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Theory and Interpretation of Narrative James Phelan, Peter J

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Theory and Interpretation of Narrative James Phelan, Peter J THEORY AND INTERPRETATION OF NARRATIVE JAMES PHELAN, PETER J. RABINOWITZ, AND ROBYN WARHOL, SERIES EDITORS FOR VANESSA, MAX, AND MILLY THE RETURN OF THE OMNISCIENT NARRATOR Authorship and Authority in Twenty-First Century Fiction PAUL DAWSON THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS COLUMBUS Copyright © 2013 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dawson, Paul, 1972– The return of the omniscient narrator authorship and authority in twenty-first century fiction / Paul Dawson. pages cm—(Theory and interpretation of narrative) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-1233-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0–8142– 1233–6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Fiction—Technique. 2. Omniscience (Theory of knowledge) in literature. 3. Narration (Rhetoric) I. Title. II. Series: Theory and interpretation of narrative series. PN3355.D246 2013 808.3—dc23 2013031509 Cover design by AuthorSupport.com Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Sabon Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Introduction The Return of Omniscience in Contemporary Fiction 1 CHaptER 1 Omniscience and Narrative Authority 25 CHaptER 2 The Direct Address and the Ironic Moralist 62 CHaptER 3 Prolepsis and the Literary Historian 88 CHaptER 4 Style and the Pyrotechnic Storyteller 111 CHaptER 5 Polymathic Knowledge, the Immersion Journalist, and the Social Commentator 136 CHaptER 6 Voice and Free Indirect Discourse in Contemporary Omniscient Narration 166 CHaptER 7 Paralepsis and Omniscient Character Narration 195 CHaptER 8 Real Authors and Real Readers: A Discursive Approach to the Narrative Communication Model 222 Conclusion 247 Notes 251 Works Cited 255 Index 267 AcKNOWLEDGMENTS THIS BOOK would not have been written without the support of my wife, Vanessa Dawson. From her unwavering encouragement and belief in my capacity to tackle a new field, to expert grant-writing advice, to patient sighs and glazed eyes at the mention of words such as paralepsis, she has sustained me. My research has benefited enormously from generous financial support in the form of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant, plus an Early Career Researcher Grant and a Faculty Research Grant from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales. Jim Phelan and Peter Rabinowitz have made this a better book with their comprehensive, challenging, and insightful comments. I am grateful for their enthusiasm, and for that of the external reader. I thank Sandy Crooms, too, for her warmth and help with the process of submission and publication. Much of this book was written during my time as a Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. I extend my warmest thanks to Dorothy Hale, who acted as my faculty host during this period. My discussions with Dori about the novel and vii viii • AcKNOWLEDGMENTS narrative theory have each and every time been exceptionally rewarding. I have also gained much from talking with Namwali Serpell and Kent Puck- ett. I must thank Mary Mellin, who facilitated the administrative side of my time at the University of California, Berkeley, and Joanna Picciotto, who generously allowed me to use her office during my stay. I extend my gratitude to many of my colleagues in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales. Julian Murphet and George Kouvaros both provided me with excellent mentorship dur- ing this book’s early life as a research grant proposal. John Attridge, Chris Danta, Helen Groth, Roslyn Jolly, Stephen Muecke, Sean Pryor, and Louise Ravelli have all helped me clarify my thoughts. Lee William- son was instrumental in helping me secure a grant to write this book. I must especially thank my two excellent research assistants, Lynda Ng and Grace Hellyer, who did so much grunt work on my behalf and provided sounding boards for ideas. Many of the claims in this book have been tested at annual confer- ences for the International Society for the Study of Narrative since 2008. The feedback from delegates at these conferences has been very helpful in shaping my argument. In particular I would like to thank the following Narrative Conference regulars who have discussed ideas or shown inter- est in my work: Porter Abbot, Frederick Aldama, Sarah Copland, Susan Lanser, Christine McBride, Brian McHale, Henrik Nielsen, Gerald Prince, Brian Richardson, Richard Walsh, and Robyn Warhol. Last, I want to acknowledge my wonderful whiskey-drinking friends in narrative, none of whom actually helped write this book: Matt Bolton, Lizzie