Post-Realist Fiction and the Masculine Archetype in 1950S America

University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2016-02-05 The Uninteresting Majority: Post-Realist Fiction and the Masculine Archetype in 1950s America Kriz, Matthew Kriz, M. (2016). The Uninteresting Majority: Post-Realist Fiction and the Masculine Archetype in 1950s America (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28406 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/2849 doctoral thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY The Uninteresting Majority: Post-Realist Fiction and the Masculine Archetype in 1950s America By Matthew David Kriz A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH CALGARY, ALBERTA DECEMBER 2015 © Matthew D. Kriz 2015 Abstract “The Uninteresting Majority” is a study of postwar American realist fiction written in the immediate postwar era and about the Second World War and the decade, the 1950s, that immediately followed it. The study views this period, and the novels under examination, as “post-realist.” The study defines post-realism as a way of defining reality only in terms of the present. In post-realism the past is wilfully ignored in favour of an all-encompassing present. It creates in effect a simulacrum of reality that simultaneously exists because of the past (especially in terms of the Depression and the war) and somehow in spite of it. “The Uninteresting Majority” observes how this post-realist effect is manifested in literature and how this distinctive way of viewing reality shapes not only past representations of the decade, but current ones as well. The focal point for both this study and the era as a whole is the archetypal middle-class white male American. It is his transition from soldier and licensed killer in wartime to family man and corporate employee in peacetime, a transition that suggests much dissonance, that sparks the post-realist attempt to foreclose the past. This study’s sections examine different representations of post-realism. The first focuses on texts that suggest its formation during wartime, where the Army’s indifference towards an individual’s background suggests an erasure of the past. The second finds texts that wholeheartedly embrace post-realism as a paradigm, suggesting that history only matters in terms of how it justifies the present. The third examines texts that reject the post-realist ideal and its focus only on present prosperity. The final section, on the television program Mad Men, discusses how the idea of post-realism shapes our current understanding of the 1950s as a period. ii Acknowledgements I want to first thank Jeanne Perreault, who guided me swiftly and firmly through the first stages of my PhD, and who helped me get this project started. Thanks to my supervisor, Michael Clarke, for his ever diplomatic and constructive approach, and for always helping me to push a little farther. Thank you as well to others in the English Department who have mentored me and helped me throughout my degree, specifically Anne McWhir, Stefania Forlini, Jim Ellis, and Aruna Srivastava. Thanks to my classmates and friends from the English Program who helped make this whole process less arduous. Thanks especially to Sungfu Tsai, Drew McDowell, Aaron Giovannone, Kirsten Inglis, Hollie Adams, Shaun Hanna, Boyda Johnstone, Tyler Hayden, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and Holly Dupej. Thank you to my parents, Sharon and Brian, whose early financial support of my seemingly never-ending post-secondary career was worth more than money. Finally, thank you to my wife, Tiphanie Roquette, and to our sons, Simon and Hugo. I would never have got this far without you, and I’m sorry it took so long to get there! iii Dedication To Tiphanie. iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... iii Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents .............................................................................................................................. v Epigraph .......................................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION: Post-Realism And The 1950s ........................................................................... 1 1950s America, World War II, and Condescending Nostalgia .................................................... 1 The State of Fiction in the Postwar Period ................................................................................. 12 The Emergence of Post-Realism ................................................................................................ 22 Realism as a Literary Period and Literary Form ........................................................................ 29 Realism and Naturalism ............................................................................................................. 35 The War and the Masculine Archetype in the Postwar Era ........................................................ 41 PART I: Modernism, Realism And The Masculine Archetype In The War .................................. 58 Chapter 1: War as Escape From the Trap of Domesticity in From Here to Eternity ................. 64 Chapter 2: Realism, Modernism, and the Army’s Denial of Pluralism in The Naked and the Dead ........................................................................................................................................... 90 PART II: “Shiny Happy People”: Embracing The Post-Realist Paradigm Of Domestic Contentment ............................................................................................................................................. 109 Chapter 3: The Post-Realist Hero: Trust in Authority and the Evils of Modernist Individualism in The Caine Mutiny ............................................................................................................. 114 Chapter 4: Present-Perfect: Foreclosing the Unpleasant Past in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit ......................................................................................................................................... 140 The Disappearance of the “Great Man” in the Post-Realist 1950s .......................................... 169 PART III: “Doomed Willy-Nilly”: Naturalism And The Suburb Novel ...................................... 179 Chapter 5: What We Have Here is a Failure to Domesticate: Urban Life as Death and Decay in Seize the Day .................................................................................................................... 180 Chapter 6: “A portrait of himself as decent but disillusioned young family man, sadly and bravely at war with his environment”: Frank Wheeler as a Tragic Caricature of 1950s Man in Revolutionary Road ......................................................................................................... 203 CODA: “Whatever it is you’re doing… it’s okay”: Passing, The Enormous Present, And The Pursuit Of Happiness In Mad Men ................................................................................................. 229 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................................... 261 v Epigraph “… and one exists in the present, in that enormous present which is without past or future, memory or planned intention, the life where a man must go until he is beat, where he must gamble with his energies through all those small or large crises of courage and unforeseen situations which beset his day, where he must be with it or doomed not to swing.” Norman Mailer, “The White Negro.” vi INTRODUCTION: POST-REALISM AND THE 1950S 1950s America, World War II, and Condescending Nostalgia 1950s America exists as an ever-enduring cliché in contemporary society. We easily recognize the symbols associated with the cliché, be they large suburban homes, men in business suits, wives (not women, but wives in particular) in corseted gowns preparing dinner in elaborate kitchens laden with “modern” conveniences, large automobiles, and smiley, rosy-cheeked children who say things like “golly” and “gee whiz.” Imbedded within these images and figures is a kind of condescending nostalgia. There is both a tendency to yearn for the perceived simplicity and prosperity of the decade and a coinciding desire to mock the impossible naivety on display. The television series Mad Men has since moved on to more serious themes (not coincidentally this more serious turn has corresponded with the show’s movement in time from 1960 to later in that decade), but at its onset it gleefully participated in this condescending nostalgia. The first few episodes revelled in

Load more