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Jason Markell, 2016 All Rights Reserved AN ABSTRACT This dissertation identifies and analyzes the politics of three postmodern authors (Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo) by focusing mainly on their novels that are set during the Cold War. I argue that these authors’ writings, which are often read as apolitical or as cultural critiques, engage with historical and political Cold War issues, like totalitarianism, liberal anticommunism, the threat of nuclear apocalypse, and the expanded role of government agencies. Moreover, I show that although these authors cover similar political topics and often work in similar genres, like the spy thriller, their political orientations vary. What unites their disparate political views is that all three authors endorse individual liberty during the Cold War, and all provide narratives in which their protagonists withdraw from society. The overall implication, then, is that the individual can no longer affect political outcomes in an age of extreme ideologies, overwhelming technology, and seemingly all- powerful governmental agencies. My first chapter examines the politics of Vladimir Nabokov, and by using theorists, like Dominick LaCapra and Cathy Caruth, I argue that Nabokov’s postmodern novels (Bend Sinister, Pnin, and Pale Fire) explore the impact of trauma and reveal the author to be a staunch liberal anticommunist. My second chapter deals with the politics of Thomas Pynchon, and by employing theorists like Fredric Jameson, Michel de Certeau, and Michel Foucault, I argue that Pynchon’s anarchistic leanings in V. and The Crying of Lot 49 give way to a clearer anarchist outlook in “A Journey into the Mind of Watts”—that is, until Gravity’s Rainbow reflects his political despair. My third chapter examines Don DeLillo’s early novels (Americana, End Zone, Players, Running Dog) as well as his more ambitious historical works (The Names, Libra, Mao II, and Underworld), and by using theorists like Linda Hutcheon, Foucault, and Guy Debord, I argue that DeLillo’s politics reflect a type of left-leaning libertarianism. Ultimately, this dissertation serves as a corrective not only to these authors’ statements about the supposed apolitical nature of their work, but it also identifies their political philosophies, which are placed within the larger historical context of the Cold War. ©Copyright by Jason Markell, 2016 All Rights Reserved Acknowledgements I would like to thank all of the people who assisted me while I was working on this dissertation project. First of all, I would to express my appreciation to my dissertation committee, including my adviser Professor Joel Dinerstein, as well as my committee members, Professor Molly Travis and Professor Supriya Nair, who offered warm support and valuable assistance. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents, Richard and Marilyn Markell, for their concerns and financial support, and I would like to express my profound gratitude to my wife, Aleksandra Hajduczek, who helped me throughout this process with her encouragement, her patience, and her thoughts. I will always be indebted to her and her willingness to not only serve as a soundboard to my ideas but also to act as a first reader to my numerous drafts. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . ii INTRODUCTION . 1 CHAPTER ONE: The Nabokovs and the Cold War: Anticommunist Politics in Bend Sinister, Pnin, and Pale Fire . 18 CHAPTER TWO: “Courting Chaos”: Thomas Pynchon’s Anarchist Politics and the Cold War . 93 CHAPTER THREE: Loners and Lunatics: Don DeLillo’s Libertarian Politics and the Cold War . 169 EPILOGUE . 264 ENDNOTES . 273 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 299 iii 1 Introduction This dissertation is about the politics of three American post-WWII novelists, and it examines them in regards to postmodernism and the Cold War. While most of us possess a general idea of what these broad terms include, like radical skepticism and proxy wars around the globe, there has never been a clear point of origin for either the cultural field or the historical period nor is there a general consensus about when exactly they ended. Still, in my estimation, both periods were roughly coterminous, encompassing the span between the end of WWII and the start of globalization, and this is a fairly conventional view. By comparison, in his essay “What Was Postmodernism? The Arts in and after the Cold War” (1995), the English scholar and novelist Malcolm Bradbury maintains that the two were strongly interconnected, whereas the postmodern theorist Brian McHale posits that “future cultural historians” will likely “identify late twentieth-century culture as ‘postmodern’”—that is, if they do not refer to it first as “‘Cold War culture’” (Cambridge 1). However, such an equation would be too broad, as not every postmodern text is indicative of the Cold War nor is every Cold War artifact an example of postmodernism. The two are not interchangeable, but they do overlap, although this common ground is primarily seen in postmodern historical novels written by British and American authors.1 As a consequence, one of