Archival Vagabonds: 20Th-Century American Fiction and the Archive in Novelistic Practice Jean-Christophe Cloutier Submitted in P
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Archival Vagabonds: 20th-Century American Fiction and the Archive in Novelistic Practice Jean-Christophe Cloutier Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 © 2013 Jean-Christophe Cloutier All rights reserved ABSTRACT Archival Vagabonds: 20th-Century American Fiction and the Archive in Novelistic Practice Jean-Christophe Cloutier My research explores the interplay between the archival and aesthetic sensibilities of novelists not typically associated with archival practices—Claude McKay, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Jack Kerouac. In juxtaposing their dual roles as public novelists and private archivists, I expose how their literary practices echo with core concepts in archival theory and position the novel as an alternative and superior site of historical preservation. Drawing on my experience as an archivist, I argue that the twentieth-century American novel’s concern with inclusivity, preservation and posterity parallels archival science’s changing approach to ephemera, arrangement, and diversity. The role of the archive in my work is both methodological and thematic: first, my own research incorporates these authors’ cache of research materials, correspondence, drafts, diaries, and aborted or unpublished pieces, obtained during my visits to their various repositories. Second, I extricate the role of the archival in their fictions, and trace how their research, documentation, and classification practices inform their experiments with the novel form. I propose that all these vagabond masters of novelistic craft throw into relief the archive’s positivist fallibility while also stressing its creative mutability. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations ii-iii Acknowledgements iv-vi Dedication vii Epigraphs viii PREAMBLE—The Hotel Spirit 1 INTRODUCTION— Processing America’s Backlog 32 CHAPTER ONE—“Building Up the Lij”: The Case of Claude McKay’s Last Novel 57 CHAPTER TWO—“Something New in Photo-Journalism”: Richard Wright, Ralph 120 Ellison, and the Shift from Documentary to Archival CHAPTER THREE—“Too Obscure for Learned Classification”: Comic Books, 190 Counterculture, and Archival Invisibility in Invisible Man CHAPTER FOUR—L’Archive est d’Hommage: The Spontaneous, Skeletonized 245 Oeuvre of Jack Kerouac CODA—Bridging Two Worlds: Claude McKay, Samuel Roth, and The Discovery 330 of Amiable with Big Teeth BIBLIOGRAPHY 342 APPENDIX I—CHART: Kerouac’s Lovers/Sexual Encounters from 1939 to 1963 356 i List of Illustrations 1.1 Negro Writers Guild, 25 May 1937, Claude McKay Collection. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. 2.1 Back cover, ’48 Magazine of the Year, June 1948. 2.2 Ralph Ellison with camera and tripod on Columbia University campus, undated. Box 3, Folder “Contact Sheets,” Ralph Ellison Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington. 2.3 Nurse with patient. Cover page for Richard Wright’s “Psychiatry Comes to Harlem,” FREE WORLD (September, 1946). Photograph by Richard Saunders. 2.4 Patient with Dr. André Tweed and Patient standing outside the Parish House, from “Psychiatry Comes to Harlem,” FREE WORLD (September, 1946). Photographs by Richard Saunders. 2.5 Reckmeir & Schunemann 3-color “one-shot” camera model. 2.6 Gordon Parks during the “Harlem is Nowhere” photo sessions, 1948. Photo by Ralph Ellison, Box 3, Folder “Contact Sheets,” Ralph Ellison Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington. 2.7 Man with baby, photograph by Roy DeCarava. Ralph Ellison, “Harlem is Nowhere,” Harper’s (August 1964). 2.8 Man with baby, photograph by Roy DeCarava. Langston Hughes and Roy DeCarava, The Sweet Flypaper of Life (New York: Hill and Wang, 1955). 2.9 Untitled, “Religious Articles” Photo by Ralph Ellison, Box 3, Folder “Contact Sheets,” Ralph Ellison Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington. 2.10 Untitled, “Dream Books, love powders, etc.” Photo by Ralph Ellison, Box 3, Folder “Contact Sheets,” Ralph Ellison Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington. 3.1 Cover of brochure for the Lafargue Clinic. Box 4, folder 18, Lafargue Clinic Records. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. 3.2 “Superman of the Radio,” HEADLINES AND PICTURES: A Monthly Negro News Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 1, July 1946, page 37. 3.3 Section of first page of Judith Crist, “Horror in the Nursery.” Collier’s 27 March 1948, page 22. ii 3.4 “Leader of New York Saxons.” Photograph by Tony Linck. “Juvenile Delinquency: War’s Insecurity Lifts Youthful Crime 100%,” Life magazine (April 8, 1946). 3.5 “Trains his body to perfection.” Panel from “The Legend of the Batman—Who he is and how he came to be!” Detective Comics 33 © 1939 DC Comics. All rights reserved. 