WHICH “PROBLEMATIZE THE ENTIRE

NOTION OF SUBJECTIVITY:” “MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW (AS IN THOMAS’S THE WHITE HOTEL) OR AN OVERTLY

CONTROLLING NARRATOR (AS IN SWIFT’S WATERLAND) .” NONE OF THESE NARRATIVE MODES KNOWS THE PAST

“WITH ANY CERTAINTY” (HUTCHEON 2004, P. 117), BECAUSE TRUTH IS RELATIVE FOR EACH NARRATOR IN THE

FIRST CASE AND NO NARRATOR CAN HAVE A GOD-LIKE EYE OVER EVERYTHING AND JUDGE THEM. WHEN THERE IS

NO RELIABLE NARRATOR, AND THERE CANNOT BE ANY RELIABLE NARRATOR, SUCH UNRELIABILITY CHALLENGES

“THE RECOGNIZED HISTORICAL RECORD” (MALPAS 2005, P. 101). “HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION,” THROUGH

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, CHALLENGES ANY BLINDFOLDEDNESS TO THE ASSUMED RELIABILITY OF ANY NARRATOR,

ESPECIALLY IN HISTORICAL RECORDS. MCHALE (2004) CONCEIVES OF SUCH NARRATION AS PROMOTING

“ONTOLOGICAL PLURALITY OR INSTABILITY” OR ONTOLOGICAL UNCERTAINTY REGARDING THE BLURRING OF THE

BOUNDARIES BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION (P. 11). FICTION AND HISTORY ARE NARRATIVES “DISTINGUISHED BY

THEIR FRAMES.” THE INTERACTION OF THE HISTORIOGRAPHIC AND THE METAFICTIONAL IN “HISTORIOGRAPHIC

METAFICTION” FOREGROUNDS THE REJECTION OF THE CLAIMS OF BOTH “AUTHENTIC” REPRESENTATION AND

“INAUTHENTIC” IMITATION ALIKE. ACCORDINGLY, THE VERY SIGNIFICANCE OF “ARTISTIC ORIGINALITY” IS AS

CHALLENGED (HUTCHEON 2004, PP. 109-110). EVERY ACCOUNT IS THUS TAKEN AS A NARRATIVE, ENTANGLED IN

THE LAWS OF LANGUAGE AND DISCOURSE. LESSING MOVES FURTHER BY ARGUING THAT THERE IS NO DEFINITE

REASON WHY REMNANTS FROM THE PAST SHOULD BE PRIVILEGED AS VALID SOURCES OF INFORMATION. ANY

OBJECT IS THE PRODUCT OF HUMAN BEINGS WHO PERCEIVED THE WORLD IN TERMS OF THEIR OWN INTERESTS

(1983, PP. 88-103). THE SAME ARGUMENT GOES WITH “THE SUBJECTIVE NATURE” OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS

WHICH ACT AS “COLLAGE” (WESSELING 1991, P. 123). COLLAGE IS ALSO AN EXAMPLE OF “METAHISTORICAL

REFLECTION” ON RECALLING THE PAST. SINCE THE NARRATORS IN SUCH NOVELS HAVE NO ABSOLUTE POINT OF

REFERENCE, “EXPLICIT REFLECTION” UPON EVENTS IS NOT OBTAINED. THESE NOVELS THUS COMMENT ON “THE

RETROSPECTIVE RETRIEVAL OF THE PAST” EITHER THROUGH QUOTATIONS OR SOURCES WHICH ARE NOT

NECESSARILY VALID (PP. 124-125). THIS CAN BE ADDED THAT WE SHOULD NOT FORGET HOW ANY HISTORIAN

MIGHT HAVE EXAGGERATED OR DEGRADED THE IMPORTANCE OF AN HISTORICAL EVENT THROUGH FIGURES OF

SPEECH AND/OR RHETORICAL FIGURES. THE POINT IS THAT, AS WESSELING SAYS, “DOCUMENTS CANNOT SPEAK

FOR THEMSELVES AT ALL, BUT OFFER NOISE INSTEAD, BECAUSE THEY DO NOT CONCUR WITH EACH OTHER” (1991,

P. 124).



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AARON READS THE NEWS ABOUT SACHS’S DEATH IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR AND

