A Stylistic and Thematic Examination of Six Contemporary American Novels in Terms of Their Relations to Existentialism and the A

5.1).93

A STYLISTIC AND THEMATIC EXAMINATION

OF SIX CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN NOVELS

IN TERMS OF THEIR RELATIONS TO EXISTENTIALISM AND THE AMERICAN ROMANCE TRADITION

,

Julie P. Piesiewicz, B.A.(Hons.)

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the UniversitY of Adelaide ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

DECLARATION iii

ACKNOl^lLEDGEMEN TS iv

SUMMARY V

Chap te r

1 I NTRODUCTI ON 1

2 THE MODERN AMERICAN NOVEL, INFLUENCES AND TRENDS 27

3 EXISTENTIALISM AND AMERICAN ABSURDIST FICTION 56

4 cATCH-22 78

5 ONE FLEI^I OVER THE CUCKOO's NEST 98

6 HERZOG TzL

7 SLAUGHTERHOUSE- FI VE t46

8 THE DICEMAN L7L

9 ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE 190

CONCLUS I ON 2t3

NOTES TO CHAPTERS 225

BIBLIOGRAPHY 235 111

DECLARATI ON

This thes'is conta'ins no material which is not the product of my own original study and research, except when due acknowledgment is made in the text, notes, or bibfiography'

JULIE P. PIESIEWICZ 'tv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I particularly wish to acknowledge the help given to me by my superv.isors, Mr. George Turner and Mr. Hadyn williams, Mr. Turner for his guìdance, during the first stage of writ'ing' with the stylistic aspects of my subiect and my approach to it' and Mr. l^l'illiams for his suggestjons of areas for further consideration once the fjrst draft of the thesis was comp'leted. V

SUtVlIVlARY

Thjs thesis began as a stylistic study of modern American prose writing and although the focus of interest shifted' from prose writing in general to the novel, and from style pez'se to sty'le as a contribut'ing factor jn the totality of a novel's presentation and impact, the thesis retains 'its starting point in stylistic analyses of the novels considered. From there, the manifestations in the novels of two other elements of maior importance - existentialism and romance - are discussed.

The influence of existent'ial philosophy on twentieth century thought has been described by writers of various discjplines. Existentialism seems to have become a part of the Western way of vìewing and'interpreting al1 aspects of l'ife; it has become popularjzed to the extent that the existential absurdist mode of describìng life dominates contemporary novel, play and film production as u,ell as such fields as news reporting and commentary'

The romance trad'ition in American literature was first

dìscussed by Henry James, and Richard Chase has argued convincingly that it still persists in the twentieth century. In post-t^lorld t^|ar Ii American novel wpiting, the romance element has acquired a special qua'lity, as a result of its alliance with the existential

mode of percePtìon. 'in The first three chapters examine the factors the Amerjcan historical experience wh'ich account for the ready adoption of existentialism 'in the twentieth century, the essential characteristics V1

of existential thought and the consequences for the novel of the absorption of existentialism into the popular consciousness; the relationship between satire, romance and romance parody is discussed wìth particular regard to the way vers'ions of romance are used to confront in new ways the ideals and failures of the American Dream; and the major developments in the creation of novels arising from the rejection of tradjtional forms and techniques are indjcated.

In Chapters 4-9 novels representat'ive of different forms of (1961) existential influence are examined. The novels are Catch-2| ' One ELeu 7uer the Cuckoots Nest (1962), Herzog (1964), SLaughterhouse-

Fiue (1970), fhu DLce Man (1972), and Zen and the Art of Motoz,cyeLe Maíntenance (L974). I begin the discussions of the novels with a sty'listic analysis of the opening pages, then I go on to relate the styfistic techn'iques observed to the general thematic concerns of the novelist and the way in which existentjal and romance influences manifest themselves in his writing. Although certain of the novels are more clear'ly accounts of existential absurdity than others, the exjstential jnfluence is pervasive and, qualified in varying degrees by the element of romance, characterizes all the novels. I NTRODUCTI ON

I

Modern American prose writing 'in general has developed a quality distinguishing 'it from other traditions of English. The di fference can be traced partìy to stylistic, syntactìc preferences, in particular a preference for nominal over verbal constructions and paratactic over complex sentence structures, but it also encompasses a different "attitude" towards experience. A sense of absurdity seems to permeate not on'ly fiterary but also such non-fictionaì areas as 'it news-report'ing and commentary. In the modern novel, however, ìs particularly strong, appearing not as an intermjttent, b¡iefly illuminated element - as'it tended to be in pre-world war II fiction - but providìng the tone of whole naryatives. The framework or by ph'i I osophi ca1 underp'i nnj ng for thi s k'i nd of novel i s provi ded existentialjsm, which is the twentieth century's ultimate express'ion of the ernphas'is on the'individual whìch began jn the nineteenth century romantìc movement. |,rJhile there are, of course, novelists still wrjting ìn the more trad'itional moulds of Christianity or humanistic

opt.im.ism, the dominat'ing vision informing those novels achjevìng both popu'lar and crjtical success in the last twenty years has been a vis.ion influenced by exjstentialism. In contrast to absurdist theatre' 'in however, thi s ex'istenti al i nfl uence i s tempered the novel by the retention of the romance element wh'ich has been part of the entire

Ameri can novel tradi t'ion. 2

The relationsh'ip between existent'ialism and romance in contemporary fictional responses to the "American Dream" and the consequences for styìe form the subiect of this thesis.

Amerjcan literature, like American culture in general, can be seen as shifting or balancing between pursu'it of and reaction aga'inst the collection of myths making up the "American Dream".I Lacking the centuries of tradit'ion against which Europeans defined themselves, Amerjcans early on developed an'imaginative framework within wh'ich they couìd examine, explain and iustify themselves. They saw America as the "lost Eden", an untouched country of continuously expanding frontiers, not only geographical but social and economjc, where there was room and opportunity for every man to be successful in his l'ife.

The Puritan work ethic, with jts emphasis on hard work and self- dependance, and the Enlìghtenment ideals of progress through rationalism, disc'iplined mental effort, which attended America's poì i ti cal b'i rth , supported the devel opment of the myth, especi al ly as they were transmuted in literature into a kind of romant'ic indiv'idualism. Later, European Romanticism reinforced another element in the American self-image with its assertion of nature as a source of sp'i¡itual strength, a means by which the ordinary man coul d overcome h'is personal weaknesses - and the I imi ti ng trad'i ti ons of his European background - and find freedom and happiness. In the

New World the desire for an unencumbered existence and for direct personal relationships rather than elaborate social amangements seemed actually atta'inable.

Americans thus took from major European movements the materials to fashion a system of belief w'ithin which the new nation 3

v,,oul d devel op, and the materi al progress that was seen to be made , by individuals and by the country as a whole, seemed to validate the Dream.

Yet a'lways beneath the surface of optìmism ran darker under- cuments , contradi ctj ons i roni cal ly 'i nherent i n the Very scurces of the myths wh'ich made up the Amerjcan Dream. Commentators on American literature and l'ife, from De Toqueville in 18352 to D.H. Lawrence in

19233 and Malcolm Cowley'in 1968,4 have observed that American experience seems defined by contradiction, by uneasy balancing between extremes; and many times when Amerjcans have looked backwards or with the critical insight of the'ir novelists, their history has seemed very much at odds with the myths. The author of the Declaration of Independence, a man of the Enlightenment, kept a houseful of slaves.

The abi di ng dreams of equaf i ty and 'i ndj vi dual opportuni ty on the one hand were threatened by the rise of materialistic self-interest and on the other came up increasing'ly against ihe realìties of big business and 'intrusive government. The glamour and patriotism generated at first by tlor'ld War I were challenged by the experienced reality of warfare, the ug'liness and physical suffe¡ing, then by the spiritual desolatjon and sense of loss of those who returned from Europe. The perceìved dichotomy of materiaì progress and sp'iritual emptiness continued to dominate twentieth century American experience, and when America, from feeling ìtself at the zenith of world power, lost the war in Vietnam, i t seemed that av{,areness of the gap between prom'ise and reality, from being largely the province of literature, became part of the national consciousness. 4

l¡lriters of al1 periods have seen it as their role to reveal the dark undersides of the'ir societies, to challenge the myt'hs by which their contemporaries l'ive - one could possibly define the fiterary impulse as realization of a clash bebveen experience and belief - but the new American nation, with'its set of specific' coherent and widely held beliefs, elicited perhaps stronger responses jn its writers than the older, tradition-governed cultures of Europe.

As D.l¡1. Noble says, "No irnportant American novelist has been able to 5 escape a d'i rect confrontat'i on wi th the Ameri can dream, " e'i ther by exploring its possibilities or by analysing its failures. For most of

the ni neteenth century, the l'iterary imag'inati on was comparati vely unfettered by the rest¡ictions of an imposing and ubiquitous social mach'inery and could deal with the basic problems of the human condit'ion

in ways which related more closely to al'legory and metaphysjcs; in the major novels of the period, the confrontation with the dream is not worked out'in the manner of the great European novelists, that is' in terms of social conflict and through "realist" methods, but is

approached more subtly through the subject'ive and metaphysical spheres in versions of romance. Lionel Trilling, in hiS essay, "Manners, morals, and the novel", provides a useful formulatjon of the

di fference:

iThel novel in Amerjca dìverges from its class'ic i ntenti on, whi ch i s the i nvesti gat'i on of the problem of reality beginning in the socjal field' The fact is that American writers of genius have not turned their minds to society the reaìity they sought was only tangential to society.b

In a later essay, he jndicates the major factor ìn this direction taken: 5

tThel real basis of the novel has never existed - that is, the tension between a middle class and an aristocracy which brings manners into observable relief as the living representation of ideals and the I i v'i ng comment on i deas . 7

The ideals and the moral values with which Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville and Twain concern themselves connect closely with the tensions in the emerg'ing society of the time but their fictìonal dramatizations do not operate through the k'ind of "social solidity" observable in the novels of Dickens, Balzac or Dosflovsky, finding instead the romance form with ìts other-worldl'iness and concern with ultimate moral conflicts more congenial as a mode of expression.

One finds, however, that while the romance form - an essentially optimistic form asserting the fundamental goodness of nature and man - has seemed particu'larly useful as a means of describing American experience, novelists have introduced jnto it dark elements which contradict or undermjne, often ironicalìy, its optimjstic, jdealistjc tendency. The characteristic American noveì, wh'ich expl o'i ts the romance form wi th 'i ts underìy'i ng emphasi s on innocence whi le qual'ify'ing i t wi th the "dark knowledge" of experience' can be i dent'i fi ed as early as the " Leatherstock'i ng" novel s of James

Fenjmore Cooper whìch reveal the 'inadequacìes of the romantic vjew of the "American Adam" progressing 'in "the area of total poss'ibif ity",B the New World Eden. hjith Hawthorn and Melville, both New Englanders and therefore likely to have absorbed the Puritan ethos with thejr upbrìng'ing, the "dark knowledge" shows itself in a fascination with evjl, and the romance devices used by each, the symbolic signìfìcance attached to deta'ils of dress or manner, for instance, or the removal of the narrative from contemporary society, lend their works a siml'lar 6

'intensity to that of Puritan aì'legories of good 'in battle with evil. Both chalìenge, too, the bel'ief in nature as a redempt'ive force wh'ich was an extension of the New ï¡lorld Eden myth developed from European romanticism by Emerson and others.

Out of the'ir perception of the flaws ìn "the complex of ideas and ideals which had animated the beginnings of the experiment that had now grou,n into the soc'ial and moral world around them",e emerged the major theme of n'ineteenth century fiction and of a great part of American fiction since, that of the isolation of the indiv'idual - not the physical isolation resulting from frontier cond'itions and often cited as the origin of the American brand of jndividualism, but moral a'lienation, the probìem of reconciling indìvidual freedom with social

I i fe wi thout impa'i ri ng the i ndi vi dual 's moral , sPi rj tual or physi cal 'integri ty.

There is, then, jn the fict'ion of the nineteenth century, a continual testing of the myths, of the optimjstic idealism promoted by politicians, essay'ists, poets, and held to by much of the population, against the facts of history' of reaì life experience'

Mark Twajn was one who was appalled by the materialism and selfishness which the Civil Ì¡lar brought out and'IluckLebenny Fínn can be seen as an assertion of the right to free oneself from cjviljzation and its ìmperat'ives. Henry James, who rea11y belongs to the succeeding generation of novelists who saw soc'ial institutions and the moral concerns of ind'ivi duals as inseparably bound up w'ith one another,

portrayed the "American Adam" as a fraudulent figure' no better than the Europeans of the Old t¡lorld with whom he engaged. 7

In retrospect, one can see that the dom'inating factors in the

American h'istorica'l experience led as if inevitably towards the adoption of existentialism as the major twentjeth century phjlosophy wjthin whìch writers have examined life. Puritanism, the westward expansion of the pioneers, Transcendentalism, the promotion of materialist'ic self-sufficiency and progress - all these forces in American life in their various ways emphasized indiv'idual'ism' a force at once posì t'ive and negative, foç wh'ile when the colony was nelv man could be seen as struggfing alone and herojcally to work out hjs own destiny without appeal to a benevolent God or the protection of tradjtion, Americans came later to see themselves as men unfettered by the restra'ints of tradi ti onal rel'ig'ious , soci al and economi c institutions, enjoying a freedom of thought and action not previously

known anywhere - yet'ironically the world that was being created by

these men was com'ing to rest increasingly upon foundat'ions of selfjshness, d'istrust and crass materialism. l/'lorld War I catalysed the shift from merely qualjfied belief in the myths makìng up the American Dream to b.itter denial of their validity. James' expatriates

become .in Hemingway and Fitzgerald "heroes" who feel themselves complete'ly on their own, betrayed by the past, lost, with no new faith to live by. Fitzgeraìd's Gatsby reveals the bankruptcy of the myth of

the American Adam, the self-made man, wh'ile Hem'ingway's Jake Barnes ' tn The Sun ALso Rises, anticipates the existential man whom Camus and Sartre would descr.ibe'in his effort to live sole'ly'in the present and his refusal to impose values and orders on a seem'ingly indifferent

uni verse.

Between the i,rjars the myths Americans had made about themselves I

were challenged directly by h'istorical events, forcing upon the peop'le in general a simjlar moral stocktaking to that whìch the conflicts in Europe had evoked in members of the "Lost Generation"' major The Depress'ion and the increasing power of big government were

factors i n the changed American sel f-'image: i nd'ivi dual i sm became al.ienation, peopìe felt themselves'isolated and powerless, lost in cities crowded w'ith others. In the thirties' many of the signjficant novels produced were novels of social protest. Among them, John Dos Passos'(J.S.A. stands out as a powerful representation of urban life and its betrayed dreams and, also, as one of the contrìbuting influences to the formulation of French existentialism in the next decade. Nathanael l¡lest, departìng from the naturalistic mode employed by h.is contemporaries, develops a v'ision of the corruption of the black Dream wh'ich startlingìy anticipates the moral ambiguìty, the

humour and the fragmentary sty]es of post !'lor1d l'rlar II absurdìst

fi cti on .

The French existential'ists provided a codification and intensif.ication of the mood of disillusionment and alienation. 'in Follow'ing hJorld War II, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre essays' novels and pìays delineated a "ph'ilosophy" which took'individualism to the extreme, making the individual the sole arbiter of his the ex'is tence 'i n an i 11ogi cal worl d. They had themsel ves shared wìder French'interest in American fiction - in the novels of Hemjngway with and Faulkner part'icularly - which showed characters in conflict the absurd, with a way of life which reason could no ìonger explajn or justìfy, and attempting to create themselves through the'ir actions

i n the face of encompass'ing absurdì ty ' 9

After the t,lar existentialism, together wi th 'its li terary para'l1el in the sense of absurd'ity, came as a disturb'ing element into American fict'ion, rejnforcing or distorting ex'isting tendencies towards n'ihilism, irony and "black humour" and establishing the tone of much of the major fjct'ion of the next three decades.

yet whi le Ameri can experience si nce t^Jorl d l¡Jar I I has repeatedly confirmed the absurd'ist vision of the ord'inary man as a pawn in the hands of vague, secular but seemingly abstract forces beyond hìs controì, the old opt'imistic myths of the American Adam and the New 'in World Eden stì11 persist, in pof itical rhetoric, much popular fictjon and film, in art'icles and in newspaper editorials and "letters to the edìtor"; and the more thoughtful and critical writers, ìn reactjon to this romantic'idealjsm, contìnue to find their starting- points and their satirical targets in the ironic awareness of the dìsparity between the propagated ideals and the actuaìity of American life, the distance between the Dream and reality providing the measure of the absurdi ty they percei ve . Increas'i ngly i n the f i ft'ies and s'ixties, novelists turn to new versìons of romance to express thejr ironic awareness of this gap, developìng through comic parody of

convent'ional romance elements incisive satirical commentaries on

contemporary Ameri can soci etY.

The'ironic use of romance in combination or juxtapos'ition with black humour, pathos and subjectivism results'in styles wh'ich are cons'istently ambiguous, merging fact and fantasy, comedy and horror' simulatìng confusion and iììogic while remaining 'in some way coherent, rejecting morality in 'its conventional shapes but asserting the 10

private moralities of the protagonists. Through their use of romance devices, novelists suggest the interminglings of fantasy and reality in modern life, both in actual events, in the "normaliz'ing" of the grotesque, horrific and absurd, and in the perceptions of the indiv'idual psyche. 0n another level, at the same t'ime that the modern author's turning towards romance connects him with his literary heritage, it enables him to criticize or mock the romantic ideal'ism which attended the early decades of the establishment of the nation, permeatìng its polit'ics, economìc theory and common ethics as well as its popular literature, and wh'ich 'is seen to pers'ist into the twentieth century. Again, the particular uses of parody in the modern novel often do

more than contribute to the dep'iction of an absurd objective world:

at the same time they draw attention to the artist'ic process itse'lf, to its own absurd'ity,'its futilìty and falsity in relation to the realities it purports to describe, by drawing attention to the language as much or more than to the events of the narrative. It is in this Sense that, as Tony Tanner argues, the alienation of the hero in the true modern novel often equates with that of his creator.I0

Numerous anaìysts of the modern novel have described it in terms of a greater distance between the novelists' concept'ion of real'ity and the forms ava'ilable for presenting it than has been experienced at any other t'ime'in the development of the form. As

Frank Kermode observes :

The h'istory of the novel ìs the h'istory of forms rejected or modified, by parody, manifesto, neglect, as absurd. Nowhere e1se, perhaps' are we so conscious of the d.issidence between inherited forms and our own reality.lt 11

The extent of the perceived dissidence in twentieth century literature ìs close]y related to the existential view of reality in generaì which den'ies the existence of order in the world and therefore rejects the ki nd of arti fi ci al 'impos'iti on of order whi ch the novel represents . Modern variat'ions on trad'itional fictional forms are aimed towards establishìng awareness of the absurdity of existence. John Barth' himself often classed as a "novelist of the absurd", contends that although the novelist can cont'inue to employ the "exhausted" forms of the past, he must emp'loy them ironically,12 and C.B. Harris expìains the double function which is thus served:

absurdi ty through an 'ant'i-style' las i n French Theatre ôf tfre Absurd and the nouueau romanl. Amerjcan novelists of the absurd, while they sometimes exaggerate 'reali ty' , seldom feel the need to d'istort 'i t beyond recogn'i ti on. I n f act, they usual ìy don' t im'i tale ' l'ife' at al I , but other novel s , other forms, other styles. Yet their imitat'ion, because ironic, transcenãs mere minesjs and becomes a comment upon the artificiality not only of art, but of life as it'is usual ly I i ved, of mass soci ety, and of al I th'ings whi ch p.eveni the réal i zati on that l'¡ te i s absurd. 13

The romant'ic quest of the jnnocent hero for knowledge or

salvation of some k'ind becomes a means of exposìng the absurd'ity of contemporary existence l'ived according to bankrupt social values 'in novels as various aS James Purdy's MaLeoLm, JOhn Barth's Sot-Weed Factoy,, Saul Bellow's HelÅ.eyson the Raín KLng, Thomas Pynchon's 7

and The Cz,ging oi Lot 49. In other novels where the quest theme does not prov'ide the controlling structural framework the romantic influence is st'ill strong: larger-than-l'ife characters are shown L2

fight'ing mysterious forces of evil (usualìy in jts modern guise of absurdity or officjal "sanity"), there is a sense of viewing a world abstracted somehow from the ordinary famjljar world but turn'ing on the same values, and the dynamic force within the narrative ìs the romantic emphasis on the forces of life and "becoming" over those of death or absurdity. As in the great Amerìcan novels of the preced'ing century, society'itself, the details of its whole organizat'ion and structures of relationship, ìs approached only tangent'ial1y and the overri d'ing concern j s wi th the protagon'ist's pri vate worl d' hi s biased distorted percept'ion of external reality, and with the fundamental abstract issues at stake.

