A Genre for Our Times: the Menippean Satires Of
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
A GENRE FOR OUR TIMES: THE MENIPPEAN SATIRES OF RUSSELL HOBAN AND MURAKAMI HARUKI by Susan Rosa Fisher BA. The University of British Columbia, 1970 M.A. The University of British Columbia, 1993 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (The Programme in Comparative Literature) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA May 1997 © Susan Rosa Fisher, 1997 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of Co^paA^fvX-e \X\^A^)v^^ The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date DE-6 (2/88) Abstract The thesis examines the novels of Anglo-American author Russell Hoban (1923-) and Japanese author Murakami Haruki tt±*k (1949-) as Menippean satires. The Introduction defines the Menippean satire and considers possible sources for this genre as found in the works of Hoban and Murakami. Parts I and II examine several novels by Hoban and by Murakami respectively, demonstrating how their works conform to the conventions of the Menippean satire. In examining Murakami's fiction, Part II also considers possible antecedents in Japanese literature for tropes and topoi that appear Menippean in the light of Western genre theory; there is a special emphasis on Murakami's most recent work, Nejimakidori kuronikuru (1994-6, The Wind-up Bird Chronicles). The Conclusion examines why these two authors write Menippean satires. No claim is made that either author has chosen this genre in deliberate imitation of classical or Renaissance models. Rather, from the standpoint of cultural history, the thesis argues that the Menippean satire—or at least a form of postmodernist novel with notable affinities to the Menippean satire—has re-emerged as a genre for our times. Drawing on examples from the fiction of Murakami and Hoban, the conclusion demonstrates that central features of this genre—fantasy, crudity, philosophical dialogues, inserted genres, invented languages, and the descent into hell—are particularly appropriate for the fictional treatment of life in a postmodern world. Moreover, these features are serviceable not only in a Western context. Murakami Haruki, despite his Japanese cultural background and his avowed intention to write about Japan, relies on many of the same generic strategies as does Russell Hoban. Ill Contents Abstract ii Table of Contents iii Acknowledgements iv INTRODUCTION The Menippean Satire 1 PART I Persistence of Vision: The Fiction of Russell Hoban Introduction 24 Chapter 1. The Mouse and His Child: The Quest for 26 Autonomy Chapter 2. The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz: "A Lion Hallucinates Me" 35 Chapter 3. Kleinzeit: Finding a Voice 49 Chapter 4. Riddley Walker. Remembering the Future 65 Chapter 5. Pilgermann: The Pattern That Connects 102 Chapter 6. The Medusa Frequency: Classic Comics 125 Chapter 7: Turtle Diary and Fremder 143 PART II Worlds of Darkness: The Fiction of Murakami Haruki Introduction 157 Chapter 8. "Boku" 161 Chapter 9. Many Voices, Many Languages 192 Chapter 10. Parodies of Popular Fiction 199 Chapter 11. Other Worlds 222 Chapter 12. The Wind-up Bird Chronicles 237 CONCLUSION 274 WORKS CITED 288 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the members of my supervisory committee, Dr. Kinya Tsuruta, Dr. Graham Good, and Dr. Patricia Merivale for their kind support during the preparation of this thesis. I am especially grateful to my supervisor, Dr. Merivale, for her kindness and encouragement. I would also like to thank my husband, Gordon Fisher, and my son, Nicholas, for their patience over the past four years. 1 Introduction When we see a resemblance between the faces of a parent and child, the recognition of similarity comes all at once, as a kind of gestalt. So too, I think, with the perception of literary resemblance: first we have an all-at-once perception of familiarity, a non-specific sense that in reading Writer A we are somehow looking at the face of Writer B. But what exactly gives us this feeling? In the case of Russell Hoban and Murakami Haruki, a salient point of similarity is the literary use of animals, in the form both of animal imagery and of talking animals. But this point of contact, while striking, is not in itself sufficient to account for the perception that the works of these two authors are similar. They also share several other features — notably a mingling of the modes of popular fiction (such as science fiction and the detective novel) with the tropes of classical mythology (especially the myth of Orpheus and his descent to the Underworld). But accumulating a list of similarities (which could be matched by an equally long list of differences) does not help us to explain why these resemblances exist or how they came to be. There is certainly no argument to be made for influence. Murakami Haruki is fond of pointing out his indebtedness to and admiration of Western authors. He names Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, and Truman Capote as his three favourite writers (Haiho! 