TRUSTWORTHY MEDIA WITHIN THE UNITED STATES. COMBINING HISTORY AND FICTION, SINCE THE NEWSPAPER

REALLY EXISTS WHILE SACHS IS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER, AUSTER MAKES US ENCOUNTER ONTOLOGICAL

CRACKS FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE NOVEL. AS KELLY EXPLAINS, THE PASSAGE HERE “READS LIKE A

NEWSPAPER REPORT (ALBEIT AN UNUSUALLY GRAPHIC ONE), AND THE TONE IT INITIATES CONTINUES RIGHT THE

WAY DOWN THE OPENING PAGE, SO THAT THE LONG FIRST PARAGRAPH IS ALMOST AS FORENSIC AS THE REPORTS

IT ALLUDES TO.” EVEN SO, THE ESSENTIAL “PROBLEM OF WITNESSING” SHOWS ITSELF AS EARLY AS THE SECOND

LINE (2013, P. 59): “THERE WERE NO WITNESSES,” AARON SAYS (AUSTER 1992, P. 1), ALTHOUGH WE ARE GIVEN

MUCH INFORMATION ABOUT THE NEWS IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS. THE NOVEL THEN BECOMES A FICTIONAL

BIOGRAPHY OF BENJAMIN SACHS BY PETER AARON, A FACT WHICH MAKES IT INEVITABLE NOT TO FULLY TRUST

THE RECORDS SINCE THEY ARE THROUGH AARON’S EYES AS SACHS’S CLOSE FRIEND WHO WAS ALTOGETHER

ABSENT IN THE LAST MONTHS OF SACHS’S LIFE AND OBTAINED HIS INFORMATION ABOUT HIM THROUGH MARIA.

AS A WITNESS, AARON PROMISES TO “ONLY SPEAK ABOUT THE THINGS I KNOW, THE THINGS I HAVE SEEN WITH

MY OWN EYES AND HEARD WITH MY OWN EARS” (AUSTER 1992, P. 22). HOWEVER, APPLYING WHAT HE HEARS

FROM OTHERS ABOUT SACHS AND WHAT HE HIMSELF KNOWS ABOUT HIM MAKES READERS DOUBT HIS STORY, “A

STORY IN WHICH ANY SIMPLE KNOWLEDGE OF TRUTH COMES UNDER QUESTION FROM A VARIETY OF ANGLES”

(KELLY 2013, P. 60). FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY, AARON IS FRANK WITH READERS ABOUT THE LACK OF

HIS KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SACHS’S LIFE: “I WANT TO TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT HIM, . . . BUT I CAN’T DISMISS THE

POSSIBILITY THAT I’M WRONG, THAT THE TRUTH IS QUITE DIFFERENT FROM WHAT I IMAGINE IT TO BE” (AUSTER

1992, P. 22). OTHER PROBLEMS ARISE WHEN THESE ACCOUNTS MUTUALLY CONFLICT ON CERTAIN POINTS ABOUT

SACHS’S LIFE. FOR EXAMPLE, SACHS’S VERSION OF HIS FALL IS DIFFERENT FROM WHAT MARIA TELLS AARON.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE IS WHEN MARIA TELLS AARON OF LILLIAN’S DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS OF HER FALLING OUT

