Allegories of Native America in the Fiction of James Purdy

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by SHAREOK repository UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE MIXEDBLOOD METAPHORS: ALLEGORIES OF NATIVE AMERICA IN THE FICTION OF JAMES PURDY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By MICHAEL E. SNYDER Norman, Oklahoma 2009 MIXEDBLOOD METAPHORS: ALLEGORIES OF NATIVE AMERICA IN THE FICTION OF JAMES PURDY A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH BY Dr. Timothy Murphy, Chair Dr. Ronald Schleifer Dr. Craig Womack Dr. Rita Keresztesi Dr. Julia Ehrhardt © Copyright by MICHAEL E. SNYDER 2009 All Rights Reserved. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to express my gratitude to the following people, without whom I could not have completed this project at all, or in the same way: Profound thanks go to my wife and family for support, inspiration, suggestions, and proofreading help: Lori Anderson Snyder, Mary Lou Anderson, Ivy K. Snyder, Marianna Brown Snyder, E. Eugene Snyder, Christine Hadley Snyder, Timothy D. Snyder, Marci Shore, Philip B. Snyder, and Mary Moore Snyder, in Ohio, Oklahoma, San Diego, and New Haven. Deep thanks for thoughtful conversation, improvisation, edification, guidance, and ideas go to my Chair and mentor, Timothy S. Murphy. A very special debt of gratitude goes to John Uecker of New York City. Special thanks to Dr. Jorma Sjoblom of Ashtabula, Ohio. Special thanks to Parker Sams, of Findlay, Ohio, and the Sams family; and Dorothy Purdy, David Purdy, and Christine Purdy, of Berea, Ohio. Many thanks for much inspiration and education go to Craig S. Womack, currently at Emory University. Special thanks for encouragement and support above and beyond the call of duty go to Julia Ehrhardt in the Honors College at the University of Oklahoma. Many thanks for guidance, assistance, and help from committee members, staff, and graduate students at the University of Oklahoma: Rita Keresztesi, Ron Schleifer, Alan Velie, Geary Hobson, Vincent Leitch, David Mair, Elyon Wall-Ellis, Amanda Barber, Jack Day, Jen Tucker, Jen Elsner, Dustin Gray, and Steven Sexton. iv Hearty thanks go to the University of Oklahoma College of Arts and Sciences for Robberson travel and research grants, and to the OU English Department for travel funding. Many thanks to the kind and helpful librarians and assistants at Ohio State University Special Collections, Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the University of Delaware Special Collections, Bowling Green State University Center for Archival Collections, the Interlibrary Loan librarians and others at Bizzell Library at the University of Oklahoma, and the librarians at the Johnson Memorial Library in Hicksville, Ohio. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: Introduction and Critical Methodologies 1 CHAPTER TWO: Ways Of Looking at White Blackbirds: The Challenge Of Constructing Red Readings 93 CHAPTER THREE: “‘Original Stock’ in America”: Eustace Chisholm And The Works and Narrow Rooms As Tragic National Allegories 131 CHAPTER FOUR: “The Heart of a Warrior is Beating”: Family Indian Wars 204 CHAPTER FIVE: Natives In New York: I Am Elijah Thrush and Out With The Stars 270 CHAPTER SIX: Indian Fathers, Sons, and Lovers: In The Hollow of His Hand and Moe’s Villa 344 CONCLUSION: The Evolution toward Alliance 418 BIBLIOGRAPHY: 428 APPENDIX: An Envoi for James Purdy 456 vi ABSTRACT “Mixedblood Metaphors” analyzes the Native American aspects of seven novels, one novella, and a few short stories by the U.S. author James Purdy (1914-2009). Purdy’s engagement with indigeneity includes the creation of Native American and mixedblood characters, allusions to Native history and culture, and the use of figurative language. This engagement forms an integral part of Purdy’s historical and racial allegories of America found in these works. I argue that Purdy’s allegories engage troubling aspects of American history, exposing the violence and rapacity of Euro-American colonialism, and serve as a critique of American myths such as Manifest Destiny, “wide open spaces,” and white supremacy. While most non-Native writers neglect to mention Native Americans at all or are only able to imagine them as doomed, vanished, or absent, Purdy regards Natives as central to the formation of a truly American identity. Purdy imagines a new American character potential that blends the best qualities of Europe and aboriginal America and suggests the grim consequences of our failure to meet this potential. Purdy also makes rhetorical links between indigeneity and same-sex desire, alluding to the same-sex and gender diversity traditions of most Native American tribes. Purdy positions himself as a “metaphorical crossblood,” an ethical position that builds upon what I call his “imagined ancestry,” sympathizing with Native perspectives. Although he initially focuses on criticizing Euro-Americans and pointing to Native victimization, with increased knowledge of Native literature and activism, over the course of his