ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the biographies of the three authors and analyses key similarities that their works offer. Some of the main events in their biographies are mentioned to reveal some significant parallels. They grew up in the economically stable American white middle-class milieu of the 1950s and 60s, acquired worldwide credibility as innovative artists in the 1980s and established fruitful artistic synergies with their life partners. The similarities traced from their body of works emerge in four main areas: topics, characters, aesthetics and ethics. All these similarities culminate in a social commentary against a negligent, individualistic society that is single-mindedly absorbed in self-indulgence and consumerism. Such commentary confers an element of artistic resistance to these artworks as it will be further examined in the last part of the book. The implicit critique contained in Auster, Jarmusch and Waits is the device used to appreciate how America is perceived, explained and confronted in their works.