WITH DIMAGGIO. THIS STATEMENTS ACTUALLY HIGHLIGHT “THE DIFFICULTY OF A SIMPLE DISTINCTION BETWEEN

TRUTH AND FALSITY, AND, INDEED, THIS DISTINCTION IS EVERYWHERE THREATENED AND UNDER ERASURE IN

AARON’S NARRATIVE” (KELLY 2013, P. 61). AARON AS SACHS’S CLOSE FRIENDS CANNOT TALK FOR SURE ABOUT

SACHS’S REAL MOTIVATION IN WRITING HIS BIOGRAPHY, SO HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR HISTORIANS TO RECORD

THINGS IN WHICH THEY ARE NECESSARILY NOT THE FIRST WITNESSES? HOWEVER, AARON’S NARRATION SHOWS

THE MISSION OF LITERATURE TO “SAY EVERYTHING,” TO INCLUDE “ALL THE EVENTS” AND “ALL ACCOUNTS OF

EVENTS” WITHIN ITSELF, EVEN “AT THE EXPENSE OF A CLEAR AND DETERMINATE NARRATION” (KELLY 2013, P.

74).

3.5. NON-TELEOLOGICAL NARRATION: NARRATIVE FLUCTUATIONS IN A BOMBING CASE

POSTMODERNIST FICTION RE-WRITES OR RE-PRESENTS THE PAST IN THE FORM OF FICTIONALIZED HISTORY AND BY

OPENING THE PAST TO THE PRESENT PREVENT THE PAST “FROM BEING CONCLUSIVE AND TELEOLOGICAL”

(HUTCHEON, 2004, P. 110). FOLLOWING THE “LINGUISTIC TURN IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY THOUGHT”,

PHILOSOPHERS OF HISTORY HAVE HIGHLIGHTED “THE LINGUISTIC CONVENTIONS THAT GOVERN THE NARRATIVE

REPRESENTATION OF HISTORY.” IN THIS VIEW, “NARRATIVE IS NOT A TRANSPARENT MEDIUM FOR REPRESENTING

HISTORICAL REALITY,” AS ROLAND BARTHES, W. B. GALLIE, FRANK R. ANKERSMIT, HAYDEN V. WHITE, AND

OTHERS HAVE POINTED OUT, BUT IT EVOKES “A SPECIFIC MODE OF UNDERSTANDING THE PAST” (WESSELING

1991, P. 128). IN OTHER WORDS, NARRATIVITY IMPOSES A CERTAIN FORM ON HISTORICAL EVENTS BEFORE THEY

“CAN BECOME AN OBJECT OF HISTORICAL INQUIRY AND REPRESENTATION.” ACCORDINGLY, TWO IMPORTANT

ELEMENTS THAT MAKE HISTORY, “CAUSALITY AND TELEOLOGY,” ARE CONCEIVED AS “LINGUISTIC PHENOMENA”

AND RECOUNTED THROUGH LANGUAGE (WESSELING 1991, P. 128). FRANK KERMODE DESCRIBES THIS FEATURE

OF NARRATIVE UNDERSTANDING BY ARGUING THAT STORIES CHANGE CHRONOLOGICAL TIME INTO “A POINT IN

TIME FILLED WITH SIGNIFICANCE, CHARGED WITH A MEANING DERIVED FROM ITS RELATION TO THE END” (1979,

P. 47). DISTINCT EVENTS ARE THUS TELEOLOGICALLY COMBINED TOGETHER TO FORM ONE DOCUMENTED AND

MEANINGFUL HISTORICAL EVENT, WHICH COULD BE OTHERWISE RECOUNTED IN THE POSTMODERN SENSE.