Northrop Frye's attempted parad'igm of 1i terary crì ti ci sm 'in his Anntonry of Criticism provides useful methods of approach to the novel 'in general, but it is part'icuìarly useful for a study of the modern, existent'ial'ism-influenced novel since the theory itself conforms at several po'ints to exi stent'ial thought. Frye rejects traditional methods of classifying literary works accord'ing to externally imposed moral criteria and instead focuses on internal, easi ìy i dent'i fj able characteri stics :

In literary fictions the plot consists of somebody dojng something. The somebody, if an individual, 'is the hero, and the õomething he does or fails to do is what he can do, or could have done, on the level of the postulates made about him by the author and the consequent expectatì ons of the audi ence . Fi cti ons , therefore, may be classifìed, not morally, but by the hero's power of action, whigþ may be greater than ours, less, ôr roughly the same.14

Frye goes on to describe the five modes of fiction - myth' romance, h'igh mimetic (epic and tragedy), low mjmetic (comedy and 13

realistic fict'ion), and irony - and to posit that over the last fifteen centurjes European fiction has steadily moved ìts centre of grav'ity down the list, becoming in the last hundred years increasingly i ron'ic.

!'larning against any attempt at rigid classification according to his defjnition of the five modes, however, Frye points out that

"while one mode constitutes the underlying tonality of a work of fiction, any or all of the other four may be simultaneously present", and that "much of our sense of the subtlety of great literature comes from thi s modal counterpoi nt". 15

The modern post-Worl d Ì¡lar I I Ameri can novel takes 'its dynamì sm from its particular kind of interaction between the ironic and the romance modes. Frye descrjbes the two modes 'in terms of their protagonì sts thus:

If superior in degree to both lother men and thejr env'ironmentl , the hero i s the typi cal hero of xomance, whose act'ions are marvellous but who is himself identified as a human be'ing. He moves jn a world'in which the ord'inary I aws of nature are s I i ghtly suspended: prodì g'ies of courage and endurance, unnatural to us' are natural to him, and enchanted weapons (and magic) violate no rule of probability once the postulates of romance have been es tab I i she d. If inferior in power or intelf igence to ourselves' so that we have the sense of looking down on a scene of bondage, frustration, or absurdity, the hero belongs to the iionic mode. This is true when the reader feels he is or m'ight be in the same situation, as the situation is being-judged by the norms of a greater freedom.16

The sense of irony in the modern Ame¡ican novel js a total one, embracìng a'll areas of life; absurd'ity is seen, paradoxically' as the only constant of human experience, and the authors' awareness t4

of the ul timate futi I i ty of chal I eng'i ng thi s absurd'i ty i nforms the presentatjon of their characters and their characters' experience.

Through the coalescence of the ironic and romantic modes, modern novelists, at the same time that they construct their sat'ire, are able to suggest somethjng more than the bleak existentjal pessimism of much of absurdist drama. Although the sense of cosnr|c meaninglessness that existentialism 'impìies is not generally a strong'ly felt presence in the American novel, the sense of powerless- ness which is its corollary is dramatized in social terms through the conflict between indiv'iduals and the man-made absurdity of jnstitutions - and the people who enforce their laws. In novels like Catch-Z2 and ûne FLeu Ouer the Cuckoots Nest, ìt is easy to see the institutions as symboì'iz'ing the wider, uni versal absurdity, and in certain novelS, such as Vonnegut's SLaughtez,house-Fiue, the relation- ship ìs stated explicitly. These novels represent at the same time a social parallel or metaphor of metaphysical absurdity and a critique of the manner of thinking, of the fundamental values and attitudes which have led to modern soc'iety becomjng such a parad'igm of absurdity.

Nevertheless, while w¡iting within this ironic, ex'istential frame of reference, contemporary novelists are able to suggest that there st'ill is value in human existence, that man ach'ieves his full humanjty by making a stand aga'inst the absurdity wh'ich envelopes him.

By employ'ing romance techniques - for instance, heroes are somewhat 'larger than life and possess slight'ly superhuman qualitjes, medieval magic undergoes a metamorphosis and becomes the impenetrable force 15

of bureaucratic power - novelists are able at the same time to describe the Sense of fantasty-'in-reaìity, the "unrealìty" entering into everyday'life, which is a major symptom of "future shock", to 'is criticize the fundamental values on which modern society based, and they are able to lend their characters and events a quality of allegory wh'ich renders them representative of the human condition in general, in its social and, by implication, its metaphysical aspects'

The romance element also makes possìble the relatively opt'imisti c end'ings of many absurdist novels. The incorporation of romance quaìities within the body of the narrative encourages' perhaps subliminaììy during the actual reading' expectation of a "happy ending" or some sort of resolution. Thus, despite the grimness, the pathos' the frustration caused by powerlessness, and the bitterness contained in what has happened before, the escapes of Yossarian and the Chief (in Catch-2T and Orp FLeu Ooez,the Clrckoots Nest respect'ive1y), and the mental recoveries and posit'ive vision of the future ach'ieved by Pirsig (in Zen and the Ay,t ofMotoreycLe Maintenance) do not seem completely improbable, or irreconciliable with the existential framework of the narrative.

The romance element - desp'ite the fact that it appears usual'ly as parody - thus acts as a counter to the despair engendered by existentjalism. It allies itself w'ith the ironic

humour through which novelists of the absurd tend to view life,

humanizing in a sense what would otherwise be a cold, heartless form of comedy. The modern novel falls between the traditional categories of tragedy, in which the hero becomes isolated from his 16

society, and comedy, in wh'ich he is incorporated into it. The heroes of modern novels suffer alienation from their social environment, as did the heroes of classical tragedy, but what is lacking nov'/ is the sense of a real alternative, a sense of how things could and should be, and "where there is no Sense of the infjnite vastness of what is beyond our grasp, all we finaì'ly succeed in conveying'is misery - not tragedy".rT Hence the tragedy of the tradjtional model becomes pathos in the modern novel , and it js qualified at all po'ints by buffoonery' In acknowìedg'ing the absurdity of the world and man's powerlessness to alter this condition, ljfe is treated as a ioke; all the stylistic techniques of traditional comedy and satire are employed in order to dramatize the chaos - perceptual, ethical, and spiritual - w'ithin wh'ich man exi s ts .

This absurdist vision is saved also from becoming a representation of the madness which hopelessness gives rìse to by the underlying thread of romance through which modern novelists seem to be making a conscious I'ink with myth, in both jts classical and Jungìan senses of laying out the fundamental patterns in which human existence forms and reforms itself. Critics have seen both Cateh-Z2 and One

ELeu Ouey, the Cuckoots Nest as regeneration myths, Billy Pilgrìm's name 'in SLaughterhouse-Fir¿ suggests his Everyman role, and Pirsig's journey in Zen and. the Ant of MotoncgcLe Mainfenøtce has undertones of a spirjtual odyssey. Modern fiction often contains a new perspective on the irony whjch is at the heart of myth: that out of the suffering of certain men can come the salvat'ion or happiness of others. In modern novelS, the protagonist's efforts are djrected towards ach'ieving h'is own sal vati on or happi ness and any benefi ts T7

coming to his associates or h'is society are purely coincidental. It

'is through thi s I imi ted, egocentri c - bas'ical ly romanti c - atti tude that contemporary writers affirm or at least postulate the value of human attempts to deny or ignore or overcome the total presence of absurdity, in a hopeful response to the pessimism of "pure" ex'istentialism.

The presence of both romance and ex'istential irony in the jrony, modern American novel also forms a different. kind of, l'iterary, for phìlosoph'ica'lly the two are at opposite po'les. The opposition is even clearer between existentialism and romanticism, which intensified certain characteristics of medieval romance in alliance with the newer ph.ilosophy of indivjdualism, and which still infìuences l,{estern thought and perceptìon. Romanticism, as l,,lalter Kaufmann puts 'it, exaggerating, perhaps too negativeìy, a characteristic tendency, 'is "flight from the present, whether into the past, the future' or another world, dreams, or, most often, a vague fog. It is self-deception. Romanticism yearns for deliverance from the cross of the Here and Now: it is will'ing to face anyth'ing but the facts".lB

Existentialism retajns the romant'ic emphasis on indiv'idualism

but makes the jndividual the sole arbiter of his experience and equalizes in importance all parts of his experience, the depravìty as well as the beauty, the trivial and the customarily signjficant' It .is very much rooted in the present moment, in the action which defines the "qua'l'ity" of that moment for the ind'ividual, and it insists on self-knowledge and self-responsibility as counters to absurdity'

Thi s .is the perspecti ve f rom wh'i ch con temporary noveì i sts 18

tend to depict the'ir protagonists and their protagonists' experience. Such a perspective has inev'itably certain consequences for style: certain things can only be said or can be said most effectively in certain ways, Stylistic analysis provides perhaps the most direct means of "entry" into a novel s'ince, unlike other approaches - the soc'iological, political or b'iographica'l , for instance - it starts from the words themselves of the author, from his primary symbols of

conmuni cat'ion .

The novels examined in detail in this thesis have been chosen to represent varjous concerns of American novelists writing today. All have been publ'ished since 1960, the most recent having appeared in Lg74, Restrict'ion to only six novels has meant the omission of a number of sign'ificant writers: John Barth and Thomas Pynchon, for example, who are usually discussed aS "novelists of the absurd" are not included, and neither is a representative of black (Negro) writing. However these authors raise issues rather d'ifferent from the ones which are dominant here.

I examine only one novel of the writers concerned. The novels

chosen seem to me the finest produced by the'ir authors and I believe that the observations of each novel's relat'ionship with existential'ism are not invalidated by the author's other novels. My concern'is to identify the relation of each novel to existential thought, and part.icularìy the way in which the repeated elements of romance qualify this relationship, to examine the styfistic expression of this relationship, and to look at the contrasts between the novels'in theìr approaches to different (but nevertheless related) themes and experiences w'ith'in a shared philosoph'ical-existential framework' ***** 19

II

My method of approach to the novels rajses the argument about whether uhat a Writer says can be separated from hoa he SayS it' and whether a writer's attitude or vision of life is separable from the narration. I have followed those lìterary critics and linguìstic theOrists WhO acCept that the "fgrm", "Content" and "ViSiOn" Of A literary work are not finally separabìe and who empìoy instead semi- metaphopical descript'ions to explain the relationsh'ips between them. M.A.K. Halliday, for example, describes their interactjon thus:

. 'Vis'ion' and 'subiect matter' are merely the different levels of meañing wh'ich we expect to find each these, the inner as in a literary work; and of I9 wel I as the outer, finds expression in the syntax

In thi s formul ati on of Hal l i day' s , " sty'l e" whj ch equates wi th hi s use of "Syntax", is g'iven its proper place in relation to the other e I emen ts of f i ct'i onal creati on .

One way of definìng "style" is to see it in terms of the relationship between experience of the phys'ical world and language'

No two people can expepience anything - whether a s'ingle obiect or

a complex social situation - in an exactly sìmilar manner' because the way we experience something is determined by all our preced'ing 'indi experiences - whi ch are qu'i te di fferent for each vi dual ' Yet in order to communicate w'ith one another, to bridge the gaps between our ind'ividual worlds, we have to use a language code which begins

by assum.ing that the di f feri ng experì ences of i ndi vi dual s are exactly alike. "Qrdinary language," says R'ichard Qhmann, "urges us to think of experience as a constant, offered with ìmpartial sameness to all 20

experiencers, rather than as an infinite series of relations of which no two need be alike."20

This dichotomy which is the essence of language - the dichotomy between its general and 'its part'icular aspects' as a means of social communication and as a p¡ivate means of organizing and patterning experience - is the key to any analysis of communication through language. Because no word or concept has one single "meaning" but is, rather, a kind of cluster of meanings or references which have something in common, communicat'ion is possible between individuals of widely varying experience. The writer is able to use those elements of understanding of a word which he has in common w'ith his readers as a basis for ìntroducing new extensions of meaning which are particularly important to him.

Language thus mediates between experience, or perception, and thought. Qnce a person becomes a user of language he can no longer "think" about the world except by using language - words. For the language-user, the world is experienced, ìts varjous elements related meaningfuìly to one another' in terms of words. As Soon aS we try tO "think" about an experience we must use words. "The mind js a connecting organ t¡lords are meeting po'ints at which regions of experience come together",2I and they are the means by which the

members of a community com,munjcate to one another that they have shared simi Iar experiences.

This relationship enables the crit'ic to suggest valid connections between a writer'S style and his intentìon or his att'itude to his subiect. Jonathan Raban, in The Teehnique of Modezm 2t

Eictton, expresses in its theoretical, ideal form the method of this critical approach:

A writer's syntax tisl a system which conveys the dynamìcs of his perception, indicat'ing how his experience is apprehended as well as what the exþerience is. ()nce one has identified the general design of a piece of prose syntactic'long óne has come a way towards describ'ing the inherent relationships between the various constituents of the writer's world.22

Because each ind'ividual experiences the world differently and organizes his expe¡iences differently, it js inevitable that writers will w¡ite in recogn'izably different "styles", that different patternings of words will predominate in their writing' In this sense the view of style as "individualistìc or psychological monism"23 - "Sty]e'is the man himself" - is val'id. "The writer cannot help writing the way he does- for that is the dynam'ic expression of hìs personal'ity."24 Unless'it'is qualified' however, such a def.inition is not partìcularly useful as a tool of literary analysis. Illhat needs to be cons'idered is that the writer is to a certain degree free to cz,eate his own personality' or persona. This is one of the major "creatiVe" aspects of literary writ'ing' A writer's style is something separate from the man hjmself, and one man may w¡ite, at different t'imes, 'in a variety of styles. 'is Thus the concept of styìe as "the man himself" qualified through the recognition that an individual's personal'ity 'is, ìn the first place, many s'ided and, secondly,'in a continual state of adjustment and change. The freedom of the writer to create h'is own literary personality or persona bears a direct relation to the element of

styl ì sti c choi ce whi ch he has . 22

Each piece of writìng conveys a certain attitude towards a certain experience; the style of writing - the part'icular works and arrangements of words which the author chooses - acts as a mediator between the two, between subiect and persona. All ljterature is "moral" in the Sense that any description of an experience will convey a certain attitude towards or value judgement about that experience which is essent'iaìly moral in nature. The way in which a writer uses the familiar words of his language code jn his own comb'inations will gìve the words new implications and new values, producìng a two-fold effect: firstly, to define the writer's system of values and, seconda¡ily, to extend the reader'S awareness of different values and world views. In his descriptìons of the situations he has chosen the writer states his own attitude towards the situat'ions and, while we are read'in9, challenges us to form ours.

,,style',, then, refers to the way 'in which a writer presents his system of moral values through the creat'ion of a persona whose psychological consistency prov'ides the reader with a framework

wi thi n whi ch he can eval uate for himsel f what he reads . t¡lal ker Gibson's and Ian Watt's descript'ions of style as "psychologicaI revelation of the speaker or the relationship between the speaker and the subject" respect'ively2s have a sim'ilar emphasi s in that they

move beyond the definition of style as merely the patterns of words on a page to focus on the effects of certa'i n word patterns. The

styì.isti c mode of entry i nto analysì s of twenti eth century f icti on 'is particularly appropriate in v'iew of the deep interest in

ìanguage pef, se shown by many contemporary authors and their 23

conception of writing itself as a craft, as the creation of a literary artifice through words.

Every novel is constructed of a great many details - of descript'ion of pìace or person, of the characters' thought and actions, of commentary. The details elaborate and energize the bare plot line:

[,rJe generally accept these details as'solidi!V oI speði fi cati on' ( James ) . They g'i ve us the ai r of reality, the illusion of l!fe, without which the novel can hardly survive.26

0f course the details are not randomly selected or randomly organ'ized' but are arranged - or patterned - to present a particular p'icture or interpretation of realìty. By setting the varjous kinds of deta'il side by side, emphas'izing some at the expense of others, the novel'ist suggests the relatjonships, the cause and effect connections, the'ironic contrasts, and So on, wh'ich he sees as underìying and an'imating the world he is describ'ing.

In "realistic" (as opposed to allego¡ical) novels, where there iS "a lower degree of relevance"2T imposed, deta'ils of descrjption

may seem to be given only to create a convincingly ful1 portrait of a character or analysis of a situat'ion and need not'imply moral qualìties as they would be likely to do in a romance. Yet over a whole novel , apparently 'irrelevant detajls acquìre a cumulat'ive signìficance; certain categories of detail will be found to predominate or else to appear reguìarly at part'icular related stages in the pìot - physical details of the characters, for example, or details l'inking the work'ings of nature with the human 24

'involVements - creating patterns, relations, and simplifications withi n complex experìence, imply'ing wi thout statì ng part'icul ar attj tudes and i nterpretati ons .

The "unity" of a novel, the sense that it all somehow "be'longs together", will be found to derive in large part from the cons'istency with which the author employs certain kinds of details above others throughout the book.

Styl'istic analysis enables one to pinpo'int more finely intuit'ive understand'ings of what the writeris most and least interested in as he tells the story. It enables one to attempt an exp'lanation not only of how the writer presents a particular view of the world but also of how he persuades us to thjnk about and judge that particular picture of life in a part'icuìar way.

In this respect there is much to be ga'ined from an examination of the first few pages of any novel under consideration. Applying Leo Spìtzer's method of the "lingu'istic" or "phiìolog'icaì circle"28 jn a slightly different manner, one can begin by determining the ìdiosyncrat'ic emphases, omissions, or collocations with whjch the author commences his novel, then go on to compare the model thus obtained with the book as a whole. The d'irection and manner in which the open'ing emphases change before the end of the story will i ndì cate spec'i fi c si gn'i fi cances i nherent i n that novel . Marti n Price, elaborating hìs metaphor of the novel as a form of riddle to be solved by the reader, explains clearly the power of the novel's begi nni ng: 25

or cultivated innocence - all these are ways of indicat'ing the nature of the game, of educating the responses and guiding the collaboration of the reader. 29

Consistency in the selection of deta'if is partìcularly important in the modern novel where writers tend to do without the traditìonal expository introduction and the l'inking commentary wìthin the body of the text.

lrJh'ile we bring to our reading of a novel the same knowledge and ways of makjng iudgements as we bring to ordinary experience' We also are lookjng for or have a heìghtened awareness of pattet'n in the experience described in the novel: causes lead logically to later effects, relationsh'ips are clarified and contrasts defined. It js thìs pattern'ing aspect that makes the novel a z'efLection of reality - makes it a finite, bounded experience in contrast to the non-bounded, continuously on-flow'ing and simultaneous se¡ies of eVents, relat'ionships, causes and effect which make up human act'ivity.

Most importantly, it is this patterning quality of the novel form which modern authors have felt 'impelled to challenge. Since the world described in the major American novels of the sixties and Seventies is to different degrees an incoherent, seemingly jrratjonal, absurd one, the traditional "realist'ic" novel forms seem quite 'inappropriate. 0n the other hand, in order to communicate effectively hìs v'ision of things, ôflV novelist must present his ideas, however complex, with some sort of coherence and order and avoid "the 26

fallacy of expresS'iVe, or imitative, form."30 The patternlessness and mystery of life cannot be rendered by a patternless and unfathomable novel; the artist cannot justìfy the formlessness of his work by claiming that he is writìng about disorder or madness. The art of wrìting is, after all, to convince, to persuade and enable the reader to follow and understand the argument or thoughts which the writer has in his own mind.

I,rJi th twentieth century I i terature, where the perce'ived di stance between present experience and both the experience of the past and the trad'itìonal forms which are avajlable for writing about experience is so great, it might seem diffjcult to establjsh valid connections between the style of a novel and the philosoph'icaì framework within which it is written. In general, though, the stylist'ic technìques of modern American fiction are not markedly different from those employed in earlier novels; that is, they require the development of no new reading ski'11s. The purpose and interest of a styl'istically-based critical study lie in d'iscoverìng the ways 'in which modern authors have used traditional techniques to serve new'

often qu'i te dj fferent ends . 27

CHAPTER 2

THE lVlODERN AIVIERI CAN NOVEL,

INFLUENCES AND TRENDS

Various commentators on twentieth century fiction have spoken of the "international novel", implying that the increas'ing ease of intellectual con¡nunication between the 0ld and the New hlorlds has resulted in a break'ing down of the distinctions between the literatures of different nations. In some respects thjs is what has happened: certain themes, related to the particular crises and conditions of twentieth century experience' do recur in English' European and Amèrican literature. 0n the other hand, though, there are still certain qualities which render many of the most'important post-l^lorld l¡Jar II American novels di stinctively American. They are novels which explore'in an often extreme manner issues taken from ord'inary, objectively unexceptional experience' which apply to thejr subject matter a particular kind of black yet exuberant humour, which deal as if by compulsion with the betrayals of the Amerjcan Dream, which take existentialism as their ph'ilosophicaì explanatjon of reality and yet do not conclude despa'iringly. The saving element is typically one of romance, traditionally the form which the American writers found most congenial to their treatment of experience, distorted often jn the modern novel by parody, but rareìy so djstorted that'its essential opt'imism and faith in human struggle is abandoned a1 together. 28

In the years following world t4|ar II, lasting almost to 1960, as Malcolm Cowley points out,l it was not fiction by younger writers that flourished, but rather it was criticism that became a field of discovery in which works by American writers of the past were re- examined and reinterpreted, resulting ìn new awarenesses of connections between contemporary authors and their eighteenth and nineteenth century predecessors. Since about 1960, fiction-writing has experienced a release of creative energy, and it is interesting to note that more important writers than at any other time now hold formal ties wìth institutions of learnihg, ô phenomenon that indicates a new recognition of literature as itself a serious and leg'itimate form of knowledge, a means of th¿nking about existence as well as describing it.2 No doubt, a'lso, such a situation maintains a heightened consciousness among authors of their l'inks with their literary heritage and its history of rebellion, both against established forms and against the rece'ived values and beliefs of the society of the

time.

while the maior movements of thought influencing the form which the American novel has taken'in the twentieth century have

come from Europe (ìn this sense the American novel often qual'ifies as an "international novel"), this is not to say that they brought

new elements into the Ame¡ican rendering of life: rather, as indìcated ìn the precedìng chapter, the directions taken by the new nation made its writers part'icuìarly open to the European influences

as prov'id'ing new and dramat'ic ways of express'ing the o'ld problems.