career Purdy’s optimism for Native Americans develops and he eventually comes to advocate Native claims, and finally, tribal sovereignty. Thus I argue that Purdy vii is a non-Native writer whose work benefits from a Native Studies approach along with those of American Studies and Queer Theory. Purdy should be regarded as an exploratory figure toward what Jace Weaver, in the critical context of American Indian Literary Nationalism, has called the non-Native critical ally. viii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION AND CRITICAL METHODOLOGIES We who are under the ground, indians & voyagers & wilderness men still breathe the bloom of plants in air and think of the running sun —James Purdy, “The Running Sun” PRELUDE James Purdy (July 17, 1914-March 13, 2009) lived for fifty years in a small apartment in Brooklyn Heights, New York City. In this modest space, with a kitchen, bedroom, and workspace occupying the same room, the late author created almost all of his astounding novels, plays, and poems. I am sad that I was never able to meet James Purdy in person, not least because I came so close. It was my fortune, however, to have had a few good conversations with him on the telephone. James Purdy’s close friend, assistant, and sometime amanuensis John Uecker arranged for me to meet him and I purchased my plane ticket, but Purdy’s health declined quickly following an accident which left him with a broken hip, and I was unable to meet him. Although I was devastated by his loss, I came to feel that there was actually something appropriately Purdian about my having missed meeting him. 1 John Uecker, who has been an actor, acting coach, and theatre producer, 1 was kind enough to allow me to see James’s apartment at 236 Henry Street prior to its contents being removed. After ascending a narrow, winding antique staircase, and upon entering the writer’s apartment, the visitor passes a closet door on the right. It might be easy to miss the small Diné , or Navajo, sandpainting replica of the emblematic figure Bat which rests on the ledge over the closet door. Opening the door, one is struck by a colorful Native American-styled dreamcatcher mounted on the wall to one’s left, just inside the large closet. Walking past the closet into the main apartment area, one spies framed photographs, hats, compact discs, and other personal objects covering what appears to be a Navajo rug laid across an antique dresser. The nature of these objects and their placement in James Purdy’s apartment struck me as being highly significant and symbolic for a few reasons relevant to my project. First, in James Purdy’s creative works, Native American characters and tropes are often subtle or even hidden. They are fairly consistently present in his oeuvre but sometimes placed out of sight of the casual reader, just as these objects might be overlooked by a casual visitor to the apartment. Second, questions of authenticity, appropriation, and appropriateness surround such objects that are, as in the case of the dreamcatcher, simulations, or as in the case of the Navajo sandpainting and rug, removed from Indigenous contexts. Likewise, similar questions are raised by Purdy’s fictional Native American figurative tropes and characters, the latter usually lacking Native communities. The lack of Indigenous communities in Purdy’s works and the tenuousness of some of his characters’ Native ancestry raise the crucial question of whether it is possible to be an 1 John Uecker’s Running Sun Theatre Company was named after a collection of Purdy’s poetry and produced some of Purdy’s dramatic works. 2 Indian without a tribal community. Lastly, the symbolic and cultural connotations of things that are “closeted” or being “in the closet” connects to my exploration of Purdy’s rhetorical linkage of male same-sex desire and indigeneity, and his startling illustrations of the concomitant disastrous effects of denying one’s desires and one’s ethnic heritage, emphasized especially in Eustace Chisholm and the Works (1967) and Narrow Rooms (1978), discussed in chapter three. I describe Purdy’s Navajo sandpainting, which derives from Shiprock, New Mexico, as a “replica” because bona fide Navajo sandpaintings are deliberately ephemeral and not to be viewed by outsiders. They are created only by Singers, or Navajo medicine men, to heal a Navajo person who has lost balance, within a sacred ceremonial context only. The sandpaintings are meant to be destroyed after their use in the healing ceremony. During this healing process, the person who requires healing is actually seated upon the image. Purdy’s small sandpainting resting over the closet is, of course permanent; its sand granules forming Bat are glued to a small piece of particleboard. This practice of making permanent sandpaintings or weavings of their traditional patterns began only well into the Twentieth Century, and these replicas are deliberately incomplete or contain intentional errors, to avoid incurring the harm of violating taboo.

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