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THE NON-TELEOLOGICAL NARRATION IN “HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION” TELLS US THAT RANDOMNESS IS

MORE COGNITIVELY ACCEPTABLE THAN SEQUENTIAL AND CAUSAL SET OF EVENTS. LEVIATHAN IS FILLED WITH A

SERIES OF SEEMINGLY UNRELATED PLOT TWISTS THAT EVENTUALLY CULMINATE IN SACHS’S DEATH. THIS

“MANIC PLOT,” AS KELLY SAYS, GIVES READERS THE OPPORTUNITY TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS IN THE NOVEL “AS THE

PLAYING OUT OF THE LOGIC OF SACHS’S STRANGE SITUATION AND CHOICES, AS THE UNAVOIDABLE OUTCOME OF

A TRAGIC FATE, OR AS A CONTINUED SERIES OF RANDOM EVENTS, PLAUSIBLE OR IMPLAUSIBLE.” THE PLOT

STRUCTURE “CONTINUES TO BE OFFERED TO US IN UNCERTAINTY, AS A PALIMPSEST OF TESTIMONIES, WITH THE

NARRATOR AARON’S DIRECT ACCESS TO KEY EVENTS RECEDING FURTHER AND FURTHER AS THE NOVEL GOES

ON.” AARON ESTABLISHES HIMSELF AS “AN UNRELIABLE NARRATOR” THROUGH HIS OWN DOUBTS. HE LACKS

“DIRECT EXPERIENCE OF ALMOST ALL THE EVENTS OF THE NOVEL’S SECOND HALF” AND HE PROVES HIMSELF “A

POOR READER OF THE CLUES PRESENTED TO HIM BY SACHS’S BEHAVIOR” (KELLY 2013, P. 70). “I COULD HAVE

LEARNED TO LIVE WITH THIS QUIETER AND MORE SUBDUED SACHS,” AARON REFLECTS, “BUT THE OUTWARD

SIGNS WERE TOO DISCOURAGING, AND I COULDN’T SHAKE THE FEELING THAT THEY WERE SYMPTOMS OF SOME

LARGER DISTRESS” (AUSTER 1992, P. 123). COMING TO KNOW MORE ABOUT SACHS’S MOTIVATION, AARON

LATER HOLDS THAT

KNOWING WHAT I KNOW NOW, I CAN SEE HOW LITTLE I REALLY UNDERSTOOD. I WAS DRAWING CONCLUSIONS

FROM WHAT AMOUNTED TO PARTIAL EVIDENCE, BASING MY RESPONSE ON A CLUSTER OF RANDOM, OBSERVABLE

FACTS THAT TOLD ONLY A SMALL PIECE OF THE STORY. (P. 126)

NOW THAT HE KNOWS CERTAIN FACTS ABOUT SACHS, HE HAS TO RETURN BACK TO HIS FORMER EVIDENCE AND

REREAD THEM. REREADING HIS FORMER EVIDENCE LEADS TO REINTERPRETATIONS AND NEW PLOT TWISTS. AS

KELLY BELIEVES, “THE ADDED TWIST” IS THAT AUSTER’S PASSAGE HAPPENS IN “A LITERARY TEXT, WRITTEN BY

A CHARACTER WHO EXISTS ONLY IN A FICTIONAL WORLD,” THAT IS, “THE PASSAGE ASKS TO BE READ THROUGH

THE LENS OF AN IRONY THAT COMPLICATES THE TESTIMONY” (2013, P. 72). AARON’S TWISTED PLOT IN HIS

BIOGRAPHY OF SACHS, WHICH FINDS ITS REFLECTION AS AUSTER’S NOVEL, PROVES NON-TELEOLOGICAL SINCE IT

HAS NO FINAL CONCLUSION TO OFFER ABOUT SACHS’S REAL MOTIVATION.

3.6. PLURALITY: THE TRUTH BEHIND SACHS’ MOTIVATIONS

AS HUTCHEON SAYS, “HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION ESPOUSES A POSTMODERN IDEOLOGY OF PLURALITY AND