Nixon, and, particularly, Emily Anderson, who is always there to help prop up the bar. Early versions of my argument have appeared in: “Historicizing ‘Craft’ in the Teaching of Fiction,” New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing 5.3 (2008); and “The Return of Omniscience in Contemporary Fiction,” Narrative 17.2 (2009). A ver- sion of chapter 8 appears as “Real Authors and Real Readers: Omniscient Narration and a Discursive Approach to the Narrative Communication Model,” Journal of Narrative Theory 42.1 (2012). INTRODUCTION The Return of Omniscience in Contemporary Fiction “What happened to the omniscient author?” Gone interactive. —Jeanette Winterson, The Powerbook 27 (2001) In the first year of the new millennium Helen published a novel which one reviewer described as “so old-fashioned in form as to be almost experimental.” It was written in the third person, past tense, with an omniscient and sometimes intrusive narrator. —David Lodge, Thinks 340 (2002) THIS QUOTE from the last paragraph of David Lodge’s novel Thinks cap- tures with ironic pithiness the central premise of this book and the para- dox it seeks to investigate. Despite long being considered a relic of the nineteenth-century novel, the ostensibly outmoded figure of the omniscient narrator has become a salient feature of contemporary British and Ameri- can literary fiction. From the 1990s, and particularly since the turn of the millennium, a number of important and popular novelists have produced books which exhibit all the formal elements we typically associate with literary omniscience: an all-knowing authorial narrator who addresses the reader directly, offers intrusive commentary on the events being narrated, ranges freely across space and time, provides access to the consciousness of characters, and generally asserts a palpable presence within the fictional world. 1 2 • INTRODUCTION These authors range from relatively new writers such as Zadie Smith, Adam Thirlwell and Nicola Barker, to established literary figures such as Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace and Rick Moody, to liter- ary icons such as Tom Wolfe, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, and Don DeLillo. They include writers who have won or been shortlisted for two of the most significant literary prizes in the Anglo-American world, the Booker and the Pulitzer, such as David Lodge, A. S. Byatt, Gail Jones, and Edward P. Jones. Many of these writers have received sustained scholarly attention for their significance to postmodern and postcolonial fiction, and have generated much debate about the contemporary novel through their nonfiction writing, notably Wolfe, Wallace, and Franzen. Despite the critical scrutiny these writers have received, their collective contribution to the development of new modes of omniscient narration in contemporary fiction has yet to be recognized. Indeed, criticism today still seems to be in thrall to an historical narrative about the anachronicity of omniscience fostered by modernism. For instance, Timothy Aubry opens a 2008 article on the “politics of interiority” in middlebrow fiction with this claim: Although occasionally called upon to perform certain emeritus functions, the omniscient narrator has retired decisively from the scene of contem- porary United States fiction. In the place of this appealingly wise but problematic figure emerges an array of speakers no less ignorant, preju- diced, and confused than the reader. A modernist innovation origi- nally, the refusal of omniscience has become a fixed principle, especially within what is frequently referred to as middlebrow fiction. (85) Aubry’s characterization of an omniscient narrator as “appealingly wise” betrays the continued association of this narrative voice with canon- ical works of nineteenth-century fiction, and hence an unwillingness to consider how formal conventions of omniscience may have been adapted to a different historical context, invoking a different figure of authorship. One reason for the critical neglect of contemporary omniscience is that surveys of the novel today—unlike, say, Joseph Warren Beach’s The Twen- tieth Century Novel (1932)—tend to concern themselves less with formal developments than with interpretative criticism in relation to broader the- ories of nationalism, history, gender, postmodernism, and postcolonial- ism. Excursions into literary form are rare, and may be summed up by Brian Finney’s claim in his 2006 book, English Fiction Since 1984: Nar- rating a Nation, that what unites British novelists of the last two decades THE RETURN OF OMNISCIENCE IN CONTEMPORARY FICTION • 3 is a belief that “an omniscient narrator is an anachronism” (12). Even avowedly formalist
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