123); he has translated into Japanese works by Raymond Carver, Ursula Le Guin, John Irving, and Tim O'Brien. But nowhere does he give any indication of having read the novels of Russell Hoban. For his part, Hoban was writing in his characteristic mode long before any fiction by Murakami was available in English translation. What accounts for the resemblances between the works of Hoban and those of Murakami is, I believe, not influence, but the fact that both write in the same genre— namely, the Menippean satire. It is the Menippean satire, with its particular qualities, topoi, and narrative strategies that colours their novels and gives them a similar texture. 2 Menippean Satire The Menippean satire was an obscure generic term until the work first of Northrop Frye (in his Anatomy of Criticism in 1957) and then Mikhail Bakhtin (Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, published in the West in 1973) brought it once more to scholarly attention.1 Certainly works in this genre were well-known: Frye, for example, mentions Gulliver's Travels, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and the Alice books as examples of Menippean satire. But they were not recognized as Menippean satires until Frye and Bakhtin suggested it as the appropriate genre. This discovery of their true generic identity was not, like M. Jourdain's discovery that he had been speaking prose, a fatuous shift in terminology. Rather, Frye and Bakhtin's resurrection of this generic term, along with their elucidation of its characteristics, helped readers to understand in a more systematic fashion the internal dynamics and peculiar force of these works. Subsequent studies on the Menippean satire—ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and modern—have helped to clarify its origins, distinguishing features, and evolution. Using these studies, I hope to demonstrate that the works both of Russell Hoban and Murakami Haruki can best be understood as Menippean satires. When viewed in this way, the curious amalgam in their works of the comic and the philosophical, the human and the animal, the sordid and the sublime, the popular and the classical begins to come clear as a particular narrative strategy, one which, moreover, has "an excellent and antique pedigree" (Relihan 8). This is not an exercise in taxonomy; rather, I hope that it can accomplish what Frye spells out as the purpose of genre criticism, which is to "bring[] out a large number of literary relationships that would not be noticed as long as there were no context established for them" (247-8). I will begin by defining the Menippean satire, drawing on a range of critical studies. The Menippean satire is, as Bakhtin pointed out, "extraordinarily flexible and as changeable as Proteus [and] capable of penetrating other genres" (113). It is, therefore, not surprising that the works of Hoban and Murakami have been described by a variety of other terms, such as postmodern novel, fable, and fantasy. In defining the contemporary Menippean satire, I will also examine its relationship to these other genres and modes. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Bakhtin are from this work. 3 Defining the Menippean Satire In Anatomy of Criticism, an attempt at "a synoptic view" of literary criticism (3), Northrop Frye identifies the Menippean satire (which he prefers to call "anatomy," after Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy), as one of the four types of prose fiction. In this category, he places such works as Anatomy of Melancholy, the Alice books, Brave New World and Gulliver's Travels. What distinguishes these works is a "loose-jointed narrative form" (309); a focus on "mental attitudes" rather than on "people as such" (309); fantasy or, in a more serious Utopian vein, the creation of ideal worlds; the use of dialogues (as in the "dialogue of the dead") or colloquies or symposia; "a tendency to expand into an encyclopaedic farrago" (311) and the consequent "ridicule of philosophers and pedantic critics" (312). These characteristics serve to set apart the Menippean satire (or anatomy) as a distinct genre of prose fiction. Mikhail Bakhtin's definition of the Menippean satire, which appears in his Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, did not reach Western readers until the 1970s. (The translation commonly used now did not appear until 1984.) In Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, Bakhtin enumerates fourteen characteristics of the Menippean satire, based on such classical examples as Apuleius' The Golden Ass and Petronius' Satyricon: 1.