RECOGNITION OF DIFFERENCE.” SHE HOLDS THAT NO “TYPE” EXISTS HERE AND THAT “THERE IS NO SENSE OF

CULTURAL UNIVERSALITY.” THE PROTAGONISTS OF SUCH FICTION ARE OPENLY “SPECIFIC, INDIVIDUAL,

CULTURALLY AND FAMILIALLY CONDITIONED” IN FACING HISTORY (2004, P. 114). SINCE NO SINGLE SUBJECTIVE

VIEWPOINT IS SUFFICIENT TO SATISFY A GENERAL VIEW OF HISTORY, A PLURALITY OF PERSPECTIVES CAN BE

JUSTIFIABLY THE BEST POSTMODERN OPTION FOR HISTORIOGRAPHY TO REPORT HISTORICAL EVENTS. IT IS

THEREFORE AN INHERENT ASPECT OF “HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION” TO BE PLURALISTIC IN INCLUDING AS

MANY AS VERSIONS OF HISTORICAL EVENTS, EVEN IF THEY ARE TINGED WITH FICTIONALITY. PETER AARON IN

LEVIATHAN HOLDS THAT

EACH ONE OF US IS CONNECTED TO SACHS’S DEATH IN SOME WAY, AND IT WON’T BE POSSIBLE FOR ME TO TELL

HIS STORY WITHOUT TELLING EACH OF OUR STORIES AT THE SAME TIME. EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO

EVERYTHING ELSE, EVERY STORY OVERLAPS WITH EVERY OTHER STORY. . . . I UNDERSTAND NOW THAT I’M THE

ONE WHO BROUGHT ALL OF US TOGETHER. (AUSTER 1992, P. 51)



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AARON’S EXPLANATION IMPLIES THAT IF ANY OTHER PERSON WOULD HAVE WRITTEN SACHS’S LIFE, IT WOULD

HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT. AARON OBTAINS PART OF HIS INFORMATION ABOUT SACHS FROM MARIA, AND MARIA

MIGHT HAVE TALKED ABOUT SACHS AS SHE HAD PLEASED. SO AARON’S EVIDENCE WHEN HE BEGINS TO WRITE

SACHS’S BIOGRAPHY IS SUBJECTIVE NOT ONLY ON AARON’S GROUNDS BUT ALSO IN INCORPORATING ANOTHER

PERSON’S PERSONAL ACCOUNT ABOUT SACHS. MOREOVER, AARON’S ACCOUNT MAY MODIFY ANY

MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT SACHS, BUT THE FBI AGENTS’ REPORTS POSSESS “A PRECONCEIVED NOTION OF WHAT

FORCES HAVE SHAPED THE MIND OF A FORMER CONVICT AND NATIONAL DISSENTER” (MARTIN 2007, P. 179). THE

POINT IS THAT ALTHOUGH AARON GIVES HIS MANUSCRIPT ABOUT SACHS TO THE FBI AGENTS, AARON HAS

ALREADY DOCUMENTED HIS OWN VERSION OF THE EVENTS AND NOT WHAT THE AGENTS ARE REALLY AFTER.

AARON CANNOT EVEN DECIDE TO CHOOSE ONE SPECIFIC VERSION OF SACHS: A WRITER WITH TRANSCENDENTAL

ASPIRATIONS OR A RADICAL WITH LEFTIST/MARXIST IDEOLOGIES. THE NOVEL IS THUS “A TESTIMONY TO THE LIFE

OF SACHS” AND HELPS AARON SPECULATE HIS FRIEND’S ACTIONS. AARON MOSTLY “INVESTIGATES THE OUTSIDE

FORCES THAT HAVE SHAPED SACHS AS AN INDIVIDUAL” (2007, P. 210), A FACT WHICH IS SUPPORTED BY THE

COMMENTS AARON HAS ON THE POLITICAL ATMOSPHERE OF THE 1980S THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.

AS MARTIN SAYS, “LEVIATHAN CAN BE CONSIDERED EITHER AN ATTEMPT ON AARON’S PART TO COMPREHEND

AND DEFEND HIS FRIEND’S ACTIONS OR A CLEVERLY CONSTRUCTED WORK OF SELF-DECEPTIVE HISTORICAL

FICTION.” WITH LEVIATHAN, MARTIN ARGUES, “AUSTER RESORTS TO HISTORICAL FICTION, AND EXAMINES THE

MOTIVATION BEHIND THE ACTIONS OF A LITERARY VERSION OF A MODERN AMERICAN TERRORIST” (2007, P. 211).