4.1 “Hot Chocolate Delicious,” from page 17 of Jack Kerouac’s Visions of Cody 4.2 “ABSTRACT DRAWING,” from page 337 of Jack Kerouac’s Visions of Cody 4.3 “REPULSION ARRIVES for BIG ‘CAP” from page 90 of Jack Kerouac’s Doctor Sax 4.4 Bilingual Columns, from pages 362-363 of Jack Kerouac’s Visions of Cody C.1 Photograph of Samuel Roth by John Gruen iii Acknowledgements The germs of this dissertation were implanted without my knowledge, as I inhaled the dust particles that gather on stack 15, even while I set my sights on other projects. I would not have survived phase 3 of the archival infection had it not been for my committee, the dedicated librarians and archivists I met, and the support of colleagues, friends and family. My advisor, Brent Edwards, has been a force and source of power throughout my stay at Columbia. He consistently pushed me into better ways of thinking and researching, and came to embody a happy challenge that propelled me to work harder. Our collaboration on the Amiable project has been an invaluable learning experience in addition to being one hell of a ride. Without the advice and friendship of Maura Spiegel, not only would I not have completed this dissertation, but I would not have made it through my first year at Columbia. Maura’s humanity, her kindness, and her narrative insights continue to give me strength and hope. Bob O’Meally provided new sparks of inspiration with every conversation, opening avenues I had not conceived in my solitude. I was fortunate to receive great support from many other faculty members during my tenure at Columbia, notably, Katherine Biers, Sarah Cole, Ann Douglas, Philip Kitcher, Edward Mendelson, Ross Posnock and all those who helped along the way. Special shout out to Casey Blake a.k.a. “Dr. Strange” for all his support, feedback, and camaraderie, and to Andrew Delbanco and the American Studies Center for welcoming me into the fold. My work would not have been the same without the assistance and generosity of the curators, archivists, and librarians I’ve had the pleasure of working with and meeting: they include, Michael Ryan, whose support was vital, Alix Ross, Carrie Hintz, Karla Nielsen, Jane Siegel, Diana Lachatenere, Isaac Gewirtz, Maricia Battle, Alice L. Birney, Patrick Kerwin, iv Michael Forstrom, and Nick Chen. This extends to all the archivists that helped me either in person or virtually at the Berg, the Schomburg, the Beinecke, the Library of Congress, the Amistad Research Center, the Houghton Library, Worcester Public Library, and of course everyone in the “Pink Palace,” Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Columbia’s secret comics society, Karen Green, Paul Levitz, and Jeremy Dauber, were amazing resources and generous with their time. Many thanks as well to the superhero team of administrators who were instrumental in getting all my paperwork settled, including those life-saving reimbursements and payroll forms: Angela Darling, Joy Hayton, Pam Rodman, Virginia Kay, Valencia Ortiz. I’d like to acknowledge those institutions and departments that provided financial support through scholarships, fellowships, and awards: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Mellon Foundation, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts & Science, the American Studies Center at Columbia, and the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia. I am grateful to friends and colleagues at Columbia, including Nat Allard, John Hay, Jang-Wook Huh, Irvin Hunt, Vesna Kuiken, Ivan Lupic, Imani Owens, Hiie Saumaa, Jessica Teague, Lindsay Van Tine, Autumn Womack, and many others. Special thanks to Aaron Winslow, friend, writer, fellow-archivist, mugwump, and gentlemen-scholar who read sections, shared ideas, and provided multifaceted inspiration and lateral thinking over countless encounters bien arrosées all over New York. For many conversations over lunch and dinners, thanks to Jay Gertzman, the “Larry David” of academe and Roth-scholar extraordinaire. From my stay at SUNY Buffalo, I am grateful to Damien Keane for his encouragement and for that wonderful independent study on Ralph Ellison that crystallized so much for me at a crucial time. My time at Buffalo would not have been the same without the friendship of the brilliant poet Alessandro Porco and all those evenings at Faherty’s discussing hip hop, Iron Man, hockey, and many other fine things. Un grand merci to my old friends for keeping me sane and relieving the v burden of graduate study: Daniel Brisebois, Dimitri Gagnon-Morris, Michel Houde, Marc Laflamme, Mathieu Lanthier, Michel Moreau, Jason Philips, Sylvain POITRAS!, Érik Renaud. I still can’t believe that, by the time I completed this Beast, most of you have become fathers. À ma famille, Estelle St-Pierre, Jean-François Cloutier, Marieke Cloutier, François Miller et les petits, Félix, Floryane, et Évelyne, je vous remercie de tout mon cœur. C’est de cet arbre ancestral dont j’ai puisé la force et la passion qui m’ont permis de compléter cette aventure de fou. Quand je doutais de mes habiletés ou de mes chances, quand j’étais dans le besoin, vous étiez toujours là, ainsi que la devise de notre cher Elvis Gratton : “Think Big, s’tie.” Truly, however, it must be said that the lion’s share of remerciements goes to Beth Blum, shining star of my days, hope of my soul, grand amour de ma p’tite vie.