Richard chase, contrast'ing the American with the Engìish novel, observes that while the Engljsh novel characteristically 29

draws contradictions and abnormalities of experience and behaviour into a moral centrality or movement towards harmony, the Ænerican novel often explores the aesthetic possjbilities of radical forms of al ienation, contradictjon, and disorder.3 In the American novel tradition, the soc'ial novel or novel of manners plays a smaller part than in English ljterature. The tendency instead is towards various forms of poetic symbolization, mythopoeic and metaphoric representation of the inner life and ideal worlds. Wh'ile the central concern of Engfish novelists throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the accommodation of indivjdual aspirations within the sheltering embrace of the social framework, the central concern of the major

Amerìcan novelists was with those'indjvidual asp'irations that are

'incapable of accommodation within any social framework except, perhaps, the unrealized American dream of freedom, equafity and iustice.

Henry James brought the two traditions together in confrontation in

his own "international" novels of encounters between Europeans and Americans. His best works "express in metaphor how much the condition

of modern man hangs continual'ly 'in the balance between the European dream of social accommodation and the American dream of perfect

4 freedom . "

In this respect, James places himself in the line of important American novelists whose novels take their energy and thejr form from the percept'ion of contradictions and radical disunities rather than unities and accommodat'ion. As De Tocqueville noted, from earìy on there was a disparity between ideals and practice, thought and experìence, a tendency of the American mind to oscillate rather w'ild1y

between ideas "that are all either extremely minute and clear or 30

extremely general and vague."s As indicated in the Introductory chapter, the contradictions which continue to preoccupy American novel'ists seem traceable to certain historical conditìons: the divided a'llegiance of the new American, to the culture and stabilities of the 0ld World and to the immediate needs and envisioned future of the New; the solitary pos'ition of the American settler, a position enforced both psychologica]'ly and phys'ically by the doctrines of Puritanism and Calvinism and, later, by frontier cond'itions; the theology of New Engìand, where much of America's jntellectual life had its begìnnings, which itself turned on extremes, dividing the elect from the damned and stressing always the eternal struggle of good and evil.*

T.S. Eliot's elaborated metaphor of the Wasteland, with which the twentieth century began, remains the paradigm of modern culture and exiStence for many American writers in what one m'ight call the 'l non-real i st trad'iti on . Fol I owi ng l,rlorl d l^lar I and, espec'ia'l ly, after World l¡Jar II, Amerjcan fìction underwent a burst of creat'ivity in response to the perceived "Sickness" in contemporary soc'iety. In novels of the sixties in particular, this sickness has been described vlith great vitality, the w¡iters seem'ing to draw energy from ennui, despa'ir and alienation, and rendering a supposedly sterile world profoundly complex and interesting through the inventive powers of

* The domination of early American literary culture by Puritan theology perhaps also helps to account for the turning towards romance. Distruit of the senses and of the arts v'JaS expounded, the arts of mimetic representatjon of reality be'ing part'icularly suspect, and the sing'le mode of l'iterary expression sanctioned was allegory, a mode derived from the conviction of a prec'ise correspondence between natural objects and events and certain sp'iritual truths. 31

their imagination. The protagonìsts may be sp'iritually lost' alienated, mad, or merely dull and aimless, but by the nature of the'ir experiences or the intensity of their thoughts and feelings - or rather, the author's rendering of them - they engage the reader's interest and concern as representatives of the common, fundamental conditions of twentieth century, absurd ex'istence.

The language, the style itself, of these novels is responsible in large part for thejr dynamism. The other major factor contribut'ing to thei r distincti ve "Ameri canness" is the part'icuìar vers'ion or reversal of the romance form which they embody.

Richard Poirier raises an 'important issue when he quest'ions whether certain types of experience or states of consciousness are much harder to put into language than others' impìy'ing that the experience wh'ich American authors have wished to exp'lore has often been of this kind.6 Although he uses this idea as the basis of his criticism of attempts to categorize works of fiction at all, he perhaps points indirectly towards an understanding of why the romance form, or at least techniques traditional'ly associated with romance, has always played so large a part'in the product'ion of American fi ct'ion .

Among early American writers, the first to deliberately apply romance methods to material conventionally treated real'istically was Nathaniel Hawthorne. His use of romance rather than verisimilitude arose from h'is belief that all truth that matters is inner, that externalities are inherentìy deceptive and that therefore the important thing was the construction of a fictive world which 32

remained faithful to the artist's 'inmost vision. In the Preface to his novel The Hotæe of the Seuen GaþLes, which is subtitled "A

Romance", he sets down the princ'ip1es underly'ing his use of form:

A Romance - tdhile, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonab'ly so far as 'it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart - has fai rly a night to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing or creation. If he think fjt, also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lìghts and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a very moderate use of the privilege here stated, and, espec'ia1ly, to m'ing1e the Marvellous rather as a slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor, than any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the pubìic.7

In the romance, in the medieval tale as in the "romantic" novels of the nìneteenth century, p'lot and action domi nate over psycholog'ical characterization. The form is indeterminate, enveloping a variety of ep'isodes which may not seem sequentially or logically re'lated and which often - increasingly in the nineteenth century - have reference to the supernatural and 'irrat'ional areas of experience and fee'l'ing. Metaphor is employed as a structural device, i n both characteri zati on and narrati ve , often tak'ing on myth'i c, aììegorical or symboì'ic sign'ificance. The romance implies when it does not define an ideal world, an alternative to the unsatisfactory world of the familiar present, and it asserts the dignity and worth of perseverance, even to the po'int of death, in the face of obstacles hindering the attainment of that jdeal condition.

Americans, from the beginn'ings of the colony, have been aware of themselves as caught between the probìems and responsibilities of 33

the here and now and thejr hankering after another world, ejther the 0ld hJorld w'ith its stabilit'ies of history, tradition and social structure, or, on the other hand, the "New World Eden", the ideal

ì and symbol i zed by the l¡lestern frontier, where i ndi vi dual freedom and happiness u,ere attainable and maintainable. Romance provides this kind of escape, through language; while the conventional novel mimors an environment a'lready accredited by history and society, in the romance the author creates an essentially imaginary environment for the hero. In the modern versions of romance it may be ostensibly a setting in ord'inary, contemporary society, but it will have a quality of strangeness or mystery - stylistically created and often deriving from the lack of concrete detail delineating it - which sets it apart from while it remains within the ordinary reality, becoming an externalization of the protagonist's or the author's state of mind. John Hawkes, who in h'is first novel, The CønníbaL, took the additional distancing step of situatjng h'is narrative jn a geographically non-

American setting, writes with respect to the modern author's task of "that absolute need to create from the'imag'inat'ion a totally new and necessary fictional ìandscape or Visionary world";B and John Barth asserts that "what you Ithe novelist] rea1ly want to do js re-invent the world This impulse to imagine alternatives to the world can become a driv'ing impulse for writers."e It is an attitude anticipated and summarized at the beg'inn'ing of the century by the linguistic phì'losopher Ludwig l,,littgenstein: "To imagine a language means to imagi¡e a form of life," he said, and "The lim'its of my language mean the limits of my world."I0 34

Central to the general feeling of the breakdown of traditional values and social relationships, of the very patterns of exjstence in all areas of life, which began in the nineteenth century and came to a peak in the early twentieth century, and which has p'layed a particularly important part in the directions taken by American fiction, .is a loss of faith in the primacy of the word, in the possib'ility of ordering real'ity w'ithin the governance of language'

George Steiner, in his study of the dimjnishing power of language to account for reality entitled "The Retreat from the Word"' argues that until the seventeenth century, the sphere of language encompassed nearly the whole of experience and reality; even mathematics, its ngf u'l symbo'li c notati on , v,Jas a shorthand for verbal proposi ti ons meani within the framework of lingu'istjc description. Today, though:

0ther areas belong to the sub-languages or anti- languages of non-obiective art and mus'ique concrete' 'image s f rom . the of the worl d i - recedi ng the conmunicative érasp of the word. II

The consequences for philosophy and literature of this shrinking of the sphere of verbal statement have been crucial. Classic and med.ieval phi losophy were whol ìy comm'itted to the d'ign'ity and resources of language, to the belief that "words could bring the mjnd ìnto accord with reality,tr12 a belief which literature as well held on to throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the early

decades of the twentieth century, however' among the attacks which

came from all directions on the old traditions and authorities' was 35

the chal'lenge to the authority of language laid down by Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein's entire work starts out by asking whether there is any verjfiable relation between the word and the fact, between language and rea'lity. He compels us to question whether reality can truly be spoken of, whether words can account for either the experience or even the percept'ion of real i ty.

The estrangement from language which wittgenstein made a central problem of philosophy, then, was part of the general abandonment of confidence in the stabilitìes and expressive authority of European civil ization which developed around World War I. From the artistic side, Symbolism, Dadaism and Surrealism had made writers, too' agonizingly conscious of the problems assoc'iated with evokìng reaìity - both external facts and internal feelings - through the medium of language. Literature in general, and the novel in particular, had traditionally been seen as a way of ordering reality, of draw'ing out the patterns of the superfic'ial disorgan'ization and variety of life ' forms and congruities which actualìy existed within it and which were intimately re]ated to the fundamental laws, the moral system itself, on which society vvas based.

In the immediate post-war years, Proust, Joyce and Kafka produced novels which, although jn other ways quite unalike, through their intense subiectivity refuted the old notion of the general moral basis and valjdity of the novel form and asserted that the only values, percept'ions and reactions which matter and which are true are those of the experiencìng indjvidual. Confidence in the ability of 'language to contain and g'ive shape to the contents of the 36

indivjdual mind is still impìicit in the works of these writers, as it is in the novels coming from A,merica in the between-wars period - though in Dos Passos' U.S.A. the despair which is central to his version of America is closeìy related to what happens to language in the book: from the Camera Eye sections in the preface which first 'identjfy the meanness of America with American speech and the meaning of words, there is a constant concern' expressed both dramatically and explicitly, with the corrupt'ion of language and the related perversion of ideals by the ruìing classes.

After l^lorld War II, a nurnber of novelists, particu]arly American wri ters, found in l^Jittgenstein a philosoph'ical rendering of their uneasiness at attempting, in the first pìace, to transcribe their

own private visions of realjty through a common language, and second'ly, to describe a chaot'ic, incoherent, absurd world by means of a rule- and tradition-governed, limiting and essentjaìly "untrue" verbal system. The belief in the alienation of the artist, wh'ich the

Romantjc movement had incorporated and which is a basic premise of

modernism,takes on a new quality w'ith the novelists of the fjfties and sixties. t^lhile for poets, painters and novelists of the post-World War I pe¡iod, the artist's sense of alienation vlas from the conventional values and authorities of his society, after the Second l¡lorld War the alienation extended to a distrust of the medium of communication itself, forcing novelists to operate from a sense of radical disiunction between words and things.

Tony Tanner relates the American concern with the kind of

questi ons about 'language rai sed by trli ttgenste'in to the abi d'ing dream 37

in American literature that an unpatterned, unconditioned life is possjble, that the individual can achieve the freedom to make hjs own choice to ensure his own happiness, a dream which is accompan'ied by an abiding dread that one's life is being patterned, controlled in a way that deprives the individual of his autonomy of thought and action and conditions him to act, oftenoagaìnst his own interest. "The problematical and amb'iguous relationship of the self to patterns of all kinds - social , psycholog'ica1 , linguistic - is an obsess'ion among recent American writers", says Tanner,13 and goes on to compare the predicament of the fjctional hero attempting to extricate himself from a series of fixed environments, includ'ing those of hjstory, with the predicament of the author, struggling to avoid becoming trapped by his style, by the conventions of language and the novel tradition. As Richard Poirier points out while developing a simjlar argument'in his book A Woz,Ld. ELseuheye, aesthet'ic theories of f iterary and styl.istic independence have been a preoccupation of American writers from nearly the beginn'ings of the literature;ra Emerson's artjculation of them as part of Transcendentalism in the mid-nineteenth century is revjved by the existent'ialism-influenced writers of the post-1945 peniod. Poirier's title refers to the effort by each author to construct frOm the resources of language "a world elSewhere", a world usually located in and bu'i1t upon the mind and sensibilities of the hero, incidentalìy rather than inherently related to the established patterns of social behaviour and verbal conventjon of Europe and the EuroPean novel.

In the k'inds of novels discussed by Tanner and Poirier, a central concern is the djfficulty of communication, the sense that 3B

language has been so manipulated - by politicians, advertisers, propagandists of all types - that it is no longer reliable as a means of accurately transmitting one person's thoughts or feelings to another, or even of thinking cìearly oneself. This On¡rellian view overlaps w'ith the aesthetic and phiìosoph'ica'l quest'ionings of the valìdity of language as codifjer of any part of realjty, internal or external. (Walker Percy brings the issue back to the individual in a different way when he suggests that not only can peop'le no

longer communicate With each other, but they can no longe¡ see, 'linguist'ic perceìve things accurately, unmediated by their previous Is encounters . )

To the writer who feels that the reliabil'ity of language as a

medium of reality is in quest'ion, two essential courses are avajlable:

he may choose silence, the abandonment of language altogether' or he

may seek to render his own idiom representative of the general cris'is, us'ing the exist'ing language'in a way that calls attention to his rejection of the limitations jnherent in its structures and conventions, its "rubricizing" tendencies, and thus convey his sense of the precariousness and vulnerabi'l'ity of the communjcative act itself' This kind of author is, as Tanner notes,16 an unusually common

phenomenon in modern American literature: in novel after novel the language draws attention to itself, compe'lfing recognition by the reader of the author's presence in h'is work.

The old realist doctrine that words must be like windows through which events, including psycholog'ical processes, could be clearly observed'is mocked in the blatant use of all the elements of 39

ìanguage - individual words, grammatical structure, different registers, metaphor and symbol - ìn 'incongruous or unconventional ways to transmit the author's version of his protagon'ist's experience. In the novels examined'in this thes'is, distortion of language serves the primary purpose of representing ironically the protagon'ist's experience of a distorted, absurd world. In another group of novels - including those of Barth, Nabokov, Borges and Pynchon - the further statement'is aimed at, the proposition that not only are the perceptions of different individuals equaìly val'id, and equally false' but that the fictions - the artifices - created by writers are as real, as valid and meaningfuì as life experience itself, since in recreat'ing

our own past, intellectually or verbally, we all distort it and it

becomes our own fiction.

Such a view of art as artjfice parallels the prìmary "doctrine" of exjstential jsm that man first of al I exists, then consc'ious'ly acts to create his own essence, making of himself what he chooses; in a 'language sjmilar v,,ay, the writer has his given and must struggle with it in h'is attempt to not merely "tell a story" but to create a literary artifact, his own "city of Words", to use Tanner's term' The alienatjon of the writer from the source of his expression becomes symbolic of the atienatjon of the common man from the source of his

f . i dentj ty, the env'ironment wi th'in an d aga'inst whi ch he defines himsel The paradox'is the same on both levels: meaning must be made from,

and despi te, essent'i ally meaningless materials'

Two contemporary American writers who have dealt wjth thjs 'in issue both jmaginatjvely in their novels and theoretically their 40

discuss'ions of the pfight of the language user are Walker Percy and John Barth. In the essays collected under the title Ihe Message in the BottLe, Percy attempts to formulate the connection between man's existentjal estrangement from the world and his sense of the incompatability between h'is experience and the words he must use to express it to himself and to others. Alienation he defines as the loss of communication between the observer and the "signs" wh'ich make up his environment - the "signs" are absurd or at least amb'iguous and he proposes the aesthetic reversal of alienation by art, by writing about it (as he himself does in his novel The Mouiegoen). Barth starts by regard'ing the problem from a wider angle but narrows h'is attention towards spec'ific reconmendations for the novelist. His starting-point'is the existential one that the notion of any stable meanjng or absolute value inhering in the actual world is false. Thìs g'ives rìse to an ambiguous kind of freedom for both the individual as represented by the character in the novel and for the author in h'is fiction-mak'ing. In his ear'ly novel , The End of the Road, Barth defines this freedom and also'implies the ironic reversal of the "realiSt" theories of literature wh'ich he was to explore in hìs succeeding novels. The Doctor in The End of the Road, a self-styled existentialist, asserts the Sartrean doctrjne that "a man is free not only to choose his own essence but to change it at will; he should

choose a role appropriate to each situation in which he finds himself

and as soon as the s'ituation changes he shouìd stop playing that

and adopt another."IT Each person, accord'ing to the Doctor' Sees others as minor characters in a ljfe story whose major charactelis himself. Such a view of l'ife is actually a distortion because 4T

objectively "there are no essentially major or minor characters. To that extent, all fiction is a lie."IB 0n the other hand, though, and this is the paradox that Barth exploits, fiction'is a kind of true representation of reality'in that it is a true representation of the distortion vúe all make of life. With The Sot-

Weed Factor, and then wi th GiLes Goat-Boy, Barth takes this notjon a step further still, to the linguistic and fiterary core of the problem. Since words are merely a simplification and distortion of things, realism, which is based on the theory that words can transpose reality on to paper, is not a "truthful" literary technique; Barth's alternative to carrying ìanguage to the end of this road - that js, to silence - is to imitate the world not directly, but the world as it had aìready been distorted in the eighteenth century noveì. In Barth's nove'ls, as in no other American writer's, the existential view of the contradictory nature of man's relationship with the world is dramatized in a way that makes literature as much an intellectual game as the revelation of truth about human nature and experience that it is traditionalìy considered to be.

This approach to fiction results in novels which are fundamentally amoral, which have no stated or impìied moral centre, whose characters embody no parti cul ar pos'i ti ve or negati ve qual j t'ies , and in which parody'is ubiquitous and satire is djrected at the trivial and the traditionally djgnified or authoritat'ive in all areas of life. Despite the many similarities of style and technìque between the novels of Barth and Pynchon and those of writers like Heller, Kesey and Vonnegut, the ruìing tone'in the novels of the former is parody - of literary convention and the literary act 42

itself - not satire or "black humour". Nabokov' a master of the "art as artifice" manner himself, makes the distinction clearly: "satire is a lesson, parody is a game."Ie

The concern with the validity of language'is very much related

to the themes of alienation and the individual which have dominated twentieth century writing and thjnking about life. In all novels examined in this thesis, as in very many other post-1945 novels, the failure of language,both as a means of communicat'ing with others and aS a means of making Sense of one'S own experience, is used to symboìize and dramatize the genera'l absurdity experienced by the protagoni st.

Yet despite the stated dissatisfaction of many authors with

the.ir verbal medium and despite the pronouncements of various critìcs on the "death of the novel", Amerìcan wrjters continue to find new and conv'inc'ing ways of presenting the'ir characters' experience' The influence of the European writers of the beginn'ing of the century - of Joyce, l,rloolf, Proust, Kafka - still seems a potent force in American literature and sty'le. Desp'ite their many differences, what

these writers have in common is their subiective focus; in them the

sense of the w'i der soc'i al envi ronmen t, the external real i ty to whi ch the individual belongs, 'is quite subservient to the protagonìst's

own 'internal experience, for the contents of his consciousness make up the whole of reality and things acquire their significance purely through the psycholog'ical medjum in which they are experienced - not through any connection with the values of the external world. Thus language changes from being a comparatively neutral medium for the 43

expression of actions and relationships and becomes inseparably involved v',ith the eccentric work'ings of the protagonjst's mind, with "the live tangle of subconscious life."20

Along with the stress on subjectivity came a new conception of t'ime, one which has become a major characterist'ic of twentieth century literature and genera'l experience. The time experience of the modern period consists above all in an awareness of the psychological present, of the moment in which the protagon'ist finds himseìf, in contrast to the njneteenth century novelist's consciousness of tradition and hjs feefing for the movements of history and society towards changed stateS. In Joyce'S "stream of conScjousnesS" method especìaì1y, but also in the retrospect'ive style of Proust and the nightmare-fantasy of Kafka, the emphasis js on the uninterruptedness of the movement of the protagonist's mind, the "heterogeneous continuumr', the kaleidoscopic picture of the world refracted by the specific qualities of his awareness. In Arnold Hauser's words:

The accent is now on the simultaneity of the contents of consciousness, the immanence of the past in the present, the constant flowing together of the d'ifferent periods of time, the amorphous fluidjty of inner experience, the boundlessness of the stream of time by which the soul is borne along, the relativ'ity of space and time, that'is to say, the impossibìlity of differentiat'ing and defin'ing the media in which the mind moves.2r

0f course this attitude towards psychology did not come as a totalìy new force into Amerjcan literature. In Hawthorne, Melville and Twain there is already the suggestion that true reality and real values are to be found only in the ìnd'ividual and his personal relations to others, and not in the standards of his socìety. From 44

his different stand-point, James worked towards a fictional technique that placed the centre of the novel in the mind of an observant character, an intense perceiver who was not only self-aware but also able to act as an instrument whereby the values of the obiective situation surrounding him might be recorded; thus to some extent the distinction between external and internal disappears and the world is as perceived and defined by that central figure.