my initial aims is to demonstrate how this historical period influenced or shaped the political views of American authors, like Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. Moreover, this study will prove that the Cold War 2 plays a crucial role in these authors’ postmodern novels, and my hope is to refute finally the old canard that postmodern works are simply metafictional and thus lack any interest in politics or history. As a matter of fact, the range of novels I examine, from Nabokov’s Bend Sinister (1947) to DeLillo’s Underworld (1997), practically reflects the near fifty- year duration of this conflict.2 To clarify, though, I locate the Cold War as officially ending in 1991, with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and unofficially commencing in 1945, when the tensions between the Allies emerged and increased following Yalta.3 This was the year, after all, when the battle over Western democracy and Soviet communism came into immediate focus, as Stalin reneged on his promise of “free elections” in Eastern Europe, and this was the year that nuclear weapons set the parameters for future hostilities, when Truman revealed the U.S.’s possession of the atomic bomb at Potsdam. Aside from these geopolitical events, the term “cold war” first appeared in print in 1945, and its author, George Orwell, would write one of the central texts of this period.4 Actually, although Nabokov’s dystopian novel Bend Sinister preceded Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Orwell’s vision of the likely political conditions in the Cold War era has proven to be both emblematic and influential, especially to later American postmodern writers. E.L. Doctorow and Pynchon, for example, have both written essays on it, and there are numerous references to the novel in DeLillo’s Libra, and what appears to have struck them all is Orwell’s concept that the primary conflict during the Cold War will not be one among nations. Instead, in contrast to a modern political novel, which pits the proletariat against a factory owner or an intellectual versus the bourgeoisie, Orwell’s work focuses on the power of the state, “of governments against individuals” 3 (Doctorow 60). To be specific, Orwell’s emphasis on “totalitarianism,” surveillance and the secret police, as well as the state’s control “of history and language,” has set the template for many postmodern Cold War novels, which often transplant his social vision into less fanciful genres (Doctorow 60). More importantly, like Orwell’s work, these novels express a sense of “individual helplessness,” a predicament that for some postmodern authors, like Pynchon, conveys the experience of life during the Cold War (Doctorow 60). And yet, two major historical factors that contributed to this outlook are subjects that Orwell’s novel avoids. After all, numerous authors writing after WWII were not just concerned about the encroaching power of the state; they were also preoccupied with the threat of nuclear holocaust as well as what occurred during the Holocaust. William Faulkner, in his 1950 Nobel prize speech, wondered how authors would address the looming nuclear conflict, and Norman Mailer, in his essay “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster” (1958), speculated about “the psychic havoc” produced by “the concentration camps and the atom bomb” (209). For Mailer, these recent horrors in Western civilization led to existential and artistic crises that coalesced to form a new consciousness, one that feared that life and death would be “causeless,” that time would be “deprived of cause and effect,” and that individual “courage,” if not individuality, would be lost (209). In other words, without meaning to, Mailer provides an early description of postmodernism, which he sees as stemming from traumatic events that occurred or became known in 1945, the year that signaled the start of the Cold War. Given that multiple events gave rise to postmodernism and its historical framework, so too will multiple theories about postmodernism serve as the basis for how 4 I read the aforementioned authors’ politics and their Cold War texts. One theory that buttresses my argument is Jean-François Lyotard’s ideas about the death of grand narratives, which helps to explain these authors’ incredulity towards sweeping beliefs regarding the power of art, the ends of history, and the authority of science. Indeed, all of the postmodern novels I examine express a widespread disbelief in Enlightenment rationality as well as liberal notions about progress. For example, after witnessing the October Revolution, Nabokov doubted that reason—and especially “scientific socialism” —led to a better world. Additionally, after learning about the Holocaust, which claimed his brother, he lost his modernist faith in the efficacy of art, which his postmodern novels demonstrate. Similarly, in a manner that echoes Nabokov’s, Pynchon’s novels also reject deterministic theories, like Marxism, although Pynchon mainly indicts the overreach that comes from our fascination with technology as well as the rationalizing impulse that Weber identifies with bureaucracy.
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