Post-postmodern change of sensibility in Paul Auster’s Sunset park

Abstract

At the turn of the millennium, the young writers of the New Sincerity movement tried to create a new realist literature by getting rid of the destructive power of postmodern irony. The consecrated writers of the old postmodern guard, whose Weltanschauung was conformed to the style and the relativistic reality-processing modes of the previous paradigm, saw this change with scepticism. Nevertheless, there was a change in their sensibility when approaching certain themes. This article analyses Paul Auster’s Sunset Park as paradigmatic example of that shift in order to shed some light on its nature.