In the generation of American novelists writing after World War I, Fau'lkner was the one who showed most European influence, in his prob'ing ìnto his characters' psyches through anti-realist techn'iques involving stream of consciousness narration, flashbacks, shifts in chronology, blendings of factual narration and poetic renderings of perception. In contrast, Hemjngway and Dos Passos spend l'ittle time ins'ide their characters'heads, preferring gestures, actions, talk instead, but the theme of the aljenated individual - in

Hemingway's case the jndividual cut off from the values and moral supports of his forefathers, 'in Dos Passos' novels the individual betrayed as well by the structure itself of his society - rema'ins a central one.

These were the novelists who first aroused critical and popularinterest in Europe for American fiction and who contributed to the shaping of existentialjsm'in France after World War II.

Although Camus and Sartre were part'icular'ly attracted by the stylistjc innovations of the Amerjcans, the thjnking embodied jn their language connects at many po'ints with the existential version of human life which was to be developed. As exjstentialism itself derived from certain elements of romanticism, so the morality in 45

(J.5.A., aS in many of Hemingway's stories and the early novels, is a romantic morality: "the moment to be snatched, the crucìal choice to be made, and if it is made on the wrong (the safe) side, the loss

of human quali ty .n22 It is however, a morali ty w'ithout any optìmism since it fails to include that side of life which takes in "the wìll to struggle ahead, the comradeship in struggle, the cOnscjousness Of new men and new forces cOntinua'l1y arising,"23 and

as such connects wi th primary exìstential'ism, exìstentjalism unameliorated by the concept of "commitment" which Sartre was to proclaim. Like Fitzgeral d in The Gz,eat Gatsby, Dos Passos ties his characters' disillusionment to the breakdown of the American Dream: as F'itzgera'ld, in the conclus'ion to his novel, jdentified Gatsby's story and the meaning of his fa'ilure with the fajlure of the American Experìence, so Dos Passos links the death in defeat of Sacco and Vanzettj with the defeat of the ideal vìsion with which American culture began' and he dramatizes this defeat in the most concrete of settings, the

bi g ci ty.

Ex'is tenti al i sm codi fi ed the s tate of mi nd whi ch fol I ows upon the bitterness of realization of lost values and ideals.

Devel op'i ng out of l¡lorl d llJar I I , i t brought together the vari ous

movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century which arose out of the perceived confrontation betu,een the individual and the facts of his experience, movements which Americans found particularly relevant to their own exPerìence.

Just as the fuentieth century novel represents a rejection of traditional beliefs about the relatìonship between reality and fjction, so existentialism challenges the conventional ph'ilosophical 46

methods. The relationship between the philosophical and the ìiterary development is indicated cìearly in this opening paragraph of Patrick Masterman's analysis of existent'ialism:

A characteristic feature of all existentialist

exi s ten ti al i sm resi s ts the common phi 1 osophi cal presumption that to know truly and profoundly we must achi,eve a transformation of consciousness from the standpoint of individual subject'ivity to that of a detached impersonal spectator of an absolute order of obiective reaì'ity. 0n the

In many ways, existent'ialism is romantjcism revealing its dark, pessimistic aspect: whjle the individual's feelings and experience of life remain the primary source of truth, in the twentieth century novel he is more often the victim of the society or systems opposing hìm than he is the hero or the seeker of "heightened experience" of the Romantics. In the fuentieth century the awareness of individuality no longer entajls a sense of freedom from the restrictions of conventional soc'iety; instead the "hero" has to live with the agonizing necessity both of mak'ing choices about

how to act without the convent'ional moral guidelines and of bearing responsibiljty for his actions despite the absence of absolute values. 'immedi and T,lhi le the Romanti cs tended to view i ntui ti on, ate experience closeness to nature as somehow means of placing the individual in

harmony with the ultimate truths underlying creation and human experience, the modern existent'ialist is burdened by the knowledge 47

that there is no ultimate truth of this kind, that instead the world is fundamentally chaotic and meaningless in terms of absolute values or even consistent patterns of relation and functioning.

Since the existentialist th'inker acknowledges the sovereignty of ind'ividual choice and the importance of the concrete situation, he cannot address himself to his audience in the manner of traditional phiìosophy - that is, merely through a system of concepts or abstract theories - for the reader has to make his own choices 'in the l'ight of his own experiences. Because I j ved experience is the only valid crjterion of truth, the existent'ialists see the ri ght method of ph'i l osophi z'ing as descri pt'i ve or revel atory. The ph'i'losopher is not so much concerned to expla'in or to systematize as to evoke, to reveal, to show without telling. As Heidegger says: "I cannot proue anyth'ing in philosophy, but I thìnk I can shou some things."25 All the maior existentialist philosophers have written 'large systematic treatises, but they have also made contributions to imag'inatjve literature, dramatic dialogue, whether in plays, novels or autobiography, proving a form of expression equally if not more suitable as a vehicle of the author's thinking than deduct'ive argument would be. In this the French existentìalists were antic'ipated by llittgenstein, whose thinking was based on the belief that philosophy' as ìanguage'itseìf, could on'ly describe a proportion of reality and could reveal or show the other part, that which is traditionaìly categorized as religion or moral'ity, only ìndirectly'

sìnce 1945, the serious Amerjcan novel has moved away from naturalism and concern with social defeats and victories and has 48

turned back to romance forms, or to elements of the old forms, as did the early masters of American fiction, to explore the "other world" of ind'ividual consciousness and individual response to absurd existence. The world of the contemporary novel is a seemingly hallucinatory one of merging fact and fantasy, an externalization of the hero's psyche rather than the photographically rendered world of the social novel of the thirties. Social wrongs are still an issue in novels like InuisibLe Man, Cateh-22, One FLeu Ouev'the Cuckoo's Nest' but the question of repairling these wrongs seems qu'ite beside the point; the ubiquitousness of absurdìty, as symbolìzed in these novels'in the institut'ions, the very workings of society, makes belief 'in the possibility of change meaningless, and escape becomes the only alternative to sinking into and being destroyed by absurdity. In thìs respect, the failure to offer posit'ive alternatives to the criticìzed society, the modern novel is often not constructed around any moral system apart from that centred in the'individual himself.

A particular outcome of the various twentieth century

movements based on subjective criteria in assessing real'ity has been the "'leg'itimizing" of madness as a valid source of truth. The fool or simpleton had from Shakespeare and Cervantes through to Dickens

been used to comment on and crjticize the "norms" of the socìety, but

was not made the fulcrum of meaning or value for his world. Dostoevsky and Poe ant'ic'ipate the change in their use of madman as the narrative centre of consciousness and thus as a means of penetrating to some profounder truth about life than "san'ity" could discover. Increas'ingly in the twentieth century nove'1, madness is viewed not as an "abnormal" state of mind so much as a nonnal, 49

"log'ica'l" response to contemporary conditions of disorder and 'l meani ngl essness , i nsti tuti onal i 1og'ic and abs urdi ty. Kafka' s paranojd v'ictims of bureaucracy come to be seen as models or archetypes of the modern man in opposition to the repressjve systems enveloping h'im. In a large group of novels written since the Second l,,lar, madness is taken aS the typica] reaction to ex'istential absurdity - rather than as an outcome of psychological, 'inter-personal problems, the questioning of the div'iding l'ine between sanity and madness becoming a primary method of indicating the intrusion of absurdìty 'into ordinary 'l'ife.

Styl'isti cal ly, the effect of th j s wi despread use of madness to illustrate absurdity has been an emphasis on fantasy as the most appropriate method of expressing the protagonist's experience. Following the lead of the Surrealist painters' novelists of the absurd have recognìzed in the peculiar mixed real'ity of dreams their

own stylistic ideal. "The dream becomes a paradigm of the whole world-p'icture, in which real'ity and unreality, logìc and fantasy' the banality and sublimity of exìstence, form an indissoluble and inexplicable unjty.n26 Thus the form of the modern novel becomes deliberate ambiguity, mirroring the uncertainty and bewilderment which experience of the absurd evokes. Insanity, the confus'ion of the internal and the external, becomes not merely the metaphor for

comprehending reality, but the means of revealing "the chaotic multipl.ic.ity of meanings both on and beneath the surface of soc'ial

I i fe" 27 whtch exi stenti al i sm asserts .

, In interv'iews and articles, novelists such as Phillip Roth'

John Hawkes, John Barth and Kurt Vonnegut have indicated that the 50

fantasy, the grotesque humour, the apparent exaggeration of their noyels have thejr origin very much in reality, in the daiìy news bulletins and in the experiences of ordinary people'in everyday life. The facts of contemporary existence are constant'ly beyond belief' the unbelievable, the grotesque and the fantastic are no ìonger ch'ief'ly the prov'ince of imagìnation but intrude at al1 points into what was once the firm shape of everyday rea'lity, and this blurring of the traditional categorìes of fact and fjction is what leads the author back towards romance, where the 'irrational and mysterious surround the hero'S movements, where events follow one another without ostensible causation and nothing, person or obiect, can be immed'iate'ly trusted, where the hero's main task'is to make his way among ambiguity and deception towards his goaì.

Raymond 0l dermann , after descri bi n9 the post-worl d l¡lar I I "existential" novel as a form of American romance defined by the indjv'idual's existentìal encounter with the facts of experience and heavily dependent on the ironjc mode, observes that the quest of the hero, or anti-hero, for self-know'ledge or self-ljberation, is usually a static one;27 he may be confined in an institution or by routine, or his spiritual journey may prove itself to be aimless and

unpr"oducti ve, a parody of the poss'ibi I i ti es of moral growth and spiritual progress trad'itionally symbolized by the iourney. 0ldermann, too, SeeS this movement towards contemporary versions of

romance as a responSe to the fabulous nature of fact, and a means of contaj.ning the protagonist's feeling of help'lessness and h'is seeming compuìsion to play the clown despite or because of his sense of some mysteri ous Iheg who have an 'irrational hold on th'ings. As he remarks, 51

part of the frighten'ing impact of recent novels is'in the apprehension that the fantastic events they depict may not iust be capturìng "the truths of the human heart" but may be truly rendering the actual texture of human experìence.2B

In post-l¡'lar I i terature, parody of the romanti c quest undergoes various metamorphoses. James Purdy's MaLcoLrn belongs to the l'ine of American novels which sets the innocent in an indjfferent or hostile world which he cannot understand. However, nothing illuminative or constructive comes of all Malcolm's various experience; he is used, manipulated, brutalized and ultimately discarded by the people he encounters and the outcome'is his sp'iritual as welì as physicaì death. In contrast to Malcolm, Saul Bellow's

Henderson in Hendenson úte Rain king is middle-aged and a thinker who agonizes over the existential questions to do with the atta'inment of a meaningful life and confrontation with the fact of death, driven by an jndefinable inner need, "I want! I want!", whjch takes him to Africa and a series of strange, symbo'l-laden adventures in search of answers; but Henderson is hardly the conventional Romantic hero, and his own self-mockery as well as the range of ironies represented in his experiences, culminating in the last scene's exaggeratjon of the traditjonal American attainment of transcendance, renders his quest - wh'ich in fact began as escape - a g¡imly humorous paral'le1 to or satiric commentary on the condition of the ordinary' unsatisfied, static man of urban society. The concept'ion and scope of Hendez'son is perhaps matched onìy by Barth's The Sot-tleed Factor, a pastiche of conventional styles which relentlessly parodies the initiat'ion-and- quest novel . Its hero attempts to personni fy Innocence but gains only 52

trouble, and while his iourney becomes despite him a journey from innocence to experience, Barth, in contradiction of the Romantìc model, does not prefer jnnocence over experience or regret the loss of innocence - such regret is itself a source of parody. Parody of the quest theme in Thomas Pynchon's novels I/ and The Crying of Lot 49 'is the only real constant in the confusion of seemingly gratuitously related narrative sequences and displays of ìingu'istic ingenuity, and Pynchon stretches the journey of discovery motif to its comic limits, using'it to sati¡ize the search for certainties which pre- occup'ies modern man. In the novels g'iven detailed examination in the later chapters of this thesjs, the quest becomes above al1 escape' either from the conditions of the present or the problems of the past.

Although such novels as those named above - so-called "absurdist" novels, are marked by their bizarre or black humour, their satjric commentary on contemporary American life, its spiritual and emotional bankruptcy, the loss of both community and communication, is intense and incisive. While there are, typically, comparat'ive'ly few non-ironic references to actual society - the kind of details from which conventional "realist" and "social" novels are constructed - the events of these novels form recognizable analogues of the events of ordinary, real existence, and the emotional responseS of the characters are those of real people in the paral'lel situatìons. It is this sense that such novels are convey'ing the actual texture of contemporary experience that makes them modern aì1egorìes with the

same depth and resonance as traditional Christian allegoricaì works.

The i roni c rel at'ionsh'ip between the contemporary author and his use of the romance form is mult'i-ìayered. Parody per se prov'ides 53

novelists of the absurd with a method for rejecting the traditional pretens'ions of literature to comprehend and order reality, while at

the same t'ime prov'iding the necessary framework - of plot progression, characterization, and so on - for communication to occur. For Anericans the romance form is a part'icuìar'ly appropriate source of parody since it had from the start been used to express the dreams and bel'iefs of Amerjcans about the potential'itjes of existence in the

New t¡lorld and also to penetrate to without necessari]y comenting

openìy upon other, more negatiVe "truths" about human nature and expe¡ience. Parody of romance implies the modern author's rejection of the old values, of the beliefs and ideals contribut'ing to the American Dream, yêt at the same time it connects him with his literary heritage, with both the optim'ist'ic exponents of the Dream and with those who exposed its flaws. As a number of commentators have noted,2e no major Arnerican novelist has been able to avoid confrontation with the American Dream, whether d'irectly or by imp'lication, in sati re or mere'ly through i rony. Increasi ngly 'in post- 1945 f i cti on, what i s essentially an optimistic form - one in which'innocence is not negated by expe¡ience or rendered meaningless - becomes cynicaì and pessimistic, yet the twist towards parody is rarely so great that'it

prevents the romance element from making possible endings which, in the terms of the novel itself, are optimistic - resolving'in escape' for example, rather than destruction - even if in the context of the novel as a whole they must be vjewed ironical]y. The allegorical tendency of the romance form accords, too, with the efforts of a

number of modern authors to use everyday or institutional absurd'ity to symbolize the general absurdity of exjstentìalism, that is, to 54

dramatize the connection between ordinary experience and the philosophicaì issues raised by the French existentialists.

S jmi larly, the treatment of the ord'inary worl d as the imaginary' d'istanced world of romance provides another way of represent'ing the alienation of modern man, his feeling that his environment wh'ich should be familiar, explicable and safe, is instead strange, illogica] and threatening to his phys'ical and his spiritual freedom, a hostile force to be fought against. Parody, acting at a further remove from romance, but ljke romance, provides an oblique way of getting to what js seen as the "truth" of life perceived ex'istentia'|1y.

Through parody romance becomes satire, its obverse fiterary form, above all satire of the ideals contained'in the "American Dream". As Gillian Beer's introductory definition of romance makes clear, the basic methods of the two modes are the same:

The romance draws us entirely into its own world - a world which is never fully equivalent to our own although it must remind us of it if we are to understand it at all. It oversteps the I imi ts by whi ch I i fe i s normal'ly bounded. The world of a romance is ample and inclusive, sustained by its own inherent, often obsessive laws. It is not an entire world;'it intensifies and exaggerates certain traits in human behaviour and recièates human figures out of th'is exaggeration. It excludes some reaches of experience in order to concentrate intently upon certain themes unti I they^ take fire and seem io be the flame of life itself.2s

Both romance and satire convince by a method of del'iberate exclusion. The characters are psychologically "flat", the complex workings of their minds are not recorded, and they often seem more stereotypes or carj catures than un'ique 'indi vi dual s . Even ts , sim'i I arly, are chosen to show only one side of life. In the romance the sordid 55

aspects and everyday i rri tations are el iminated; in sat'ire the warm, sincere, intimate qua'lities of human relationships are omitted. This simplification of characters and events often carries a suggestion of aì'legorical significance; thus, the restrjcted world of the romance or satire may appear to have far wider reference as a paradigm or model of the truth underly'ing the confusion of experience which makes up ord'inary 'li fe.

A sense of irony or absurdity pervades modern American fiction, lvith the romance element providing one of the major ironic techniques employed. Through the coalescence of the two modes, however, novel'ists are able to suggest more than the existential pessimism of much absurdist drama, for in the romance, in contrast with other literary forms, the hero does realize his heroic potentiality, even 'if onìy in death, and by incorporating romance methods within even an existential frame of reference novelists affirm that there still is value jn human exìstence, even if God and the old moralities are denied, and that man somehow achieves true humanity by opposing the absurdity by which he finds himself s urrounded. 56

CHAPTER 5

EXISTENTIALISM AND THE ABSURD

IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL

For a variety of reasons existentialism was accepted particu'lar1y readily in America after t¡'Jorld l,'Jar II. As already indìcated, there was much in the American experience up to 1900 that was compatible with the existential attitude' one of the major elements of that development be'ing the emphasjs on the indjvidual over the collectiv'ity. Despite its Puritan beginnings, America developed as very much a secular society, promoting the secular values of material progress, self-sufficiency and individuality rather than the more traditional Christian ideals of self-sacrifice and communal respons'ibi'lity, and there was not in America the comfortable association between religion, custom and traditional values to be found.in Europe. In the eyes of Amerìcans as in the eyes of

Europeans , the New l^lorl d was above al I a I and of i ndi vi dual opportunity, a belief which was held in batance w'ith the seem'ingly contradjctory belief in the possible attainment of equalìty and freedom for everyone.

Exjstentialism itself can be seen as one, philosophìcal facet of a much broader movement, the trend in the arts of the past century to the increasing expìorat'ion of private, inner "WorldS". t¡lhat existentjalism emphasizes is the primacy of the ego or the self 57

while as a philosophy for living jt is generally understood to describe the effort to see and accept l'ife purely as it manifests itself to the individual at each moment; the existentìalist refuses to look for either external determjn'ing or controlling powers or inherent moral systems, but treats life as if each act'ion, human or non-human, lvere equally meaningfuì or meaningless. He reiects any attempt to impose order on or allot comparative values to the random, constantly changing f'lux of li fe.

While philosophica] existential'ism thus allows for either a "pos'it'iVe" or a "negative" attjtude towards the totality of life' seeing things as either equally valuable or equally valueless, the so-called absurd'ist approach, with which existential'ism is'int'imately related, emphasizes the negative vis'ion. Absurdist drama tends to mock attempts by individuals to find meaning, importance' or purpose ìn their lives and it does this not only by presenting characters whose efforts to find meaning fail, but also, technically' by 'in abandoning conventjonal rational devices and djscursive thought an attempt to create an erperLence of absurdi ty for the spectator or reader, leav'ing the ontological impf ications of the existent'ial framework to be apprehended more or less intuitively or subconsciously. To paraphrase Martin Essljn, absurdist fictions have renounced argu'ing about the absurdity of the human cond'ition and attempt instead to pz,esen¿ it'in being, that is, to present, w'ith the work as a whole, an impression or image of absurdity.l In many cases, it is the language and the techniques of absurdist plays as much as the startling d'isjuncture between events and the responses of characters or author to them, which "absurdìst novelS" imitate and whìch leads 58

them to be so categorized. In absurdist fiction, however, there is

not usualìy the same quality of negation that one finds in the theatre of the absurd, and many of the American absurdjst novels in particular end with a kind of affirmation, an often ironic, qualified affinnation of the value of man's defiance of hjs absurd fate.

As indicated in the preceding chapter, the existential-absurdist approach has certain consequences for the form of the contemporary novel, the problem being basicaìly that of how to order experience without denying its absurdity and disorder. The writing of novels, as John Aldridge puts it, is basically a process of ordering reality and assigning value or meaning to human experience in the social world.2 It is equally a matter of communicatjon, and for the writer to share his private vision wjth his readers it must be linked with and somehow made complementary to a larger, shared body of meaning.