LIKEWISE, ONE CAN QUESTION ANY HISTORICAL ACCOUNT REGARDING ITS VALIDITY AND TRUTHFULNESS. SINCE

ALL HISTORICAL WRITINGS ARE IN THE FORM OF NARRATIVES AND NARRATIVES FOLLOW CERTAIN LITERARY

PRINCIPLES, ALL WRITTEN AND ORAL HISTORIES ARE OPEN TO QUESTION TO EXPOSE THE PLURALITY OF TRUTHS

THAT THEY HIDE CONCERNING A CERTAIN EVENT.

IIII, Conclusion

“Historiographic metafiction” has the potential not only to discuss different aspects of historical events from

different perspectives but also to tell its readers that all these historical records are subjective following certain

narrative techniques including parody, intertextuality, self-referentiality, unreliability of narration, non-

teleological narration, and plurality of truth. In Auster’s Leviathan, in historicizing the life of Benjamin Sachs,

Peter Aaron initially wants to save his closest friend from the FBI agents who are investigating his case after his

sudden death because of the explosion of one of his bombs in his hands. By trying to save his friend and

showing his true motivations in becoming a radical, Aaron has to go through the techniques of historiography in

the course of historicizing Sachs’s life. Although Aaron wants to give a truthful picture of his closest friend, he

is not immune from the accusations that are posed against historiographers. All humans are exposed to their

own biases and interests, and pure objectivity is never achieved. That is what happens for Aaron as well when

he doubts whether his accounts of Sachs’s life and motivations are true. In the course of obtaining information

about Sachs, Aaron has to ask other people for help. And those people themselves have their own interests and

hide certain facts about Sachs. To make his own history of Sachs, Aaron goes through different elements of

“historiographic metafiction.” By highlighting a set of historical events of the 1960s to 1980s in the United

States, Aaron creates a background about the circumstances that shaped Sachs’s mentality and change of

character from peacefulness to radicalism. To do so, Aaron, as Auster’s main narrator, highlight the events

which were against the Republicans to show that Reagan’s period was not as prosperous and as peaceful as the

contemporary media used to show. Auster thus partly retells the history of the era to show us its less highlighted

events.

Auster also uses many intertexts and parodies in Leviathan in refering to many famous characters of the 19th

century who were radicals, transcendentalists, or fans of national mottos and whose worldviews were all against

conservatism of the Republicans. And the point is that these events were considered minor in their own times.

Leviathan is also a self-reflexive novel in which the process of writing history by individuals is highlighted.

Aaron confesses that he is writing to purge Sachs of terroristic labels and at times he does not know what the

truth is. Aaron is also an unreliable narrator. He obtains his information about Sachs partly by himself and

partly through others. Others are sometimes not really honest with him about Sachs’s life and Aaron sometimes

even doubts his own judgment and shares it with readers. Non-teleological narration, focusing on the process of

writing than the end, is also observable in Leviathan in which the novel begins with the death news of Sachs

and ends a couple of weeks later with the FBI agents having found who Sachs was. Finally, plurality highlights

the relativity of truth among any number of people who witness an event or report an event or even narrate an



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event. Aaron’s version of Sachs’s life is different from what the FBI agents will report and what other

characters will keep in their memories. Aaron himself even doubts whether his own version of reality is valid.

Altogether, Leviathan is a case in point considering how “historiographic metafiction” is written. Although

Leviathan is not really rich in its historical documenting of the minor events of the 1980s, the perspective it has

taken to highlight those minor events against the political corruption of the era is significant since Auster has

highlighted the moral motivations of certain radicals against conservatives rather than the cruel aspect of their

actions.

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