Fiction on the Radio: Remediating Transnational Modernism

FICTION ON THE RADIO: REMEDIATING TRANSNATIONAL MODERNISM ____________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board ____________________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ____________________________________________________________ by Daniel Ryan Morse May 2014 Examining Committee Members: Priya Joshi, Advisory Chair, English Sheldon Brivic, English Paul Saint-Amour, English, University of Pennsylvania James English, External Member, English, University of Pennsylvania ii © Copyright 2014 by Daniel Ryan Morse All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT The BBC was the laboratory for major experiments in modernism. Notions of aesthetics, audience, and form were tried out before the microphones of 200 Oxford St., London and heard around the world, often before they were in England. The format of the radio address and the instant encounter with listeners shaped both the production and politics of Anglophone modernism to an extent hitherto unacknowledged in literary studies. This dissertation focuses on how innovative programming by modernist writers, transmitted through instantaneous radio links, closed the perceived physical, cultural, and temporal distances between colony and metropole. Charting the phenomenon of writing for, about, and around broadcasting in the careers of E. M. Forster, Mulk Raj Anand, James Joyce, and C. L. R. James, the dissertation revises the traditional temporal and geographical boundaries of modernism. Contrary to the intentions of the BBC’s directors, who hoped to export a monolithic English culture, empire broadcasting wreaked havoc on the imagined boundaries between center and periphery, revealing the extent to which the colonies paradoxically affected the cultural scene “at home.” The Eastern Service (directed to India), where the abstract idea of a serious, cultural station was put into practice, was the laboratory for the Third Programme, England’s post-war cultural channel. Yet the effects of Empire radio are hardly limited to its considerable impact on postwar British broadcasting. The intellectual demands of Indian listeners set the parameters of and bankrolled the literary work performed by modernist writers in England. iv Addressing authors and readers in India from a studio in London, Mulk Raj Anand embodied a crucial aspect of the Eastern Service, its treatment of English and Indian culture as mutually influential and coeval. Anand’s broadcasts and 1945 novel The Big Heart (written during his BBC years) critique imperialism by positing the simultaneity of Indian and English temporality. In so doing, Anand’s works offer a rejoinder to narratives of colonial belatedness pervasive both at the time and in the present. When tackling such transnational work, radio studies is uniquely positioned to provide an archive and a radical new model for modernist studies as it grapples with critiques of the western diffusionist model of culture. Literary production in and around the BBC registers radical cultural upheaval with a diagnostic power that reveals the attenuated ability of hypercanonical modernism alone to illuminate modernity’s complex relays. Modernism on the BBC was not an exclusive canon of works, singular set of formal features, or even a unique posture. Instead, writers such as James, Forster, Anand, and Joyce offered complex responses to the pressures of modernity, including disruptions wrought by colonization, immigration, and war. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A host of people behind the scenes made this program possible. They are responsible for inspiring and improving what follows; any and all remaining faults are exclusively my own. I send heartfelt thanks to all of these producers, fact-checkers, engineers, and funders. This project on literary discussion would have been nothing more than a tired monologue were it not for the sharp conversations I enjoyed with my dissertation committee. For encouraging me to pursue connections between modernism and media early in my graduate career I want to thank Oliver Gaycken. Shelly Brivic read (and remembered!) my drafts with incredible precision and, sharing a love of all things Joyce, sharpened my arguments significantly. Jim English provided invaluable feedback on the completed draft of the project and on my (hitherto) uninspired pizza dough. I thank Jim for his encouragement, generous reading, and model of robust sociology of literature. Paul Saint-Amour was always ready with a Kevin Shields or Paddy McAloon reference when (frequently) necessary. Paul’s seminar on Finnegans Wake challenged and shaped my thinking, making it more comfortable to sound and inhabit unfamiliar spaces. More than that, Paul was a model of