Existentìalism would seem to preclude both the assignment of meanings and the possibiìity of communication, and thus signal the death of the novel as a form. Reinforced by the directions which psychology in particular and the physical, natural and social sc'iences were tak'ing, existentialism asserted the falsity of a'll the old primary assumptions previous'ly taken for granted and providing the foundation for narrative communication. Throughout the twentieth century' however, there have been writers who have found ways of responding to this situation: at the beg'innjng of the century Proust, Joyce

and Woolf created novels in which the individual consciousness became

its own arbiter, rep'lacing the external, disintegrating soc'ial values wjth its own value - which was derived above all from the thoroughness 59

and dramati c 'i ntensi ty w'i th whi ch 'i t was expressed; I ater, the novelists of the "lost generatjon" dealt with the dìlemma by making drama out of the sense of loss itself, the betraya'l of the protagon'ists by the values of their forefathers providing the underìying impetus to the narrati ve.

Far from encouraging a "literature of silence", as critics like John Aldridge and George Steine13 suggested might happen, exjstentialism - in its role as codifier of a world whene the coexistence of evil and beauty, the horrific and the comic, rendered all theories of morality meaningless, and therefore as part of the wider change - from a stable and secure absolutism to an unstable and insecure relativism - has stimulated an exciting variety of reactjons. American fiction in part'icular prov'ides almost a catalogue of responses to the prob'lems, both ethical and aesthetic, generated by the existential way of th'i nk'ing.

"Existentialism", the term itself, refers not to a s'ingìe phìlosophy or a school of thought, neither is it reducible to any set of tenets, but it serves rather as a label for several different 'li revol ts aga'i ns t tradi ti onal phi ì osophy . Any st of "exi stenti al philosophers" wìll include Jaspers, Heidegger and Sartre, who are not in agreement on essentials, alleged precursors of existential'ism include men as different as Pascal and Kierkgaard, Nietzsche and

Dostoevsky, while Rilke, Kafka and Camus are all cited as twentieth century existentialists. The onìy essential feature shared by all these men is their intense'individualism or, more precisely, their antj-jnstitutionalism, wh'i ch beg'ins with traditjonal ph'i losophy and extends to encompass all of life. 60

The refusal to belong to any school of thought' the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional phi losophy as superficial, academic, and remote from ljfe - that is'the heart of existentialism.a

It is, of course, not a twentieth century phenomenon. To quote Kaufmann again: "Existent'ialism is a timeless sensib'i1ity that

can be discerned here and there'in the past; but jt is only in recent times that it has hardened into a sustained protest and preoccupation."5

The basic doctrine of the modern, twentieth century existentialists 'is that chance and absurdity rule human actions. If it is considered that there is no "Greater Force" directing or controlling life, then life is godless and therefore mean'ingless and "Chance" (which becomes the opposite to "God") provides the kaleìdoscope-like pattern of exìstence. Things are only seemingìy pred.ictable, organ'ized and logjcal; in real'ity there is no pre- ordained system. Thus for the individual the only truth about his expe¡ience i s what he fi nds wi thi n himsel f ; external'ly imposed val ues and interpretations are false.

As a distinct movement of modern thought, Existentialism had its roots in the decay, in many ways the perversion, of romanticism. The individualism of romantjcism, the emphasis on the supreme importance of individual, un'ique experience above collective or abstract expe¡ience, remained but without the associated ioy or opt'imismr while the belief at the core of romanticism that man could

achieve harmony with others and peace within himself through close contact with nature Was rendered mean'ingless by the advances of 61

industry and the undisciplined growth of huge cities. The conditions engendered by the new mechanized urbanized society of the nineteenth century challenged the romantic v'iews of the dignity and worth of the individual and led instead to the concept of alienation, a sociological concept at first which became inextricably part of philosophicaì and literary ex'istentialism. Marx, in 1844, described the alienation of man from the conditions and the product of his labour as alienatjon from himself, and half a century later Max l,leber extended the concept of alienated labour to all organized or institutional'ized work si tuations, the bureaucracies whose ajm 'is to

"rationalize" human behaviour by subjecting it to rules, regu'larity and hierarchy of command, where all relations between individuals are impersona:l and efficiency'is transformed from a means to an end in itself. Emile Durkheim, in 1893, developed the notion of "anomie" to describe the conditions of normlessness, the colìapse of values and rules of conduct - of the cultural structure itself - the result of which was alienation, the Ioss of identity or selfhood and consequent'ly the loss of a sense of connection with others in the community and with the natural and supernatural world beyond.

Similar diagnoses of the predicament of the individual in industrìalized, cap'italist, secular society were made at much the same t'ime by the ph'ilosophers Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Kierkegaard denounced the conception of a person as being primarily a member of a social group, for the "crowd" destroys his true existence, re'l'ieving him of responsjbility and deprìving him of freedom. Adherence to an abstract ph'i'losophy or religious system also negates his existence; the ind'ividual must act upon faith, trusting in God, making his 62

decis'ions and accepting responsibil'ity for them. This for Kierkegaard was the "absurd", the ìmpossìbility of reflecting, reasoni ng ful'ly about act'ions, and the necessi ty of acti n9.6 Nietzsche, while reject'ing Chrjst'ianity - and science - as another "system", also asserted the primacy of the "ego" and the individual experience as the only source of truth. He described, too, the alienation of the artist, his sense of estrangement from prevaì1ing cultural values, which was to become the keynote of visual and literary art'istic product'ion and mani festo after Wonld t^Iar I.

Qne of the best overtures to twentieth century existential'iam is provi ded by Dostoevsky's Notes from tlndengrowr'd ( 1844) . In i t the major themes recognizable in all the other so-called existentialists are stated. It is an exploration of the drama of individual'ity and it presents individuality not'in any retouched or idealized form but in 'its wretched, eccentric "everydayness". The hero, or antj-hero as Dostoevsky calls him,'is a man turned'in upon himself, a man of he'ightened awareness tortured by his "consciousness of what is best and the 'impossib'iìity of attaining 'it."7 He reiects the whole trad'i ti on of soci al phi I osophy and a'll systems whi ch try to impose un'iform values on the members of a society. Dostoevsky's speaker

holds out for what tradjtional Christianity has called depravi ty; but he bel i eves nei ther i n ori g'ina'l si n nor ìn God, and for him man's self-will is not depravity: it is only perverse from the point of view of rationalists and others who value neat schemes above the rich texture of indiv'idua1ity.8

By the end of the century, then, the problems which the post- I¡lorld War II existentialists were to carefulìy describe and anaìyse had been approached in Europe from a variety of angles, through the 63

sociological writings on alienation, the ontological speculations 'i of the phi l osophers , and imag'inati vely 'i n I i terature . Sci ence tsel f was criticized for its faith that through rat'ional analysis and deduction the mysterìes of the world could eventual'ly be explained, anticipating the reversal in think'ing that relativity theory was to achieve early in the twentieth century. Fundamental to this current of thought was the notion of man's estrangement, from others, from God, from his environment, and above all from himself. Many of the wri ters described th'is estrangement i n terms of the spl'it bebleen the subjective and objective, result'ing'in the denjal of the individual as the ultimate arbjter of "truth" and "reason"' a concept which was of particular significance to artists, faced as they were with traditions of "realism" and "naturalism" which accepted without question that "realìty" could be accurately transcribed, in paint or in language.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the "existential" way of th1nking cou'ld be seen as part of the wider aesthetìc movement of revolt against the visjon and forms of the past. Proust and Joyce wrote 'in ways which reiected conventional novel forms, makìng the 'ind'ivi dual consci ousness and experience central . The war-t'ime

phenomenon of Dadaism and its offspring, especially Surreaìism, explored visually the concept of contingency, the sense of the random

and simultaneous coexistence of the meaningful and meaningless, the trivial and'important, and evoked also the sense of mystery or strangeness within the commonplace, the feeling of alienation between the experienc'ing subiect and the viewed object which existential literature was to 'incorporate. As Arnold Hauser points out, the 64

artistjc movements reflected the literary situation of the time as well:

The historical importance of dadaism and surrealism [consists] in the fact that they draw attention to the bl'ind alley in which literature found itself at the end of the symboìist movement, to the sterility of a literary convention which no longer had any contact with real life. The dadaists and surrealists

stated in one of its manifestos, 'measured by the standard of eternity, all human action js futile'.e

This sense of futilìty provides the keynote of the fiction produced by the group of American writers who came to prom'inence in

Europe as well as in America after the war. Heming!',ay, DoS Passos and Faulkner were especiaì'ly influential in France, both for their stylistic o¡iginaìity and for their portraya'l of characters struggling 1mpotently to assert themselves in a world which had lost the security 'indi of common val ues and reference points aga'inst which the v'idual could define himself.l0 The perceptìons of the Americans about the

human condition follow'ing the stripping away of illusions and false

optim'ism which World tlJar I had catalysed were taken up by the

Europeans and incorporated jnto the statements of existentialism wh'ich appeared after the Second Wor:ld l'Jar.

Existentialism as a phiìosophy, as a description of life which claimed to account for all aspects of experience' relig'ious, pol'it'ica1 , social , literary, was formulated in France in the decade following the end of the war. In retrospect ìt seems to many more

an intellectual mood than a coherent system in the tradition of 65

philosoph'ical systems, very much the product of the historical circumstances of Europe at the t'ime, a codification of the "Waste Land" mentality that characterized a large part of the cultural ljfe of the time. Sartre and Camus, Marcel and Heidegger expressed in literature and philosophy the feel'ings that Europeans were left with when the war was over, that the old moral and social values were bankrupt, tradition meant nothing, God had deserted the world, and "absurdity", an often Vague generalized sense of meaninglessness, prevailed. The writers who came to be classed as existentialists attempted to answer the questions which th'is state of m'ind induced, to expla'in why life was worth fiving when there was no apparent reason for existence, no God to reward or punish at the end, and no permanence in anything.

The world they described in their ph'ilosophical essays and dramatized in human terms in their novels and p'lays is a world without a central focus, without reliable Systems of values, patterns of relationsh'ipr oF meaning, governed by chance rather than logic or 'indi d'ivi ne control , and perceì ved di fferently by every v'idual . Consequently there is no inherent mean'ing in the world itself or in man'S relationship with it. The absurd, for Camus' is the tension within which man thus exists:

These two certainties - my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the'impossibility of reducing this world to a rãtional and reasonable princ'ip1e - I also know that I cannot reconcile them.rr

Sartre takes a similar standpoint and goes on to affirm that

any meaning that a man finds in the world he makes for himself; the Sartrean term "essence" equates with this concept of "mean'ing"' 66

According to Sartre:

We mean tby saying that existence precedes essencel that man first of all ex'ists, encounters himself' surges up ìn the world - and defines himself after- warãs . . Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existenti al ism.12

Sartre's main concern is with the attainment of "authenticìty", wh'ich for him replaces moral judgement. Authenticity demands that the individual refuse to adopt masks ìmposed by others or plead that he is driven by fate, passion or any other deterministic force.

He must accept freedom, the freedom to choose to act, and its accompany'ing responsibility as the sine qua non of his ex'istence.

when sartre speaks elsewhere in the same essay of man as be'ing "condemned to freedom", he expresses the d'ichotomy of optimism and pessimism which phi'losoph'ical existentialism contains. The vision of a world without meaning inspires fear and, above all, despair in nen forced to live and act in such a world. But both Sartre and

Camus suggest that a positjve alternative to such despa'ir lies in recognition and acceptance of this absurd environment, that a man does acquire dignity, even a measure of heroism, through h'is coming to grips with absurdity then choosing to make his own meanings and find his own contentment within that absurd framework.

The world of camus and Sartre, derived from their attempts to answer the ontological questions aroused by the changing conditions in the Europe of the time, provides one source of the absurd in modern literature. The other, a'lthough its effect on the individual is the same, is exactly the opposite kind of world, the totally structured, 67

bureaucratic world of Kafka.I3 Both worlds are sources of the absurd because they destroy meaning; the first destroys all pre- established social and moral guidelìnes, all absolutes, so that the ìndividual must act totally alone; the second imposes a set of rules and restraints which deny the valid'ity both of individual experience and of human communication in the pursuit of effic'iency for efficiency's sake.

For Kafka, alienation is no longer an obiective soc'ial

phenomenon - as it was for Balzac, Dreiser and other social realists - but the entire world is v'iewed in terms of his own personal alienat'ion. His novels del'ineate imaginatively the frame of mind from which existentialism starts. In Kafka's world the individual strugg'les against ubiquitous yet elusjve anonymous powers which determine and s'imultaneously oppose h'is every step. The absurd'ity works on two levels: in the first place, the bureaucratic attempt to organize and "rationalize" human experìence is absurd, given the fundamental disorder, the cont'ingency and the moral meaninglessness of exjstence; secondly, the "1ogic" by which bureaucratic jnstitutions funct'ion is absurd because it is alien to ord'inary human impulses, it denies individuality and reduces all meaning to abstract concepts such as efficiency and order.

I^Jhile in Europe the existential concept of absurdìty was taken up chiefly by dramatists - by the group of playwrights whose plays

came to be categorized as the "Theatre of the Absurd" - jt was in America that the most significant influence of Camus and Sartre, and Kafka, on fiction was felt. As already noted, there Were a number of elements 'in the American experience, both past and recent' 68

consonant with an existent'ial 'interpretation of human actjvity; the French existentialists seemed to offer a new way of formulating the oìd problems and of establishing a link between ontological quest'ions and ordinary human experience.

Exi s ten ti al 'ism as popu'lari zed by Camus an d Sartre gave new poignancy to the quest for freedom and self-identity which had been a recurrent theme in American literature. Existentialism denied the belief that mean'ing for the 'individual , a feel'ing of his own worth, could be achieved because the world, soc'iety and, beyond jt, the created universe, had meaning and purpose. In a world viewed in terms of contingency, history itself seems static' not fundamentally chang'ing or com'ing cl oser to some i deal condi ti on ; the noti on of progress, personal and national, Which had informed the whole

development of America, is false.

Although America had experienced the war from a comparative distance, the ready acceptance of existentialism by a number of writers suggests that the post-war d'isillusionment was equaìly strong

in the 0ld and New Worlds. The bel'iefs summarized as the American

Dream had buoyed Americans from the beginnings of the colony and

because they had seemed validated by the immense material progress

beìng made, they became the unexamined creed by which middle-class America lived. The economi c collapse of the Depress'ion, followed by the horrors of l¡lorld war II and the "cold war" of the next decade were close'ly related to the swjtch from beljef in the possibility of benevolent government devoted to the pursuìt of freedom, equality

and happ.iness for all to frustration and fear jn the face of govern- mental bureaucracy. Several sociological works published in the 69

fifti es - or,gØtizatLon Man and The Pouey, ELite, fgr example - endorsed thjs reaction, and for a number of writers of this period the Kafakesque situation is symbolic of manrs general existential conditjon: man's position in relation to the absurd functionjng of the bureaucrati c organ'izati ons con trol l'ing hi s I i fe i s seen to reflect his ontological state, h'is sense of alienation in the face of an absurd uniVerse with which he has no connection, moral or sp'iritual .

The effect of the dissemination of scjentific, sociological or philosophical theories 'is, like the effect of artistic movements' to alter in certain degrees of subtlety the popular consc'iousness. Thjs is the nature of the relat'ionsh'ip of existentialìsm to the modern Ame¡ican novel, 'in contrast to the more d'irect influence of existential philosophy on playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd'

for whom "their field is the metaphysìca1 and they are concerned psychol w.i th man at a I evel whi ch i s nei ther soc'i opol i ti cal nor ogj cal but ontolog1cal".t4 The American novel, hov'/ever deeply it deals wjth the questions raised by existential'ism or however extreme its absurdist techn'iques, tends to mainta'in'its basis'in recognìzable social reality'

however vaguely localized or delineated, and even when the protagonìsts are treated as caricatures or two-dimensìonal "flat"

f igures, thei r problems remajn spec'ifi cal ìy those of ord'inary people of the real worl d.

After World War II, American novelists struggled to come to terms with the sense of futilìty wh'ich had pervaded so much of

l^Jestern cul tural I i fe during the century, whi ch the two wars had

seemed to exemplify, and which existentialism had explajned and 70

codified. In many novels of the fort'ies and fifties, the protagonist 'is paralysed by the existential freedom which the removal of the old moral sanctions has placed on him; in his long'ing for some certa'inty of meaning he endlessìy analyses himself and his feelings but this introspection drains 'instead of enfightening him, denying him the energy, spiritual and often physica] as well, to force meaning from his circumstances. Instead of actjng, to create himself, to form his essence in the Sartrean Sense, the protagonist lives a static existence, 1onely and wretched but unable to move to change his conditjon; even where there is movement through space, aS in Paul Bowles' novels, the spìritual quest for meaning remains static, the characters remain un'initiated into the mysteries of being, unable to define themsel ves.

Bowl es ' two novels , for al I thei ¡imperfect'ions , provi de some vivid images of the ideas lying behind much of the contemporary fictjon. He sets his novels in a stark and p'itiless yet oddly beautiful Africa, using the strangeness and distance -'in much the same Way as Saul Bellow was to do later in Henderson the Rain KLng ' to dramatize concepts whìch could seem merely comic ìf placed in urban or suburban America. Port and Kjt Moresby, in The SheLterLng Sky, having cut themselves off from the familiarity of Western culture, face absurdity in its ultjmate shapes: an al'ien ìandscape and sky behind which is nothing - "He d'id not look up because he knew how senseless the landscape would appear. It takes energÜ/ to invest

I jfe w'ith meaningr' ls - and a glaciaì deadness withjn, around which Port "had built his be'ing".16 Alienated from his surroundings and from his inner self , Port also ìs 'incapab'le of relationship w'ith 7t

others: "Much as he des'ired the rapprochement lwith Kit], he knew also that he dreaded the emotional responsibilities it would entail..'lT

The same cond'itjons define the Ii ves of Saul Bel low's "dang'l'ing marì", John Barth's Jake Horner (in The End of the Road), Robert Penn

Warren's Jack Burden (in ¿,LL the l(Lngts Men), and Ra'lph Ellison's "invisible man". They are characters who find themselves spìr'itually immob'ilized by their failure to act - to seek out and accept responsibility through relationships with others, and to create meaning for themselves by making demands of life and themselves.

These novels represent a primary reactìon to the problems raised by existential philosoph.y, m'irroring the bleakness and emptiness of lives devoid of mean'ing in that sense of heightened existence which Sartre had given the term. Even in novels like ALL the KLng's Men, wltich deals with the fast-moving world of potitics, and the war novels,

Norman Ma'iler's uhe Naked and. the Dead and John Hawkes' The CanníbaL, perhaps rnuisíbLe Man as wel1, despite the physical activity of the characters, the impression i s st'i I I of spi ri tual deadness and stas'is 'in relat'ion to any "quest" for knowledge or meaning.

In these novels existentialism is deli neated as nihi lism. Informìng them is a sense of man at road's end, morally paralyzed' with nowhere to go, no chance of happiness. Madness or death, physical or sp'iritual, seem to offer the onìy exjts from this condition.

Around 1960, however, there is a change'in the way writers tend to view their subiect matter. The possibility of a new begìnning' however l'imited in its potentiality, lends the later novels an optim'istic note - even if it is an ironic' qualified optimism; often 72

the novels seem to simultaneously continue and parody the American romantic tradition of belief in opportunity and progress, sp'iritual as well as material. Existentialism is still "the style of Ithe] period in all realms of life"ls and the condition of man's isolation from man, the absence of moral certainties and traditional relat'ion- ships,'is assumed. But the concept of absurdity tends to be realized much more through humour, albeit "black" humour, and a certain positive element reappears as the "heroes" act to defy their absurd circumstances. Techniques of romance are employed, often in parody' to lend a kind of symbofic force to the heroes' defiance. hJhereas the protagon'ists of the earlier group of novels were agonizing'ly aware of the'ir existent'ial predicament, 'introspective but impotent, the novel of the sixties approaches the existential dilemma with much more energy. The quest of Bellow's Henderson for understanding of existence and Jack Bolling's attempt, in Walker Percy's rhe Mouiegoen, to escape from "everydaynesS" into "rotation" or heightened experience are actiua quests. In Joseph Heller's Cateh-22 and Ken Kesey's One

FLeu 7uer the Cuekoots Nest the authors use black humour and fantasy to satirize institutionalism and at the same t'ime employ a semi- parodic romance framework to make possib'le their heroes' acts of defiance against the system.

Parody per, se characterizes a third type of novel, exempì'ifjed by John Barth's Íhe Sot-tleed. Factor and Giles Goat-Boy, and Thomas

Pynchon's I/ and I'he Cz"yíng of Lot 49. In these fictjons everything which seems meaningfuì proves to be meaningless - no new ins'ight into human nature or existence is ga'ined despite all the convolutions of pìot and symbofism. Refer¡ing to Barth, Ihab Hassan says of him: 73

Intuit'ive1y, he understands the existentiaì mummery of our time. Instinctively, he finds the given social or phenomenal world arbjtrary, faintly ludicrous.Ie

In Barth's novels, as in Pynchon's, the dominant feature is parody, parody of earlier novels and of the attempt itself to make literature out of l'ife.* Thus not only the absurdity of life is dramatized but also the absurdity of any attempt to transcribe it into language.

