Paternal Authority in Wayne Johnston's the Navigator of New York‪.‬

IN THE NAVIGATOR OF NEW YORK (2002), Wayne Johnston warns his readers that his novel does not attempt to solve the controversy over who first reached the North Pole. This warning is not contained in an epigraph, but comes at the end of the novel: While the purpose of Johnston's text was "not to answer historical questions," the lure of that possibility was most appealing. There is a play between historiography, fiction, and the writing of "contemporary" history in parallel with the writing of the novel itself. In its chiasmic structure, Johnston's note seems to urge the reader to rethink the novel she or he has just finished, and like many of his novels it encourages a reading in terms of the fluidity of boundaries between history and fiction. At a first glance, the title of the book, The Navigator of New York, could appear opportunistic. The protagonist comes from Newfoundland and goes into self-imposed exile in New York. Devlin, the narrator, writes: "There I was in Manhattan, and all I could think about was Newfoundland" (Johnston 52). Johnston might have been speaking for himself. "New York" in the title may serve to attract international readers and the protagonist of the novel is not "of' New York. But one learns, in the course of the story, that the narrator was conceived in New York and "navigated" in his mother's womb back to Newfoundland. Furthermore, this is a novel of exploration and "New York is to explorers what Paris is to artists" (Johnston 10).