generosity and empathy, an unceasing source of well- wrought phrases, and a savior for putting me on a path toward the reconciliation of the musical and intellectual spheres. I thank Paul for positing originality as an ideological construct since my debts to him will—even under the most generous of terms—forever remain unpaid. My committee chair Priya Joshi deserves special thanks for her tireless efforts on my behalf, her clarity of thought and expression, and her unstinting kindness. Priya made me feel at home in a number of other countries. This project would have been vi impossible without Priya’s unparalleled mentorship and I would have slipped right through the ionosphere without her friendship. If radio is ephemeral, the assistance that archivists and librarians leant to this researcher has proven to be anything but. For granting access to and helping me locate archival material, thanks to everyone at the BBC Written Archives Center (especially Eleanor Fleetham and Samantha Blake), the University of Reading, Temple University (especially the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, John Robert Pettit, and the Special Collections Research Center), Columbia University’s Butler Library, La Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the British Library. Michael Groden and Nick Morris were indispensible in my search for information on the reception of Finnegans Wake. I was blessed with a supportive community at Temple, for which I thank the English Department tout court, but especially Larry Venuti, Peter Logan, James Salazar, Eli Goldblatt, Dan O’Hara, Christine Palumbo-De Simone, Steve Newman, and all of my fellow graduate students. To Sara Curnow Wilson, Ted Howell, Jackie Partyka, and Beth Seltzer, an informal but no less helpful “British Studies” group: thank you for the nourishing snacks and comments. Lori Salem, Lorraine Savage, Leslie Allison, and everyone at the Writing Center made work exciting. I finished this dissertation while teaching at The University of Delaware, where I am grateful to Peter Feng, George Miller, and Mark Bowden. For welcoming me so warmly and for providing a second intellectual home, I thank my friends at the University of Pennsylvania, especially Jed Esty, John Tresch, Mara Mills, Jean-Michel Rabaté and the various incarnations of the Modernism and vii Twentieth-Century Studies Group and the Science and Literature Group. A generous mentor, friend, and interlocutor, Mel Micir has been (and continues to be) simply the best. Mel guided me through my entire graduate experience and I can’t thank her enough for her support. The Radio Studies community is as supportive as it is inspiring; for their help and generosity I wish to thank Debra Rae Cohen, Michael Coyle, Damien Keane, Todd Avery, and Allan Hepburn. For reminding me of the pleasures of transnational friendship and for providing housing, food, and empathy, thanks to Guillaume and Katia Lelait in London; Adrien Kanter and Ann Banfield in Paris; and Brian Sullivan, Jeff White, Jen Sperling, Eric Freda, Howard Casper, and the Soslows (Audrey, Jesse, Lacey, and Myron) in Philadelphia. Much appreciation is due, too, to Seymour for keeping my feet warm and my spirits up. I can hear Seymour’s gentle snoring in the background of every page. The Bell family has welcomed me as well, for which I’m most grateful. Little did I know that extended exposure to the mix of National Public Radio and the Beatles offered in my parents’ car would have such lasting influence. For sharing the back seat and championing their difficult brother, I thank my sisters Kerry and Colleen. For their example of lifelong curiosity, unstinting encouragement, and voracious consumption of books, I thank my parents. William Morse deserves extra thanks for checking my references. For her love and support, without which I could not have finished this, I thank my “center of gravity,” Casey Bell: “As long as you’re next to me / Can’t feel both feet on the ground.” viii An earlier version of Chapter 1 appeared in The Journal of Modern Literature 34.3 (2011): 87-105. I thank the editors for their comments and for allowing me to reprint some of that material here. For generous financial support that allowed me to research and write, thanks to the College of Liberal Arts and the Department of English. A Graduate Teaching Fellowship and Graduate Associate Fellowship at the Center for the Humanities at Temple were indispensible to this project and this scholar; warmest thanks go out to everyone at CHAT. ix For Louise Ann Ryan Morse and William Joseph Morse “You pulled me up” x TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………….......v DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………ix CHAPTER

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