Al I of these novel s, Hendenson the Raín kLng to The Cz'ying of Lot 49, represent, 'in vary'ing degrees, parody of the conventional

romance form. The lineaments of romance lie beneath the surface of

i nc'ident and characteri zati on but are i nten¡roven w'ith the other elements of the novels in such a way as to challenge indirectly the complacent opt'imìsm of the Ænerican culture within which the novels were produced, a culture which had early constructed a romantic myth of itself and hung onto it despite the challenges which came in the twentieth century from war, economic and politìcal deveìopments, changes in the directions of science, psychology, socio'logy, and in phi losophy.

In the novels of the sixties, existentialism is not overtly

the theme or even the narrative startìng-point, but the situations in which the characters find themselves and the terms ìn which they respond to their circumstances are those defined by the existentialist phiìosophers. There is a tradition in American literature - running through Hawthorne, Melv'ille and Poe, resurfacing in the post-Worìd

* The books have been described as past'iches of different genres and styles, verbal games in which the'author's pìeasure in the liberties he is taking with tradìtional techniques' forms, and moralìty, is so blatant as to subsume everything else to it. 74

1¡ar I novelists, shifting into the grim humour of Nathanael l^Iest in the thirties - of "existential" characters, peop'le estranged from their society and forced to find within themselves substitutes for the "truth" or "meaning" of the society wh'ich has reiected them. hlhat di sti ngui shes the modern novel i sts i s thei r part'i cul ar comb'inati on of negati ve elements - cyn'ic'ism, black humour, parody and sati re, nightmarìsh fantasy - within the framework of romance which has been part of the American literary herìtage and which is an essentially optimistic form in its affirmation of innocence over evil and l'ife over death. Thi s lim'ited opt'imism holds even in the novels characterized by their "black humour", the form of comedy which makes the horrifying

and frightening seem amusing, and wh'ich is easily confused with existent'ial absurdi ty. The v'iews of man presented by the black humourist and the existentialjst are similar in that both posit "an absurd world devo'id of intrinsic values with a resultant tension between'individual and universe."20 The existential'ist, though, retains an impl'icit respect for the self, seeing the choosing to act as in itself an assertion of indiv'idual freedom and even self-

real i zati on, and thus as hav'ing true val ue .

Robert Buckeye coins the term "psychic novel" to describe those novels labelled by other critics aS "novels of the absurd". His term

emphasi zes the s'i gni fi cance assi gned to i ndi vi dual s ubiecti ve experience in these novels rather than the conflict between the jndiv'idual and his environment w'ith which they are concerned, but his elaborated definition of the characteristics of the form does balance

i ts vari ous aspects. 75

The psychic novel sees reality to be mult'iple and uncertajn; presents a protagonist who is conscious of the masks he wears in the world; and dramatizes the unceasing struggle between them. Its subiect is the ìncompìete and unfulfilled; its form, physic; its method, reflexive parody and satire; and 'its aim, the creation and preservation of psychìc i dent1ty ì n the face of history whi ch renders events and acti ons meani ng'less as wel I as s:cience and technology which reduce man to the mechanical and operatioñã1, the biological and behavioral .2I

The widened 'interest in the different layers of meaning contained in any situation or experience has been reflected'in the new interminglings of traditional elements - tragic and comic, sat'iric and horrifying, realìstic and fantastic. The modern equ'ivalent of the "tragic hero", for instance, 9ôins knowledge about the immediate causes and the nature of his suffering' as did the earlier trag'ic heroes, but along with it he ga'ins the understand'ing that his knowledge and his actions will make no real difference to 'l anythi ng: h'is death , puni shmen t, or penance wi I not I ead to the restoration of earthly order or the righting of some moral wrong and there is little if any sense of his hav'ing grasped some insight into the ul timate moral nature of the uni verse. Thus h'is quest for mean'ing is finally a static or at best a ci rcular one, conta'ined only w'ith'in himself and inapplicable to anyone else.

The loss of a stable moral framework means that the hero and his achievements can on'ly be iudged on their own terms; that is, in terms of the values which the hero has set for himself, values wh'ich are usually to some degree in opposition to those of the society surrounding him, and the manner in which he has expressed those values through his actions. 76

Paradox js the essence of the technique of literature of the absurd, and it applies at all levels of modern novel-wrìting: within "plots" the unlikely and the fantastic mingle ìnseparably with the everyday happeni ngs, characteri zat'ion tends towards imply'ing or 'layers stating the multipìe, often contradictory of the individual personality, and the fundamenta'l stylistic technique is the unexpected juxtaposition of incongru'ities. When traditional reason is revealed aS unreason, because reason supposes an ordered, rational world, then san'ity in its traditional sense ìs shown to be really insanity; for, if sanity is defined in terms of the ability to come to terms with reality, then it is jnsane to believe or act as jf the world js coherent and rational. Loyalty to trad'itional values and the instjtutions or organizat'ions ostensibly representing them can be disloyalty to oneself, simply because the 'institutions may threaten the very people they claim to be serv'ing.

In such novels, the plot has its starting-point in the conflict caused when the protagonist finds himself caught between the two forces directing h'is society, the surface rules and expectations and

the hidden demands and laws controlling it from beneath. The appar€ntly illogical, chaotic, "contingent" situation which results is often seen as symptomatic of the underly'ing absurdity of the world itself, where chance and not God determines everything. Any freedom or peace of mind that the hero achieves comes only after he

has acquired some insight into the absurd nature of the world, both 'in general and as it affects him, and has chosen his stance in relation to it. Typically in the contemporary novel, his response is one of defiance rather than accommodation, and the act of defiance 77

is presented, however ironicaìly, as a posìtive act, an affirmation even of an al ternati ve, i nd'i vi dual mora'li ty.

For those writers for whom belief in a divinely ordered universe and a well-defined moral code has been rep'laced by the existential doctrine of absurdity and belief in the importance of indjvidual affirmation of self, this kind of achievement represents a genuinely pos'it'ive element jn thei r novels. The positive orientation comes no longer from the triumph of good over evil, order over disorder, but instead from the hero's own Sense of having triumphed through having asserted himself, his ou,n individua'lity, against the absurd'ity dominatjng h'is existence. The question of whether his assertion is ultimately a futile gesture, lim'ited merely to the duration of its enacting, is deflected by both the sense of immediacy which characterizes the style of these novels and makes the future irrelevant, and by the under'lying structure of romance which makes a trjumph of some kind seem the logica'l - if paradoxical 'in view of the illogic definìng the worlds of these novels - outcome of the hero's struggle agaìnst his circumstances. 78

CHAPTER 4

CAICH-22

THE TEXAN

It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chap'lain he fe'll mad'ly in love with him. Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being iaundjce. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn't quite iaundice. If it became iaundice they could treat it. If it didn't become iaundice and went away they could d'ischarge him. But th'is just being short of iaundice all the time confused them. Each morning they came around, three brisk and serious men with efficient mouths and 'inefficient eyes, accompanied by brisk and serious Nurse Duckett, one of the ward nurses who didn't like Yossarian. They read the chart at the foot of the bed and asked 'impatiently about the pain. They seem irritated when he told them it was exactly the same. "St'iII no movement?" the fulI colonel demanded. The doctors exchanged a look when he shook his head. 'l "Gi ve him another pi 1 . " Nurse Duckett made a note to give Yossaria¡r another pill, and the four of them moved along to the next bed. None of the nurses liked Yossarian. Actua11y, the pain in his liver had gone away, but Yossarian didn't say anythìng and the doctors never suspected. They just suspected that he had been moving his bowels and not telling anyone. Yossarian had everyth'ing he wanted in the hospita'l . The food wasn't too bad, and his meals were brought to hjm in bed. There were extra rations of fresh meat, and during the hot part of the afternoon he and the others were served chilled fruit iuice or chilled chocolate mjlk. Apart from the doctors and the nurses, no one ever djsturbed him. For a little while in the mornjng he had to censor letters, but he was free after that to spend the rest of each day 1yÍng around ìd'ly with a clear conscience. He was comfortable in the hospital, and'it was easy to stay on because he always ran a temperature of 101. He was even more comfortabl e than Dunbar, who had to keep falling down on his face in order to get his neals brought to him in bed. 79

Catch-22 is ostensibly an account of an American bomber squadron stationed on an ltalian island during Wor'ld War II. The central character is Yossarian, whose tireless efforts to avoid combat duties provide the main connecting thread in the fabric of bìzarre episodes makìng up the book. The tone of the narration is predominantìy comic, but the comedy is countered at all points by irony, cynicism, and the horror of death, and the experience of war is presented as an experience of absurdity.

Heller reverses the usual moral interpretations concerning the conduct of war. Heroism, patriotism and self-sacrifice are re- explained as euphemisms for a combination of inefficìency and vanity among the officers and a frantic fear of death on the part of the enlisted men. Cateh-Z\ is an account of what happens when this reality comes up against the official version of how and why vrars are fought. The perverted "ìogic" wh'ich the Calch-Z? of the title exemplifies is shown to operate at every level within the mi'litary bureaucracy and to extend further, such that the island of Pianosa becomes a microcosm of the modern jnstitutionalized world, and indeed of the whole world of human experience. While Heller does use absurdity per se as a vehicle for rerrdering the experience of World War II, the war-time situation becomes not only a means of advancÍng a powerfully negative assessment of the essential health of contemporary American society, but also a paradigm of an absurd universe wjthout the benevolent, ìogical and "mora'l" governance of the traditional God or "divine plan."

While the sense of absurdity ìs total, being rendered styl'istically, structurally, through plot deveìopment and through BO

p'lot development and through characterization, there are more than enough points at which the fictíonal absurdities match with real-life experíences of bureaucracy to make the book a powerfu'l sati re of contemporary sociêty,1 and the ideals by which it purports to function, ideals of patriotism, loyalty, and individual freedom to act according to one's own conscience.

Although the essence of satire is its bias, its one-sided presentation of the subject, an extended satire such as a novel depends for its effect on maintaining the semb'lance of obiectivity. There are certain sty'listic devices in Catch-zz which create a distancing effect betleen reader and subiect matter and there is another, overlapping "set" of devjces which reflect the theme of the novel in that they involve deviations from normal (that is' accepted or most frequent) linguistìc patterns and patterns of experience. Much of the novel's comic irony comes from the inter- actions between styìistic devices belonging to these two categories of detachment and deviation, from the elimination, for examp'le, of 'logicaì emotion and Sentimentality as well as of reasoning about causes and effects. Each episode and each character is treated in a Similarly ironic manner in order to suggest the totaL underlying immorality and absurdity of the situation.

From the very beginning Cateh-Z2 sets about upsetting the reader-expectations associated with the conventional realistic novel. Its fjrst sentence - "It was love at first sight" - is that of the mgdern fOrm of "rgmance," the popular love Story, Where after the dramatic opening statement the author will go back and recount the 81

circumstances of meeting of the lovers. Heller, however, uses this conventional enough opening to establish the narrative method on which the whole book is based, that of upsetting and reversing the reader's expectations of what is to follow. In the next sentence we learn that a man named Yossarian has fallen in love with a chaplain' the colìoquially exaggerative term "madLg in love" suggesting that the relationship is not to be treated too seriousìy.

Although we seem to have been given the topic of the chapter - the relationship between Yossarian and the chaplain - as the narrative continues it moves further and further away from this subiect. The word "the" in "the chaplain" and "the hospital" is homophoric2 - that is, it refers to subjects not previousìy mentioned - and the situation of the hospital and the chaplain, in space and in relationship to the protagonist respect'ively, is not clarified until many paragraphs later. Similarly, although this section is ostensibly about Yossarian, Heller

makes of him a very vague, pe¡ipheral figure by means of the simple device of not making him the subiect of any of the sentences in the next half page. 0f course, Heller is describing the daily visit of the doctors, which is clearly a routine, impersonaì affair, and the impersonal style is approprìate, but it is significant that we are given no insight at all into Yossarian's perception of things. The tone of detachment is characteristic of the book as a whole fo4 although it is predomìnantly Yossarian's story, it is not told through his point of view; Heller plays the omniscient narrator and shifts at will between the minds of the various characters and his

own conmentary. The characters throughout the novel are Scarce'ly ìndividualized: in this section the chap'lain is mentioned once then does not reappear for four and a half pages, and jn Yossarian's case 82

the emphasis is on the state of his 'liver rather than on Yossarian as the sufferer.

Other stylistic characteristics commonly associated with unemotional, objective writing reinforce the impression of distance between subject and reader. The verbs in particular are significant due to the predominance of unemphatic, non-transitive forms: simple, undynamic verbs ("saw", "became", "went away"), passives ("were puzzled", "accompan'ied by"), copulas ("it was love", "Yossarian was in hospital"), and partÍciples or gerunds ("this just being short", "'lying around" ).

Above all, the tone of this introduction is determined by the number of near-negative and diminishíng qualifications: Yossarian's pain feìì "just short of" jaundice, it "wasn't quite" jaundice, the food "wasn't too bad". This device, in combination with the number of exaggerating expressions ("madLy in love", "none of the nurses") makes it difficult for the reader to find a character or a point of

view within the novel which he can take seriously, with which he can consistent'ly identily, or which he can use as a standard against which to compare contrasting values that may be impìied. He has no choice but to remain detached.

The other group of styìistic techniques, those creating

deviations from normal expectations, is probably more prominent as the reader reads and they are directìy responsible for much of Catch-Z7 's incidental humour. They occur at all levels of the novel. 0n the plot ìevel, we are told at the very beginning that Yossarian is mad'ly in love with the chapìain: this chaplain is not referred 83

to again for several pages, then is mentioned once and not again t'ill after a long, unrelated paragraph - a compositional deviation in comparison wíth traditional novel structures.

l¡{ithin paragraphs also, one finds throughout the book a variety of structural ilìogicalities such as digressions from the apparent topic sentence or emphasis on Secondary elements - comparisons, for exampìe, which divert attention from the main line of actjon. The sentence in the eighth paragraph,for instance, "None of the nurses liked Yossarian", has no logical relation to the preceding or fol'lowing sentences; the cue which elicited it is "Nurse Duckett" who was referred to some time before in connection with dislike of

Yoss ari an.

Then on the sentence level, long complex sentences are found to consist of individual clauses and phrases which are unrelated or very tenuous'ly related to both the main clause and to each other. Such sentences "progress" not by clarifying what has gone before but by adding more complications:

McWatt wore fleecy bedroom slippers with his red pyjamas and slept between freshly pressed coloured bedsheets like the one Milo had retrieved half of for him from the grinning thief with the sweet tooth in exchange for none of the pitted dates Milo had borrowed from Yossarian. (0S¡

0n the grammatical level, one finds ambiguities about the kernel sentences to be derived from the surface structure as in ". Nurse Ducket, one of the ward nurses who didn't like Yossarian" (paragraph four), where it is ambiguous whether it was Nurse Duckett onìy or all the nurses who didn't lìke Yossarian. 84

Finally, there are the varieties of "linguistic deviation":

unexpected epithet-pai rings ("efficient mouth and inefficjent eyes") ; mjxed registers, such aS the use of "dynamic intralinear tensions" to describe Yossarian's haphazard letter-censoring; or the unexpected use of colloquìal terms within a formal, complex sentence' as in

tThe firel had died of its own accord, expired completely without even an ember to be watered down, and there was nothing for the disappointed firemen to do but drink tepid coffee and hang around trying to screw the nurses. (17)

Such devices are characteristic of a great deal of comic writing, but Heller also makes use of a more subtle trick in order to graduaììy buììd up in the reader a sense of absurdity. This "trick" is his habit of makìng ungrammatical or semant'icaììy iìlogical pairings of constructions or concepts. For exampìe, the pain in Yossarian's liver - which is iust a symptom of illness - is equated w'ith jaundice itself, a disease comprising a number of not necessarily painfu'l symptoms, in the sentence' "Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell iust short of being jaundice"; and in the same paragraph the subiect of the verb "confused" is the remarkably awkward and vague "this iust being short of jaundi ce".

This style which is characterized by its consistent breaking of rules - linguistic, ìogical and moral - is maintained throughout the novel, even (though to a lesser degree) in the scenes describing

Snowden's death. The only change is in the climacti c l'/aLput'gisnaeht

Scene near the end when Yossarian vlanders the streets of Rome, the night before he is arrested. The sustained use of this manner of 85

writing has a double effect: it not only reflects the theme of the novel - the reversal of accepted moraì beliefs associated with m'iìitary organization to represent the general absurdity of modern existence - but it also effectively prevents consideration by the reader of alternatives to the propositions and interpretations put fon¡rard about people and situations. The impression of chaotic energy and intensity, and also the persuasiveness of Catch-Z7, are derived chiefìy from this consistently ironic treatment of the

materjal, where everything is viewed equally as part of the same topsy-turvy, amoral system. Heller's sty'listic techniques have al1 been used by other writers, but it is the concentration of techniques of a certain kind, those destroying the coherence between appearance and reality - that gives Catch-2z its specìal quality and creates for the reader, through the reading process itself, an experience of absurdity. Near the beginning of the book Yossarian describes the Catch-22 clause, which has iust thwarted hìs attempt to have himself grounded by Doc Daneeka, in terms which apply equaÌly weìl to the novel as a whole:

Yossarian saw it clearìy in all its spinning reasonableness. There was an elliptical precision about its perfect pairs of parts that was gracefu'l and shocking, ìike good modern art, and at times Yossarian wasn't quite sure that he saw it at all. ( 54-55 )

The sty'le of cateh-22 is obviously crucial 'in its portrayal of absurdity, the distortions of the convent'ional structures of 'language reflecting the distortions of human, imposed logic revealed by experience in an absurd urorld, but Heller's use of'language goes further still than this and the breakdown of communication, the B6

failure of language to mediate meaningfu'l and mutually satisfying relationships between individuals, becomes symptomatic of the general malaise of American life and of the breakdown of the American Dream itself. In his dealings w'ith his superiors Yossarian, representative of the ordinary man strugg'l'ing to achieve basi c, personal freedom, is thwarted at all points by the twisted logic of catch-Z? and the impersonaì 'language in which orders are issued and justified. The colonels themselves are frustrated in their pou,er-chas'ing by the omnipotent ex'PFC l,rlintergreen who controls the whole network of official communications; when Wintergreen merges with Milo Minderbinder at the end of the novel , there is the ironic 'imp'lication that language, verbal communication, has been given over entirely to the service of absurdity - "for the good of the country." Yossarian's letter- censoring, the major subject of the first hto pages, comicalìy exaggerates the ease wÍth which verbal communication can be rendered meanjng'less, while the "soldier in white", who has become merely "a frayed black hole over h'is mouth", is the novel's most grotesque symbol of loss of communicative possjbilites.

The compìexity of Heller's use of language in Catch-zz - boluh stylistically to reflect the absurdity of the situations jn which Yossarian finds himself, and through absurd dialogue and characters who refuse to or cannot communicate to dramatize the bneakdouln of communication, and thus as a source of absurdity itself - is typical of h'is skill in weaving together seemingìy contradictory and incompatible elements to create a paradoxica'lìy coherent image of disorder and absurd existence. The book in fact derives its unity from the compìeteness of the absurdity it depicts. The conventional unifying devices of 87

chronological narration, psychoìogica'l1y'logical character development, and coherent moral code are all distorted: instead, catch-2z is episodic in structure, not onìy shifting backwards and forwards in time but also presenting two separate plots with seemingly contradictory time schemes3, the characters are presented as caricatures composed of one or two idiosyncrasies and do not develop or change during the novel, and accepted moral values are continual'ly challenged or negated.

The book develops its own internal logic through the insistent twisting of conventional togic and habits of perception in such a way aS to ShoW "rea'lity" in a distorted, skewed form which seems to reveal new "truths" about it. Heller is showing that war, and by exp'lic'it extension, society at ìarge, iS conducted not according to standards of justjce, honour, respect and so on, but according to the whìms and self-serving directives of those in power, who are represented by both the commanding officers and by the vague, untraceable, unnamed Source of the regulations which embrace all areas of the military organization.

For the ordinary men this web of controls is totalìy confusing,'lacking any centre or any predÍctabitity.

Heller's use of a total]y comic framework - of equa'lly absurd pìot, character and language - to analyse the war experience is what djfferentiates Cateh-Z| from alì prev'ious war novels. Earljer lvar nOVelS SuCh AS A FaTa¡eLL to Arrns, ALL QuLet on Lhe llestern Fz'ont and, especially, The Naked and the Dead contajn the elements which Catch-Z7 develops to the extreme in its repudiation of all that war was consi dered to represent. The Naked ønd the Dead does not end with the 8B

men on whose physical and psycho'logical struggles most of the novel has focused but with two of their leaders, Major Cummings and Maior Dalleson, planning for the next campaign. Maior Dalleson suddenìy has the idea that will win him the success he dreams of: he will use a life-size photograph of Betty Grable to teach map-reading to the troops. The novel concludes:

Dalleson scratched his head. He would write a letter to Army Headquarters Speciaì Services. They probably woul dn't have Grable, but any pin-up wou'ld do. That was it. He'd write Army. And in the meantime he might send a letter to the War Department Training Aids Sectjon. They were out for improvements like that. The Maior could see every unit in the Army using his idea at last. He clenched his fists with exci tement.

