A Cultural Materialist Reading of Paul Auster: Sunset Park

Abstract

The aim of the present research is to unveil how a “dissident” reading can be perceived by a Cultural Materialist Reading in the selected novel Sunset Park. Paul Auster is one of those writers who is always multitasking. His stories are never about just one thing, and you can never be sure what's going on behind the scenes until you turn the last page.   In fact, the novel entails some clashes serve to conceptualize the term “dissidence” as observed in the approach of cultural materialism. Cultural materialists argue that literature does not reflect only one cultural formation and is able to entreat other ideologies and subcultures.. In Sunset Park, Paul Auster has skillfully exhibited such a verbal game to represent his own concerns regarding the subject of the identity, ideology and power caught in the novels, leading to a “dissident” reading which is potentially opposed and threatening to those social oppressive norms which the protagonists are suffered.  Indeed, by investigating selected novel in details to find out how the cultural materialism notions can be applied to them, this research demonstrated that cultural materialism concepts are applicable to the characters and contents of selected novel.