Europe After the Rain: Alan Burns and the Post-War Avant-Garde
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Europe After the Rain: Alan Burns and the Post-War Avant-Garde A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Kieran John Michael Devaney College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences Brunel University March 2016 i Abstract Alan Burns was one of the key figures in the group of experimental writers working in Britain in the nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, which included writers such as B.S. Johnson, Christine Brooke-Rose, Ann Quin and Giles Gordon. All of them sought ways to update and radicalize the techniques of modernism to make them relevant for their contemporary situation. Alan Burns took the novel to more radical extremes than his counterparts, eschewing traditional narrative in favour of a dense accumulation of detail. This is the first full length study of Burns’ work, which has largely been neglected by scholars and, for the most part, remains out of print. I provide a thorough account of Burns’ life and work and theorise the reasons for his obscurity. I examine the role of trauma in his work. For Burns the experience of the traumatic moment is one in which the violence that underpins everyday society is momentarily unveiled, the sheer and explicit violence of the event produces a rupture that displays the deeper and more insidious violence that exists beneath it and gives it structure. I draw on theories of visual art, music and cinema, both of the ‘classical’ avant-garde and more recent, as much as of literature and philosophy, to attempt to account for the strategies, techniques and approaches that Alan Burns engaged with in his writing. Avowedly left-wing, in interviews Burns is frequently optimistic about the possibility for political change in the world, and is even confident about the role that literature can play in fostering that change. However, I argue that his novels present a rather different, and much more pessimistic picture: each of them shows the way in which any activism can ultimately be constrained and co-opted. ii Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. Signature:........ iii Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the generous fee waiver provided by Brunel University. My thanks to them. I would also like to thank David Madden, Charles Sugnet, David Pink, George Green, Chuck Lewis and Daniel Cooper Alarcón for providing information and suggestions. I would also like to thank, in particular, Jeannette Baxter and Nonia Williams Korteling for discussions about Alan Burns and his work, and for their encouragement. For their support and friendship during the writing of this thesis I am grateful to Naomi Booth, Ciara Brennan, Thomas Bunstead, Dulcie Few, Eloise Gafney, Cassie Holland, Thomas Houlton, Helen Jukes and Kate O’Connor. Very special thanks to Philip Tew, whose patience, insight and support have been invaluable in the completion of this project. Thanks to my family for their encouragement and belief. Finally, to Laura Joyce, thanks for your continual support and love. This would have been impossible without you. iv Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................. i Declaration ........................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................iii Preface .................................................................................................................................................. v Chapter One: History, Biography and Context .................................................................................. 15 Chapter Two: Trauma ........................................................................................................................ 57 Chapter Three: The Avant-Garde .................................................................................................... 106 Chapter Four: Politics, Ideology and Activism ................................................................................ 154 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 193 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................... 201 v Preface Alan Burns was one of the key figures in the short-lived group of experimental writers working in Britain in the nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, which included writers such as B.S. Johnson, Christine Brooke-Rose, Ann Quin and Giles Gordon. All of these writers sought ways to update and radicalize the techniques of modernism to make them relevant for their contemporary situation. Burns, influenced by modernism and the classical avant-garde, in particular the Surrealists (he named two of his novels after Max Ernst paintings), and by left-wing political activism, took the novel to more radical extremes than his avant-garde counterparts, eschewing plot, character and conventional narrative in favour of a dense accumulation of detail. Burns wrote eight novels, a play and the script for two short films (one in collaboration with B.S. Johnson), as well as several short pieces, a book of interviews with writers, articles and edited an American report on pornography and censorship for publication in the UK. Burns was one of the earliest teachers of creative writing as an academic discipline in the Britain, appointed as the first writer in residence on the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing Master’s programme and later he went on to teach this discipline in both Australia and the USA. Burn’s first novel, the autobiographical Buster, was published in 1961, and his last published novel was Revolutions of the Night, in 1986 (though he had ideas for two biographies, another novel, and a book about his approach to fiction, none of which were published1). Burns wrote experimental novels during a period in which much of the literary establishment, and academia (with some exceptions) were actively hostile towards the strategies of modernism or the avant-garde2. This thesis aims to examine critically Burns’ fiction, as well as his various other written works, interviews and biographical material, in four distinct areas, which are detailed below. 1 See David Madden, 'Alan Burns: An Introduction' in Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. 17 Issue 2 (Summer 1997). An excerpt from the unfinished B.S. Johnson biography was published in the same issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction, and Madden also outlines Burns' plans for a biography of Frank Cook, a lifelong convict who became an artist and sculptor. Burns also planned a novel entitled Brothers, which would depict several sets of historical and fictional brothers. Also excerpted in the same issue is a section of Burns' Imaginary Dictionary, a work which, as Madden describes it is: "a dictionary of whimsy, wherein words come alive, take on characteristics of their own, unhinged from the uses and expectations of readers.” Finally, Burns also wrote, and came close to publishing, a book about his approach to writing called Art By Accident. The book was scheduled to be published by Calder in 2000, has an ISBN and is listed on some websites, including Amazon. However, the book was never released, and at the time of completing this thesis, I have been unable to obtain a copy. 2 For a detailed discussion of this issue see, for example, Rubin Rabinovitz, The Reaction Against Experiment in the English Novel 1950-1960, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), and also my analysis in chapters one and three of this thesis. vi Given that so little academic or biographical writing exists about Alan Burns, the opening chapter, ‘History, Biography and Context,’ will acknowledge Burns’ obscurity and also deal with that issue in two ways. Firstly, it offers an extensive historical, contextual, biographical and literary account of Burns’ life and work, and, secondly, in so doing presents a cumulative argument for the importance of Burns’ novels through an original examination of a wide range of source material. Taken together, this will offer the most detailed and complete version of Burns’ biography and bibliography to date. What this material demonstrates is that Burns was a writer whose works were taken seriously by his contemporaries, and who was considered a central part of the London literary scene of the late 1960s and early 70s. He was politically active, with links to various activist groups, and he produced fiction which experimented with form and narrative, at least in part, as a means to convey his left-leaning ideological beliefs, and even as part of an attempt to effect political change. The chapter outlines Burns’ middle class upbringing, his private education and his early career as a lawyer, suggesting that the relative economic comfort and security of his background, as well as his early employment in right wing institutions (in particular his work for the Daily Express newspaper), complicate the notion of Burns as a straightforwardly left wing activist writer. Drawing upon material from Buster, I also initiate a critical proposition which will recur throughout the thesis, that while