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Literature Against Criticism University English and Contemporary Fiction in Confl Ict MARTIN PAUL EVE Literature Against Criticism University English and Contemporary Fiction in Confl ict LITERATURE AGAINST CRITICISM Literature Against Criticism University English and Contemporary Fiction in Conflict Martin Paul Eve https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2016 Martin Paul Eve This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that he endorses you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Martin Paul Eve, Literature Against Criticism: University English and Contemporary Fiction in Conflict. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0102 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https:// www.openbookpublishers.com/isbn/9781783742738#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active on 3/10/2016 unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://www.openbookpublishers.com/isbn/9781783742738#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. Birkbeck, University of London, has generously contributed towards the publication of this volume. ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-273-8 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-274-5 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-275-2 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-276-9 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-277-6 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0102 Cover image: CCAC (The Community College of Allegheny County North Library), ‘Red, white, and blue books’ (2014), Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ccacnorth lib/14547337031, CC BY-SA 2.0 license. All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) and Forest Stewardship Council(r)(FSC(r) certified. Printed in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers (Cambridge, UK) For Siân, Joe, and Caroline Contents About the Author 1 Style 2 Acknowledgements 5 Part I: Introduction 9 1. Authors, Institutions, and Markets 11 2. What, Where? 43 Part II: Critique 55 3. Aesthetic Critique 57 4. Political Critique 87 Part III: Legitimation 113 5. Sincerity and Truth 115 6. Labour and Theory 135 Part IV: Discipline 157 7. Genre and Class 159 8. Discipline and Publish 185 Part V: The End 205 9. Conclusion 207 Bibliography 209 Index 227 About the Author Professor Martin Paul Eve is Chair of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the author of three other books, Pynchon and Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Foucault and Adorno (Palgrave, 2014); Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future (Cambridge University Press, 2014); and Password (a cultural history of the password) (Bloomsbury, 2016). Martin is also well known for his work on open access publishing and especially as a founder of the Open Library of Humanities. Style In this work, double quotation marks are used to signify direct quotation of text and speech while single quotation marks indicate terms that merit scepticism or are not the author’s own; scare-quotes. Theory is written with a capital ‘T’ throughout when it refers to literary or poststructuralist schools. Names of people and works that appear in the main text also appear in the index, those in the footnotes do not. She will be distracted by the plot into which I shall draw her [...] putting on the things she sees the constructions she expects to find. — Sarah Waters, Fingersmith We too must write interpretative essays on the work of others more intelligent and gifted than we will ever be. We too must do our best to offer support and solace to others despite the fact that we will always misunderstand their genius, and only bother them with our enthusiasm. — Lars Iyer, Spurious Acknowledgements This book began life in early 2012 and was meant to be my second book. It is, instead, co-genetic with two of my other books: Pynchon and Philosophy and Open Access and the Humanities. The former of these books sparked my interest in mutations in metafiction in contemporary fiction, an aspect that was borne out over Pynchon’s extensive career as a writer. Reflecting this, earlier drafts of this book were called Metafiction After the Millennium and The Anxiety of Academia, the latter referring to Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence. At the same time, in part due to the history of radical politics at the University of Sussex (under constant repressive threat from the administration) where I undertook my PhD, I became interested in the ways in which the public good of the university might be salvaged, even if that was through the instruments of mass technocracy; an aspect that I believe to be furthered by the general, free availability of research material on the internet — open access. These two interests converge in this study of self-aware fiction that plays with the university. I found this book difficult to write and it went through many different drafts until I discovered what I needed to say. My thanks, therefore, must go to everyone who helped me with those other two works and, therefore, in turn, with this. Three colleagues and friends in particular, though, have been key to this book (in alphabetical order): Siân Adiseshiah, Joe Brooker, and Caroline Edwards. In various ways both direct and indirect I have profited from their wit, wisdom, and kindnesses throughout the process of writing this work and in life more broadly, whether they know it or not. We certainly don’t always agree on everything (we probably don’t even now, Joe) but in the productive spaces of our discussions, I have 6 Literature Against Criticism found great pleasure and greater understandings that have found their way into this work. This book is dedicated to you. For the stronger parts of the book are due to you. The weaker, to me. For his erudition and stimulating conversations, I also thank Jake Wilson. It was he who introduced me to the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, which opens this book. Likewise, I thank Adeline Koh for a stimulating conversation in NYC in early 2015. It is thanks to her that I remembered On Beauty and kicked myself for ever neglecting it. David Winters introduced me to the work of Lars Iyer, from whom I draw an epigraph, and I have profited from many hours of stimulating conversation with him about fiction after Theory. Thanks must also go to Siobhan Garrigan, who first led me to consider the diary objects in Affinity as impossible, while Peter Fifield and Ted Underwood gave invaluable feedback upon my thoughts about digital reading practices. As ever, I thank Ruth Charnock for reading a draft of this work and suggesting improvements (although the remaining faults are all mine). I also thank Penny Andrews for the cover suggestion and Heidi Coburn for its realisation. At Birkbeck, University of London I would particularly like to thank Robert Atkinson, who helped enormously with budgeting and the book publishing charge. At Open Book Publishers I would like to thank Alessandra Tosi, Rupert Gatti, and William St Clair for their ongoing efforts to ensure that the broadest number of people have access to university research material in the humanities. Some parts of this work have appeared previously (or are forthcoming) in different article or edited-collection/book chapter form, or are derived from my thinking in other publications. Chapter Three, on Tom McCarthy’s C, is partially derived from a different draft of my chapter in Tom McCarthy: Critical Essays (Gylphi, 2016), edited by Dennis Duncan (to whom I extend my many thanks for his patient editorial feedback). Chapter Four, on Roberto Bolaño, was originally published open access in Textual Practice 29.7 (2015). Part of Chapter Five is under submission to the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Contemporary Fiction, edited by Robert Eaglestone. A small part of Chapter Six grew from my article, ‘“Too Many Goddamn Echoes”: Historicizing the Iraq War in Don DeLillo’s Point Omega’, Journal of American Studies 49.3 (2015). Parts of Chapter Six appeared open access as ‘“Structural Dissatisfaction”: Academics on Safari in the Novels of Jennifer Egan’ Acknowledgements 7 in the Open Library of Humanities, 1.1 (2015). Chapter Seven, on Sarah Waters, was originally published open access as ‘“You Will See the Logic of the Design of This”: From Historiography to Taxonomography in the Contemporary Metafiction of Sarah Waters’s Affinity’ in Neo-Victorian Studies, 6.1 (2013). Last but not least, and as always, I thank my wife, Helen; my dearest friend and more. PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Authors, Institutions, and Markets For those working in university English departments in the early twenty-first century, these words will probably sound all too familiar: “[t]his man possesses great eloquence. See that he is denied justice for some time and arrange for all his grandiose speeches to be recorded”. Yet, despite the plausibility of the scenario, this passage is not a sadistic diktat issued from a university administrator to an unsuspecting humanities underling, perhaps enforcing lecture capture or a similar contemporary technology. It comes instead, in rough translation, from a Ninth- or Tenth- Dynasty Ancient Egyptian story called the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant.
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