The Evolution of Modern Cartography through Urban Literary Lenses. Exploring the cityscapes of City of Glass and Cosmopolis

Through an examination of two lauded postmodern novels, in this essay I endeavor to show how narrative, and literature in general, plays a substantial role in shaping and at once undermining the authenticity of the modern cartographic map. By analyzing the change from the urban landscape of the modern industrial city to the “real‑and‑imagined” cityscape of the postmodern metropolis, I seek to underscore the evolution of the cartographic representation of urban space in a historical optic. I argue that in Paul Auster’s City of Glass through the detective genre and the ambulatory way of exploring New York City the novel challenges the hard and fast cartographic epistemology of urban modernity, indicating the aesthetics of the postmodern metropolis. Likewise, I posit a similar argument in Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis through the theme of the quest and the spatial practice of driving in New York City, suggesting the impossibility of mapping the urban space in an absolutely practical manner in the postmodern city.