Hot dog! a

Heller has picked up this attitude and this tone and built an entire novel on it. In The Naked øtd the Dead this conclusion ironically counterpointed the physica'l and emotional suffering resultìng in new understandings which the men had been through, but Cateh-2T begins at a point beyond the statement made by Mailer. The key to the change in attitude found in Cateh-zz, as Sanford Pinsker puts it, is not initiation but survival 5. For the participants in earlier war novels, the horrors of war were in some way balanced by the positive gain in understanding of or initiation into certain mysteries of the self and of life. The futility of war was recognìzed, but this was counterbalanced by examples of individual courage and self-development. In Catch-22, however, the experience of war is no ìonger seen in terms of any herojc possib'ilities whatsoever. Not only is the futilÍty of war asserted, but also the 89

absurdity of trying to do anything else but stay alive. Similarly, Heller rejects the conventional separation of genres. Throughout Cateh-Z2 the horrors of War - death, suffering and terror - are y€cast as fantasy and satire and presented within a comic structure' a technique imitating that of Surrealism whjch also exp'lores the borderline between humour and horror and is concerned with the elements of menace and fear in the most ordinary of obiects and situations. Like the fantast'ic iuxtapositions of Surrealistic art, which seem to expose another, equally valid real'ity beneath the surface of ordinary perceived reality, the apparently tlvisted and reversed logic of Cateh-2|, operating throug'h Uotft the comic and the grotesque' seems to expose the real workings of the mjlitary organization usually hidden with'in the code of rules and custom, and of the universe jtself.

In Cateh-27, Heller dramatizes both of the sources of absurdity identified by Richard Lehan:6 the fragmented, centre-less world where each individual is estranged from everyone eìse, where he must reconstruct himself and find hjs own meanjngs and moral and socjal values without the guidance of common, traditional norms, and the opposite kind of world, the overstructured and bureaucratie worJd of Kafka. The two sources of absurdity - the chaos of the war (and the wider society which it s¡rmbolizes) and the mad system of bureaucracy within it - exjst together in Catch-2T, but for Heller the system is even more absurd than the war jtself, and al't the "iokes" around which the novel is constructed have primary reference to aspects of the

mi'l i tary organi zati on.

Although there is a certain build-up of tension and movement towards a climax (as Yossarian's colleagues are k'illed one by one and 90

as h'is own efforts to avoid being killed become more desperate), the sense of development - and hence of the possibiljty of change within the system - is constantly obscured and parodied by the deliberately incoherent chronology, the repetition and the seeming illogic of characterization and incident. Many of the techniques used by Heller are those of the "theatre of the absurd", and Martin Esslin's comments on that theatre are relevant also to the overall impression created in Cateh-22:

The Theatre of the Absurd strives to express its sense of senselessness of the human condition and

The action is not intended to tell a story but to communicate a pattern of poetic images to make in the spectator's mind a total, complex impiàision of a basic, and static, situation. (393)7

A'lthough the setting and the situations of Cateh-zz aYe not the vague, unspecific ones of absurd theatre, the methods of the absurd p'laywri ghts being used i nstead to render the parti eul ar wor'l dly experience of l,'Jorld ',rlar II, still the narrative surface strikes one while reading as circular rather than lìnear, based on a formula of contingency rather than logical sequence. The characters, too' are more like those of absu.r:dist drama than those of the conventìonal novel; thejr motives and actions are often incomprehensible and they are presented in such a way that we cannot psycho'logicaì1y identify with them. They are caricatures, each one governed by his particular 9t

obsession. Each is described in terms of only one or two attributes - which at first often appear to be contradictory but are later seen to be aspects of the same obsession - and no attempt is made to indicate the'ir psycholog'ica'l complexity. They do not change' psychologicaììy' during the course of the novel and this factor also contributes to the impression of the static nature of the world being described-

Such characters, as Esslin points out, are inevitably comic; because of this, in sp'ite of the fact that much of what happens is violent and horrifying, Catch-Z2 is a comic novel as the Theatre of the Absurd is a comic theatre.

The opening chapter provìdes an introduction to the method which Heller develops more and mol€ powerfully as the book p,rogresses.

The summary tyeatment of Yossarian's illness is amusing because the i'llness js feigned, but the application of the same indifference to jn the "soldier in white" moves close to the grotesque. The soldier white "Wasencasedfrom head to toe in plaster and gauze" and was connected to two bottles, one feeding him, the other removing waste:

a frayed black hole over his mouth.

. One afternoon Ithe nurse] read his thermometer and discovered that he was dead. (16-17)

The two episodes together create a powerfuì image of the total'ly indifferent efficiency masking incompetence by which the hospital and the war are run. 92

Thus the comedy in Cateh-22 is not used for its own sake (as it tends to be in The ùice Man for example) but is part of the complicated satirical pattern which Heller builds up, for each ioke

serves as a prologue for some grotesque para11el or extension of it and out of the two there emerges some revelation of absurdity, of the second reality beneath the surface.

For a number of critics, however, the qualities of the novel which create this impression of absurdity represent its chief

weaknesses. B They condemn its repetitiveness - both of sty'le and of the basic Catch-Z? joke on which its action is based, its lack of structure, its lack of philosophical argument and its failure to suggest any positive alternative to the absurd world portrayed in it.

Joseph J. lrJaldmeir, for example, in a critique which, interest'ingìy, employs a method very sími I ar to the el lipti c' reversed "logic" used throughout Catch-Z?, argues:

The artist must have a position, a point of view, some av,,areness of what things should or could be in order to be aware of the absurdity of things as they are. Without such an awareness, he rcal ly has nothing to portray - and the portrayal of nothing as absurd equals the portraya'l of nothing as nothing. e

Presumably the "awareness of what things should or could be" should be included in the novel, providing the phi'losophical debate

" which is lacking, but to suggest this is to see the novel as a realistic portrayal of life rather than the satire which, by content, emphasis, and styìe, it is. Like other sat'ires, from Swift's Modest ptoposaL to On¡el1's 1984, Cateh-Z| presents a closed world regu'lated by a reversed set of standards, where alternatives corresponding to 93

the moral values subscribed to by the contemporary socìety for which the book was written are denied. l¡Jorks of this kind operate by taking certain tendencies observed in society, exaggerating them perhaps, and multiplying them within a compressed space of time, in such a way that they seem to make up the whole of the world of the novel. Catch-Z2 does, however, contain positive norms, generalized and idealistic though they might be: through Yossarian 'it promotes such norms as the individual's right to follow the dictates of his ouJn conscience, the assertion of life and energy against the sterile impersonality of bureaucratic structure, and thus a neu, "morality of refusal." 10

This idealistic morality informing Cateh-zz is matched by an underlying structural framework which holds together the superficially chaotic and random ordering of the narrative elements (and, also, makes possible the comparatively optimistic ending of the novel). As Constance Denniston convincingly argues, Catch-Z2 follows closely the form of the romance-parody'in which all the conventions of romance are I1 through irony made to achieve the opposite effeet-

As in the romance, the action takes p'lace we'|1 above the level of reality, the realm of magic and spirìtuaì symbo'lism becoming a world of cartoon-like exaggeratìon and fantasy. Absurdity, confusion, the abandonment of logic and probabi'lity, which in the romanee are used to represent threats to the hero's spiritual well-being, become in the romance-parody simply ways of imaginatively indicating the normal state of things, the intrusion of the traditionally fantastic ìnto reality. The ideals which romance celebrates are shorvn by parody to be hollow and alien to the real experience of ordinary men. 94

The superior, self-reliant hero of romance becomes in the parody an ordinary man, isolated from his society because he is a misfit and not strong enough to stand alone against the hostile forces of his environment, a victim of chance rather than evi'l powers; the hero's quest for enlÍghtenment or salvation becomes a static quest merely for survival, and instead of ending in rebirth or redemption, the situation tends to remain fundamentally unchanged and unchangeab'le.

In Catch-Z2, the traditional romance model informs the main plot, that concern'ing Yossarian. (The other, intersecting plot' the story of Milo Minderbinder's rise to power, parodies the particularly American form of romance, the Horatio Alger myth of the boy of humble

origins who "makes good" through his own efforts) Yossarian is an anti-hero, whose quest is not to preserve his society or achieve enlightenment of some kind, but mereìy to preserve his own life; at the conclusion of the novel, having overcome all the obstacles placed in his way by the vague, illogica'l and hostile forces of "Catch-22" as represented by the military bureaucracy and its officers, he achieves his goa'|, by running away: his quest up to now has been a static one' onìy now does an actual iourney begin.

Aìthough at first Yossarian seems simply a comic foil, a means of showing up the idiocies of the mi'litary system, throughout the novel his stature - aS a rebel against the forces of absurdity and the representative of a kind of moraljty - increases as the novel develops. Like the heroes of conventional romance, Yossarian iS a

man apart from and "superior" in certain WayS to others. His name' for a start, contrasts with all the hlhite Anglo Saxon Protestant 95

names, and inspires fear and awe in other people.* Qther little details - his constant temperature of 101'F, for instance - accumulate during the novel to set him apart. Such details elevatìng the trivial to the exceptional parody romance technique while simultaneously employing its traditional function as a means of

distinguishing the hero from other men.

Like many heroes of tradition, Yossarian undergoes a figurat'ive descent to he'll when he walks alone through the ruined streets of

Rome in the chapter entitled "The Eternal City"' passing as'if invisìbly group after group of grotesque, tormented people. He experiences a certain revelation, âlbeit tempered by Heller's

characteri sti c humour:

The night was filled with homors, and he thought he knew hów Christ must have felt as he walked through the worl d, I i ke a psych'iatrist through a worl d ful l of nuts, like a victim through a prison full of thieves. (438)

He fails the "test" which comes towards the end of this experience when he fails to heìp an old woman who is desperate'ly pursuing a

younger u,oman:

. the old woman was left standing he'lp'less'ly in the centre of the thoroughfare, dazed, uncertain whi ch r¡lay to proceed, al one. Yossari an tore hi s eyes from her and hurried away in shame because he hãd done nothing to assist her. (440)

*General Dreedle for example: "The chaplain's fÍrst mention of the name rossarian! had tolìed deep in his memory ljke a portentous gong the very sight of the .name made him shudder. There were ao many esses in it. It just had to be subversive It was an odious, alien, distasteful name." (224-5) 96

Soon after thjs Yossarian is amested (for being 'in Rome without a pass) and, in another reversaì of expectation, instead of being puníshed is told he will be sent home - the very thing he has 'longed for. There is, of course, a catch to this, Catch-Z?: Yossarian can go home only if he says nice things about Colonels Cathcart and Korn and does not criticize them for making the rest of the men fly more missions. Yossarian agrees, and if the novel had ended here, the dual themes, of absurdìty - of a world functioning according to chance and alterable moralities - and satire of an amoral,'impersonal and jnstitutionalized society, would have been neatly completed. But Heller, returning to that element which throughout the novel darkens the absurd humour and humanizes the outrageous satire, that is, the reality and the horror of death, complicates the responses which the novel up to then might elicit. We are told at last what happened to

Snowden, and it is clearthatYossarìan's reaction to this is in the order of a profound and spiritual revelation, about the nature of man's mortality. As John Colmer observes, the timing of the release of this information is critical in enlisting our sympathies for Yossarìan when he decides to'opt out of the war. 12 In his reiection of this ultimate temptation by the Colonels,Yossarian achieves a kind of moral stature which he has not had before and the p'lot twists back to the romance model. To Maior Danby's attempt to convince him to accept the deal, "It's a way to save yourself", Yossa¡ian replies, "It'S a way to lose myself, Danby". (471,) Then at the moment when all the options seem equally unacceptable - he can neither accept the

Col onel s' deal and go home, nor stay and f'ly more mi SSi ons , nor can he desert and risk recapture and imprisonment - when Danby and 97

Yossanian agree that there is no hope at all, the chaplain bursts in with the news that 0rr, who was presumed drowned, has made it to

Sweden and safety. It is the equivalent of the magic weapon or super- natural advice given to the romance hero at the moment of crisis. In the terms of the novel, running away beoomes an heroic action:

I'm not running away from my responsibiljties. I m running to them. There's nothing negative about running av',ay to save my life. (475)

The ending of Catch-Z2 amounts to a reiection of a "phì losophy" of

absurd'ity per s¿ and comes towards a k'ind of existent'ial jst stand- point, in Yossarian's assumption of full respons'ibility for himself, his deliberate and desperate tak'ing of action to secure his individual freedom (however temporary this might turn out to be), thus affirming - "the ultimate reality of moral choice in an absurd universe."13

The novel's conclusion represents, also, a use of a different variety of romance, not the traditional medieval type of romance, but

the peculiarìy American variety which asserted the possibility of an earth'ly Eden and, continuaì]y optimistic, affirmed belief in the

value of human striving towards this goal. Sweden is a kìnd of symbolic Eden, a no doubt unattainable goal therefore a fitting destination for the "ìronic hero" (as defined by Northrop Fryela) which Yossarian is. l¡lithout over-dramatizing this comparative]y positive turning at the end, Heller makes the point that the American

Dream of freedom and self-responsìbi'lity still has a place, despite the absurd'ity of the modern world, and that the callous opportunisnl masked by patriotic cant of Milo Minderbinder is not the only reality of contemporary American life. 9B

CHAPTER 5

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S IIEST

They're out there. Black boys in wh'ite suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.

They,re mopp.ing when I come out the dorm, all three of them sulky änd hatiirg õverything, the time of day, the place th-.Y.'re at here-, the peoplé tney- got io work around. When they hate like.this' Úetter if thei don'f see me. I creep along the wall AYiet as.dust in my canvas ihoes, but they got spec'iaì sensitive equiPTgnt detects my fäar and they a'll look uþ, all three at once, e.ygs g'l'itteri'ng o-ut of the blac-k faces like the hard gf itter of radio tubes out of the back of an old radio. 'Here's the Chief. The soo-pah Chief, fellas. 0l' Chief Broom. Here you go, Ch'ief Broom . ' Stick a mop'in my-go. hand and motion to the spot they aim for me to clean today, änd I Qne swats the backs of my ìegs w'ith a broom handle to hurry me Past.

'Haw, you look at 'ìm sha g it? Big enough to eat aPPles off mY he ad an' he mine me like ab aby.' They laugh and then I hear them mumbling beh'ind me, heads close togeihär. úum of black machinery' humm'ing !9!e and death and other hoõpiial secrets. They don't bother not talking out loud about their hatä secrets when I'm nearby because they think I'm deaf and dumb' ¡verybody think so. I'm cagey enough to fool them that much. If my being nalt lndian ever helpéd-me in any way in this d'irty life' it helped me be'ing cagey, helped me alì these years.

I'm mopping near the ward door when a key hits it from the other side and i't

she,s carrying her woven wicker bag like the ones the umpqua tribe sells ouCalõng the hot August highway, a bag shape of a tool box with a hemp handle. She's had it all the years I been here. It's a loose weave and I can See inside it; there'S no compact or 'lipst'ick or lvoman stuff, she's got that bag full of a thousand parts shê aims to use in her duties today - wheels and gears''like cogs poìished to a hard gl'itter, tiny pil ls that gle_am porcelain, heedles, forceps, wátchmakers' pliers, roìls of copper wire

One ELeu Ouer the Cuckoots Nest is Set in the ward of a mental hospital. The ward is run by Nurse Ratched, nicknamed the Big Nurse' who sees her job as adiusting the inmates to fit the social norms.

She keeps the patients cowed and docile through a comb'ination of medication, subtle humiliations, and the threat of electric shock treatment. To the narrator - one of the inmates - she represents the

"Combine", a term which refers not just to the mental institut'ion but to all the mechanistic, systematiz'ing ìevelling agencies or forces ordering society and restricting the possibi lities forindividualism and independent action. I¡lhen a new patient enters the ward her authority is challenged. Randle Patrick McMurphy is a swaggering, happy-go-ìucky character and he ìs outraged at the way she has

reduced the men to mindlessly obedjent puppets. As the battle

between McMurphy and the Big Nurse intensifies, the other patients gain'in strength and self-confidence, and eventually McMurphy d'iscovers that he must g'ive up all his strength to them in order to free them 'interwoven from the Bi g Nurse's hol d. The tv'ro, cl osely movements ,

McMurphy's rebellion and the narrator's gradual recovery from aìienation, develop through that blend of hilarious, often fantasy-

like comedy and the grimness that is simultaneously fantastic and too close to reality to be easily dismissed which characterizes

much modern absurdist fiction.

10'h

5

I imi ti ng the poss'ibi l'iti es of resol uti on of the narrati ve confl i ct.

The novel,s plot is constructed on a near-classjc tragic model. The protagonist, a man superior to the others in his environment (superior not in stat'ion in Mcfiurphy's case, but in vitality and strength), finds himself p'itted against forces which seem as autonomous and as inexorable as fate itself. The narrat'ive traces his growing understand'ing of the situation, but full real.ization of the nature of the forces he is up against comes too late for him to be able to retreat from the path he has chosen. The final confrontation between the protagonist and the representative of those forces results in a victory for the protagonist (a victory, that is, in terms of the values on which the whole narrative is based) though also in his death; the old order js thrown down' even'if only tempora¡ily, and a better one, in which freedom is a possib'il'ity''is affi rmed.

Although Mcflurphy's lobotomy and his death are treated with the depth and seriousness of tragedy,'in the greater part of the novel the tone is set by Kesey's ironic use of the romance novel'

The hosp'ital i s a modern Wastel and, where i ndì vi dual i ty and ioy i n lìfe are seen aS threatening and are therefore treated as symptoms of insanity which must be destroyed. Through the chief's eccentric vision of events, Kesey exaggerates the qualities of McMurphy and Nurse Ratched in such a way that their confl'ict becomes a contest between the hero and the witch-dragon-machine for the ljberation of the drug-enchanted, physi cal'ly and mental ly paralysed pat'ients ' Yet although McMurphy and his "quest" for the redemption of his fe'llow-patients 'is presented with comic, absurdjst exaggeration, L02

the romance-parody of tne ELeu Ouer the Cuckoots Nest differs from that of other modern romance parodies, largely because McMurphy's quest is not self-oriented or pointless or perhaps imaginary' because the absurd'ity of the Big Nurse's ward is so little removed from the absurdity encountered in many modern bureaucratic situations, and because there is a degree of understanding and sympathy in the narrator-Chief which brings McMurphy back to the realm of ordinary

men without djminishing h'is achievement and self-sacrifice.

The steps 'in McMurphy's rebellion are paralleled by the steps towards recovery of the narrator. With each of McMurphy's v'ictories over the Big Nurse, the narrator's spiritual strength and self- assurance increase and his escape from the hospital' with which the book ends,'is the fulfilment of the promise of new life which

McMurphy brought into the ward from the first.

At the same time, hov,Jever, that KeSey uses the romance model to imply the real value of McMurphy's "sacrifice", he uses it to focus hjs sat'ire of the contemporary society in which the novel is

set. When he first appears, McMurphy 'is presented as the American folk hero, big, warm-hearted and full of life, menta'l]y unfettered

by the demands of convention. The novel shows how this strand of

the American Dream has no p'lace in modern society, for the "systeml - the "Combine" as the Chief calls it - of which the hospitaì ìs on'ly an example, suffocates and destroys those attributes whjch

Were seen to characteri ze the New t¡'Jorl d expl orer, f ronti ersman ' settler and nation builder. it is the Chief who first describes

McMurphy in such romantic terms and it is the Chief who at the 103

end makes the po'int that this McMurphy was only a creation of the patients' need for such a hero, only a dream: the real McMurphy is just a man, and able to be destroyed by the reality of the system. Thus Kesey, at the same time that he draws on the romantic myth of the free, self-sufficient indjvidual, shows up the emptiness of that myth, its failure to remain a possibility in contemporary life.

The po'int is underlined by Kesey's choice of narrator, the son of a dispossessed Ind'ian chief who has lost the d'ign'ity and freedom belonging to his race (there is perhaps a hinted ironic reference to the "noble Savage" aspect of American legend in th'is), and has chosen dumbness as protest against his condition. McMurphy teaches him an opposite form of protest, and escape: the novel is an account of this protest and the Chief's simultaneous return to spiritual health.

One FLeu }uer the Cuckoots Nest begins with a first-person narrator using the present and present cont'inuous tense, creating a sense of ìnrnediacy, a sense of particìpating in events by experiencing them as the narrator does . Zen and the At't of MotorcycLe Maintenance (discussed later, in Chapter 9) begins in the same way, but other styl'istic features which appear after the opening paragraphs indicate that the ü¡lo stories are narrated by two very different people. In Zen the narrator is an educated man whose chief interest is investigat'ion and analysis of abstract concepts; people are important'in the narrative only as they are affected by or illustrate these concepts. A number of the familiar, coììoqu'ial devices which characterize the style of the opening paragraphs of 104

Zen aye retained v,,hen the narrator moves into abstract speculation, but these are counterbalanced by the obiective, formal devices needed to present a logìcal argument. One FLeu )uer the Cuckoots Nest, hotvever, does not have this division between experience and intellectual analysis, bebleen subiectj vity and obiectiv'ity; experiences and the narrator's immediate psycholog'ica1 reaction to them make up the book's subiect matter.

