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'Getting Constructively Lost:' Narratives of Escapism in Contemporary American Fiction

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'Getting Constructively Lost:' Narratives of Escapism in Contemporary American Fiction ‘Getting Constructively Lost:’ Narratives of Escapism in Contemporary American Fiction PhD in English Literature Department of English Literature Mattia Ravasi November 2019 Abstract The subject of this thesis is self-conscious escapism in a selection of contemporary American novels, chief among them works by Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Thomas Pynchon, Junot Díaz and Jennifer Egan. I explore the ways in which these texts interrogate the consequences of the act of escape into fictional worlds, exposing its dangers – among them social isolation and ontological confusion about one's relation to the written or unwritten world – while also considering its benefits, including relief from trauma, a sense of communal belonging, and insight into historical and social phenomena. Challenging established assumptions about escapism and escapist fiction, I argue that the core texts of this thesis represent escapism as an aesthetically legitimate pursuit, with complex philosophical and political implications. The thesis’ first chapter offers close readings of these core texts' staging of escapism as an alternately redemptive and damning pursuit. It also situates the text's re- evaluation of escapist fiction within broader discussions on the cultural and aesthetic value of popular narratives. The second chapter reflects on the significance of these texts' reliance on an explicit form of intertextuality, central to their conception of literary influence, and to the way they represent popular fiction as a source of communal belonging with the potential to transcend barriers of ethnicity and social status. Finally, the third chapter focuses on a narrative strategy I define as generic contagion, by means of which many of my core texts represent the process by which characters become so addicted to fiction they are no longer able to distinguish it from reality. I conclude by situating my core texts in the broader contemporary landscape, arguing that their exploration of the dynamics of escapism casts new light on and deepens our understanding of the function and the implications of our engagement with fiction. Declaration of Original Authorship Declaration: I confirm that this is my own work and the use of all material from other sources has been properly and fully acknowledged. Mattia Ravasi, November 2nd, 2019 Acknowledgements I am eternally grateful to my supervisor, David Brauner, for his support and guidance over the course of three years. He encouraged me, challanged me, and recommended a variety of scholarly sources and literary texts that informed my thesis, and enriched my understanding of both the written and unwritten world. I am also grateful to Gregory Dowling and Pia Masiero for their help and suggestions. My thanks also go to the Department of English Literature, whose generous scholarship helped me support myself as I worked on this thesis. Thank you, Anna Thompson, for your help preparing for my viva, and for everything else. Un ringraziamento finale alla mia famiglia, il cui supporto è stato fondamentale alla stesura di questa tesi, e di tutti i miei scritti, e agli anni di letture che li hanno preceduti. Tutto quanto ho lo devo al loro duro lavoro. Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 – The Uses of Escape ...................................................................................................... 46 Chapter 2 – Keys to Escape ........................................................................................................... 131 Chapter 3 – Escape and Ensnarement ............................................................................................ 194 ‘Ravening Monsters:’ Conclusion ................................................................................................. 246 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................. 263 1 Introduction The subject of this thesis is self-conscious escapism in a selection of contemporary American novels. The texts I am going to analyse variously stage the process of narrative escapism, through which readers and consumers of books, comic books and other media can become detached from their everyday lives and concerns through immersion in fictional narratives. By staging this process, these novels interrogate the act of escape and its consequences, exploring its potential dangers – among them social isolation and ontological confusion about one's relation to the written or unwritten world1 – but also considering its potential benefits, including relief from trauma, the pleasure associated with a sense of closure, a sense of communal belonging, and insight into the most disparate historical and social phenomena. These texts challenge established assumptions about escapism and escapist fiction, and represent escapism as an aesthetically legitimate pursuit, with significant philosophical and political implications. What I propose to do in my thesis is to map the dynamics and manifestations of self-conscious escapism within a range of contemporary American fiction. I will highlight the way these texts’ discussion of escapism is connected with their call for a re-evaluation of genre and popular fiction, and at the same time allows them to engage with many of the central debates of literary criticism, including questions of influence, intertextuality, and the nature of narrative immersion. Self-conscious escapism is closely related to metafiction. In her seminal study 1 I shall borrow these terms, very useful in making such a fundamental distinction, from Philip Roth – who borrowed them from Paul Goodman – since 'everyone can think through readily enough to the clear-cut differences between the two' (ix). 2 Metafiction (1984), Patricia Waugh argues that 'metafiction is not so much a subgenre of the novel as a tendency within the novel which operates through exaggeration of the tensions and oppositions inherent in all novels' (14). Two aspects of this definition are especially relevant to my discussion of self-conscious escapism: first, the idea that the subject of this thesis is not a subgenre, but a tendency. I do not suggest that my core texts constitute a specific category of fiction, let alone a genre: their existence in what Michael Chabon calls 'the no man's land' of fiction (Maps and Legends 13), and as such between genres, is in fact inextricably bound to their form and concerns. Instead, I argue that these texts share common structural features and thematic interests, and that these textual characteristics can be understood all the more clearly in a comparative study. Second, Waugh argues that metafiction relates to features that are universal in literature: the same can be said of self-conscious escapism. Just as narrative escape is, paradoxically, an inescapable process – as I will argue later – so any fiction that features stories-within- stories, or characters immersed in narrative escapism, will reflect more or less overtly on this process. The difference is one of intensity: my core texts 'exaggerate,' to use Waugh's terms, these concerns, often turning them into key points of their plots, or extended thematic reflections. The characters in these texts become so obsessed with the vehicles of their escape they often forget precisely where the boundaries of their world begin, resulting in a peculiar form of metalepsis I define as generic contagion. Indeed, self-conscious escapism can be conceived of as a variant form of metafiction, in itself a tendency discussed in different terms by various critics and on whose nature there is no absolute consensus. My position regarding self-conscious escapism will be to treat it as belonging to the metafictional spectrum described by Waugh, and more precisely to the side where novels 'take fictionality as a theme to be explored,' 3 while also showing occasional signs of that 'formal and ontological insecurity' (19) – for instance in the works of Mark Danielewski – that pertains to more experimental works. Indeed, a crucial feature of self-conscious escapism that I will explore in the course of this thesis is the way in which, rather than constituting a genre, it challenges generic assumptions about the texts that exhibit it. But what exactly qualifies a text as showing self-consciously escapist tendencies? In order to arrive at a working definition, it is helpful to identify what unadulterated escapism looks like. A relatively unequivocal instance of pure escapism in contemporary American fiction is Ernest Cline's science fictional novel Armada (2015), in which a young man who is obsessed with video games discovers that he has been secretly trained, through participating in these games, to save Earth from an alien invasion. The wish- fulfilling potential of the text is clear: turning an apparently inconsequential hobby into a noble pursuit, crucial to the survival of the human race. 'All those years I spent playing videogames weren't wasted after all, eh?' Armada's protagonist says to his mother (259). His personality exhibits no nuances that might complicate the process of wish-fulfilment: his main flaw is that he is too zealous in protecting his friends from bullies. Similarly, there is no serious questioning in the novel of the methodology and ideology of the secret and belligerent military organisation that recruits the protagonist. Love and glory are achieved in the course of
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