The novel's style is a consequence of this choice of emphasis: there is no point of vieur presented but that of the narrator, everythìng is mediated directly through his consciousness and any commentary is presented as a part of the experience' not separate from it. Sentences are segmented, items separated by commas or loosely l'inked by the s'imp1e "and" , "but", " then" conjunct'ions, reflect'ing an effort to get each detail down in its night p]ace, g'iv'ing each item equal importance in contribut'ing to the larger action and slowing down time so that the full import of the scene is conveyed. At crisis po'ints the pace is further slowed down by lengthening descriptive detail and itemiz'ing of action, developing a step-by-step buj1d-up to the climax, so that every part of the total scene or event is fixed there. The method also, perhaps, represents a way of coming to terms with the events for the narrator.

The first page of One FLeu Ouer the Cuekoo's Nest reveals that the narrato¡is a patient in a hospital, he is half-Indian' unusual ly ta'l'l , and he pretends to be deaf and dumb. The "ungrammatical", simpìe and d'irect style is appropriate for such a person but, as well as defining the narrator'S personality' it 105

directs the reader's attention to certain impìications about the situation being described without overtly stating them and thus

'intemupting the "mood" or "tone" of the narration.

The open'ing sentence immediately establishes the impression of an 'individual experiencing something directly, and describing it as it happens: "They're out there". tJe are not told who "they" are or where "out there" is until the next paragraph, and for some time it is not clear whether the narrator is describing a particular occasi on or an hab'itual occurrence. Th'i s type of ambi gui ty i s characteristic of the sty'le'in which the whole novel is written for while on the one hand dev'ices such as verb contractions, deletion of pronouns and verb particles and the paratactic sentence forms are all typical of spoken style and thus imply a narrator speaking not on reflectjon but as he experiences events, on the other hand such mannerisms are used also to create particular effects, of a metaphorical and somet'imes symbolic nature, deriving from the

context 'in which they are used.

In the second paragraph we find out that the opening "they" refers to "black boys" - no names, no individualizing qualities - and the repeated use of the vague and impersonal "they" to refer to the black aides, together with the repeated reference to hate in connection with them, makes them seem shadowy, threatening figures' symbols of hate and fear rather than individuals, part of an habitual, unchanging rout'ine. The deletion of the "they" in the fifth paragraph - "stick a mop in my hand, and I go" - reinforces the impress'ion of a timeless' representatiVe Scene; and a little later the use of the present tense to describe a sequence 106

of events, not a number of simultaneous events - "They laugh and then I hear them mumbling behìnd me, heads close together" - has animplication of menace in the ioining of the two clauses by "and then" which suggests that the black boys are in one place, laugh'ing' then immediate'ly jn another place, behind the Chief, thus creating a subtle ìmpression of fear and strangeness' !vh'ich is reinforced by the verb "mumbl'ing" .

The implication of menace is expressed as well in the imagery through which the black boys are described at the end of the thjrd paragraph, when their awareness of the Chìef'S presence is compared to electrically operated machinery' somethjng f ifeless and feeling- less: detecting hìs fear with their "special sensitive equipment", they 'look at hjm w'ith eyes gf ittering "like the hard glitter of radio tubes out of the back of an old radio." The other' more conventional 'image used 'in the same sentence - "I creep quiet as dust" - introduces the other id'iosyncratic use of metaphor which js a characteristic of the entire narrat'ion. Here, "dust" might refer to both the dust inside a bui'lding and the dust outsjde, but nevertheless the simile exemp'lifies the contrast beblveen "natural" imagery and the ìmagery of'machjne's which appears throughout the book. Through the natural 'imagery the Chief seems to be relating the world inside the asylum to the outside world of his memories and by this means keeps alive the part of him that was shaped by the past. Both types of imagery reappear a little later. The aides'mumbling seems to the Chjef l'ike the "hum of black machiRery, humming hate and death and other hospital secrets", the metaphor reinforcing the'imp'lication of menace associated with t07

them. In contrast, the Big Nurse's wicker bag reminds the Chief for a moment of his former Indian life - it is "like the ones the Umpqua tribe sells out along the hot August highway" - before his train of thought returns to'its former mode and he sees the bag as "a tool box".

Although the sentence structures in this third paragraph are qu'ite sophisticated in their manner of relating the observing narrator to the observed black boys, and the imagery is unusual and complex, Kesey creates the impression of a speaker who is grammaticaìly care- less - perhaps because he is poor'ly educated or perhaps onìy because he is muttering hurriedly to himself - simply by the omjssion of a number of smalI words, as in "when I come out the dorm", and "they got equ.ipment detects my fear." Thus through the language vl,e are given the impression of a narrator who is superfjcially simple and unintellectual but whose manner of perception is contrastingly

complex and mul ti-l ayered.

Following the comparison of the black boys' faces to radios, it is appropriate that the novel's first pieces of direct speech are presented, like djsembodied radio voices, w'ithout being linked to a particular person. The comments of the black boys about the narrator suggest a docile simpleton who is the butt of jokes, and at this poìnt it is diffjcult to tell how mad or sane the Chief is' how "reliable" a narrator he will be. The way in which he describes the black boys' thoughts and feelings exactly as he describes their actions, 'in the manner of an omnjscient third-person narrator' and the intensity of h'is imagery, which makes them into non-human machines, both suggest a kind of madness. The information which

comes a little later, however, that people only think he is deaf 108

and dumb, reveals that the Chief is more cunning and therefore more intelligent than they, and perhaps we, realize. Respect for hjm as a reliable narrator is increased also by the information that he is half Indian, which suggests that his unpolished style of narrat'ion is not due merely to simplemindedness.

Kesey has managed to recreate in the narrating voice the paranoid vis'ion of a schizophrenic. The Chief's perception of the hosp'ital , as a great n'ightmare of hi dden machi nery, wì res, devi ces implanted in the patients themselves which make it imposs'ible for the patìents to thjnk or act for themselves, is totally convinc'ing, and there is enough evidence in the way the world around the Chief runs - and enough parallels with the world "outside", the reader's world - to make his terms increas'ingly acceptab'le as the novel progresses.

After the brief going back in time which the information about the Chief's pretended deafness produces, "I'm mopping" returns us to the narrative present. The effect of such use of the present continuous is to evoke a tableau-like scene, a single image of repeated activ'ity. Then having established the present continuous aS the main narrative tense, Kesey uses the abrupt contrast betvveen "I'm mopp'ing" and "the key híts" to underline the apprehension felt by the Chief at the approach of Nurse Ratched. When the "Big Nurse" is introduced she is desc¡ibed not obiectiveìy'in terms of her appearance and personality so much as'in terms of the effects she has on the Chief. As her nickname suggests, she is the authority in the ward, but there is also someth'ing sinister and threatening 109

about her. In contrast with the style established so far, a nominal style in which the verbs are main'ly common, unremarkable ones and appear in their weak, unemphatic forms (I'm mopping", "they don't bother not talk'ing"), a number of strik'ing verbs are used to depict Nurse Ratched's entrance: the violence of the verb "hits", descr.ib.ing her first little action of putting the key in the lock, is offset by the smooth, vaguely sinister "cleave", "Slides" and "trailS". The repeated "and" in "SOft and SWìft and familiar" slows down the sense of time passing, extend'ing the impression of a frozen moment of activ'ity wh'ich the'introductory "I'm mopp'ing" has jnitiated. The vague implications of some threat connected with the B'ig Nurse come more to the surface in the descript'ion of her nail colour as "like the tip of a soldering iron" - dangerous, and both hot and cold together. As with the black boys ' "speci al sensi t'i ve equi pment" , the omi ssi on of connecti ng- relating words helps create the impression of a simile passing into reality - into the unseparated fantasy-reality, that js, of the narrator.

Sim'iles of this kjnd occur frequently throughout the novel. Peopìe and thìngs inside the hospital are compared to concrete, everyday objects or aspects of the natural worl d outsi de the hosp'i tal , ord'inary things previousìy familiar to the Chief, who seems to need to define or fìx exactly the nature of the experiences he is describing. At times the images go one stage beyond metaphor and merge with reality, and this is related to the manner in which ordinary nouns' adjectives and verbs are used in unconventional grammatìcal relatìonships to create particularimplied effects. Nouns used as 110 adjectives - "the piìl hops across the floor with a cricket scrabble" - suggest a world in which inanimate obiects or imaginary objects become real and take on a life of their own. Inanimate nouns coupled with active verbs and 'intransitive verbs used transitiveìy - "the question pops their heads up" - suggest the power of intangible things to exert the same 'influence as physicaì obiects. Single details such as these reinforce the ideEs of fear and threat suggested by the consistent imagery of sinister, invisible machinery controlìing the hospital patients without their knowledge.

Real i ty ì s not di sti ngui shed sty'l i s ti cal ly or even syntact'i cal ìy from imagination: the narrator's description of a scene is entirely subjective and made in terms of his otvn emotional reactions to it. In this ¡¡ay, by interweaving the narrative and the commentary so compìete1y, Kesey encourages us not to quest'ion or try to objectively analyse what is being described; by involvìng us in the Chief's consciousness, he appeals to us through our emotions and not through 'logical reasoning or persuas'ive argument. Because there is this unbroken focus through the Chief's consciousness, we accept his

"omnjscience" as insight based on years of observation inside the asylum. In the Chief external events and internal emotional responses to them merge complete'ly and Kesey's style of writing manages to reflect this intense perceptual subiectivity. The descriptìon of the contents of the Big Nurse's bag, with jts imaginary cogs and real needles, is an example:

. she's got that bag full of a thousand parts she aims to use in her duties today - wheels and gears' cogs polished to a hard glitter, tìny p'ills that-gleam ì'i [e porce] ai n , needl es , forceps , watchmaker's pl i ers , rolls of copper wire (10) 111

The most noticeable stylistic characteristics of One tLa¡ huez, the Cuckoots Nest' the use of the present tense, the specific ìmagery, the col'loquial, straightforward speaking manner, and the paratactic sentence forms - all suggest a narrator whose main concern 'is to relate each deta'il of an experience jn order, clearly and equally. The use of the present and present continuous tense in part'icular suggests that the Chief is relìving the experience in the telling and it aìso gives each episode a quafity of timelessness - or frozen t'ime perhaps - and representativeness. It is a similar effect to that not'iced by M.A.K. Half iday in his readjng of "Leda and the Swan" which also "moves" by means of verbs of th'is kind'l

Atthough hne FLea Ouet, the Cuckoots Nest is written as a first person narration and is also stylistically the narration of an 'individual consc'iousness, structuraìly' however'the narrator's story forms onìy a sub-plot secondary to the story of another character'

Randle McMurphy. So there is a simultaneous duality of interest:

what McMurphy is doing and how the Chief is expepiencing McMurphy's also actions. t^lh.ile the overt focus is on lrlcMurphy, however, we are involved in the Chief's development, not only because it is through his eyes and iudgements that we see McMurphy and what is happening' but also because he is hjmself undergo'ing psychologica] changes which it is up to us, the readers, to evaluate'

Having used the present tense for the first half of the novel' the author is able to make the switch to the past tense an ìmportant functional element in the delineat'ion of this central relationship' have The change comes first on page !24, after McMurphy seems to is scored a victory over the Big Nurse and the chìef' as a result, see'ing thìngs differently, more clearly: t12

She [Nurse Ratched] stands uP, looking more pleased with herself than I've seen her look since McMurphy came to trouble her a week ago The way the Big Nurse acted so confident in that staff meeting, that worried me for a while, but-ìt di dn't make ãny d'i fference to McMurphy (I24)

McMurphy's defiance and the Chief's confidence are both broken shortìy after, however, when McMurphy finds out that there is no fixed date for his release from the hospital, that he is there indefinitely. The next day he does his chores zealously and refuses to stand up for the other patients against the B'ig Nurse during the group therapy sessjon. The Chief, who knows the reason for the change, feels his old fear returning, the fear which his 'imagination transmutes into the i nvi si bl e fog-maki ng machi nery of the "Combi ne" . Hi s psychoìogical regression is signified by the tense change:

Looki n g down the cancelled row of faces my eyes fi nal I y came to McMurphy 'in his cha'ir in the corner and th e wh'ite tubes 'in the ceiling begin to pump their refri gerated ìight again I can feel it, beams all th e way intó my stomach. (135)

The narrative remains in the present, as if the Chief has returned to his former introverted psychoìogical state, until near the end of Part II when McMurphy finds out that most of the patients have voluntarily committed themselves to the hosp'ital, they are free to leave but they do not, a realizat'ion which at first seems almost to destroy him; soon, however, his defiance reasserts itself and seeing this makes the Chief's heart "r'ing a high excited p'itch in [h'is] head."(152) The narrative has returned to the past and, apart from two passages of reminiscence and the section describing the shock treatment given to McMurphy and the Chief' it remains in the past unt.il the end. The epjsode i nvol vi ng McMurphy 's renewed 113

defiance'is a turnjng-pojnt not only for him but for the Chief also: he gains strength and confidence and detachment, acquires some of what he has admired all along ìn McMurphy. He is no longer re]ìving

experiences with total involvement in the memory, but is looking baek at them, therefore with jncreased obiectivity'

The shift from present to past tense together with the shift'ing of the narrative balance, so that the Chief's psychological evolution wi th i s gi ven equal promì nence wi th McMurphy 's conti nuì ng offens i ve , which the tense sh'ifts coinc'ide, have the function of mitigating the apparent climax - McMurphy's death - and the final statement of the novel. The tragic element which McMurphy's death, fol'lowing Billy Bibbjt's, introduces, the martyr-hero being killed so that order may be restored, is left to one side and the focus shjfts to the chief's final victory over the institution, thus reestablishing the serious tone of blended comedy and satire in which the story has developed. The shift also high]ights the allegorical role - as a kind of christ- figure, the saviour and liberator of those who survive him - which is implied for McMurphy through the imagery'in the last th'ird of the book, in, for example, the passage describing his electric shock treatment: ,'[He] climbs on the table without any he]p and spreads his

arms out to fit the shadow Put on those things like headphones' crown of s.il ver thorns at h'is tempì es. " (222)

The New Testament allusions combine with a number of other narrative elements - a narrator who is a simple, thorough observer but

whose percept'ions are comp'lex, the insistent'imagery, the Biblical parataxis - to help create an'impress'ion of import and "mean'ing" which the story alone would not bear. An allegoricaì layer beneath the surface story ìayer is suggested, so that it is easy to see the IT4 hospital as a mjcrocosm reflecting the macrocosm of American society in genera'l .

It is difficult to express the formula for the relationship between style and interpretation but jt is signjficant that revìewers and critìcs writing from a number of different poìnts of view have been able to interpret 7ne FLa¡ }uer the Cuckoots Nest allegorica]1y, and have done so without having to distort, om'it or apologize for parts of the novel which do not fit the pattern they recognise. The struggle between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, and the ,,salvation" of the Chief which results from the struggle, have been seen by d'ifferent critics as representing modern versions of several ancient conflicts: the Fisher King - Wasteland myth; the sacrjfice of Christ on the cross; the struggìe between Good and

Evil or Man and Matriarchy; the Promethean myth of mortalS versus

gods. As wel I there i s the more fami I i ar modern preoccupat'ion w'ith the conflict between man (or individuality) and bureaucracy; and for one rev'iewer the book'is a precise account of an LSD trip' with

McMurphy the guide and the Chief the initiate.2

Thi s mul t'ipì'i ci ty of ì nterpretati ons s uggests that the appeal of the book to its readers is made on several different levels' Northrop Frye, at the end of his descriptjon of the various'l'iterary

modes, makes an important statement about the nature of the literary experience jn general , which is espec'ial'ly relevant in this regard:

blhiIe one mode constjtutes the underlying tonality of a work of fiction, ôrY or all of the other four may ¡e simultaneously preient. Much of our sense of the tuUtlety of gqeai iiterature comes from thìs modal counterpo'int. r 115

AlargepartofAmericanf.ictionofthelasttwentyyearsis distingujshed by a particular form of "modal counterpoint", a yoking together of seemingly discordant modes in a way which el'icits a complex weave of react'ions in the reader'

OneFLeuOuertheCuckoo|sNesthasbeendescribedasa ,,novel of the absurd" in the same way as catch-22, and stylistically points' To it parallels,,theatre of the absurd" plays at a number of treated with the begin with, grotesque and paìnfu'l subiect matter is a techniques of comedy: McMurphy is drawn as a comic character' as his upnight' clown of the "wise fool" type, and Nurse Ratched acts I i ke Bi I ly humourless fo'i l du¡i ng thei r confrontations ' Pati ents Bjbb.it,withhisstammerandpathoìogicalaweofhismother'or prowess' are modern Hard.ing, with hiS pretensions to po!"er and sexual Ellis' versjons of tradit'ional comic figures, but the "Chronics" - the wall with for example, with his hands permanently nailed to grotesques' imaginary nails - correspond more to Beckett's fìxed

Asinthetheatreoftheabsurd,fantasypìaysanimportant part: in characterization, where the bold exaggerated outljnes make where stereotypes or symbols out of the characters; in incident, fantastic events such as the ward party occur among more ord'inary that they happenìngs; and 'in the externalizing of emotions such example' intrude into reality - the Chjef's ìmagined fog mach'ine' for to be in control whichchurns out mist whenever the Big Nurse seems gains the upper hand' The and ceases to function whenever lilcMurphy the conflict between technique used by Kesey in his presentation of an exact ìiterary equiva]ent McMurphy and the Big Nurse is, in fact' and of the cartoonist's method which relies on sìmple' exaggerated fantasticìmagestoevokeapersonality.TheappearanceofNurse 116

Ratched at the beginning, for exampìe, is described in thiS way:

[She's] so furious. She's swelling up, swells. tjll fìár-Uáóf ì s sp1 i ttj ng out the whi te uni form and she 's let her arms sect'ioñ out long enough to wrap around the three of them five, six times. She looks around her with a swivel of her huge head So she ieatiy lets herself go and her painted smile twists' stretlhes to an open snarl, and she blows.up bìgger ãñ¿-¡igg.r, big ai a tractor (10)

McMurphy, too, when he first appears, is a cartoon-figure' a caricature of the cowboy hero, with a laugh which "comes out of his wide grinning mouth and spreads ìn rings bigger and bigger till it's tapping aga'inst the walls all over the ward'" (15)

The conflict, however, despite its delineation as comedy, has a framework of seriousness'in that it is mediated through the chief,s consciousness. The relationship between the comic methods of narration and the grìmness of the events being described is in fact expressed in the Chief's comment on the daily routine of the ward:'

Like a cartoon world, where the figures are flat and ãuiÍined in black,ieifing through some kind of goofy iió.V lfrut might Ué real-funny 'if it lveren't for the ãuitäon figurãs being real guvs. (31)

Throughout hne FLeu 7oev'the Cuckoo'¡s Nest, this discord between style and subiect matter evokes a sense of despairing protest, as if to laugh is the only way to cope with such knowtedge. It is a react.ion evoked also in much wrìting classed as belonging to the theatre of the absurd.

Thus Kesey presents an.image of absurd'ity which, because there .is that degree of exaggerat'ion and fantasy about the characters and the pìot, is not seen as specific to mental institutjons but has reference poìnts with society in general. unl'ike many absurdist LL7 plays, however, One FLa¡ Ouey, the Cuckoots Nest is not simply a static'image of reality, it does not iust create the sense of a situation repeated over and over without alteration or the likelihood of change. The difference is in the way the characters are developed. Despìte the comic-strip exaggeration in the characterization of

McMurphy, he is depicted as a compìex personaìity who sees deep'ly and sympathetically what is happening 'in the hospital. The conflict at the centre of the novel is specifjc and personal, that of a man who must maintain his individuality ìn order to exìst and who, if he has any choice, must choose to defy al1-powerful authority even when the cause is hopeless if he is to remain a man in his own eyes. Moreover, Mcflurphy and Nurse Ratched do not function merely as symbols of two sides of a moral conflict because the effects they have on the patìents are presented as genuine and not to be iust laughed at. McMurphy's contjnual iest'ing has a humanizing effect' not on'ly on the pat'ients within the narrative, but on the total mood and impact of the novel. The sìgnificance of th'is humanizing role of

McMurphy is brought out in the choice of the Chief, himself deeply influenced by McMurphy's approach to life, as narrator and recorder of the change in the patients - from mentally dead automations to thinking, self-respect'ing men - and as a result there is a warmth and present in sympathy felt towards the characters which is not usual'ly the theatre cf the absurd.

Asaresult,oneFLeu7uez'theCuckootsNestreachesintothe most reader'S own experience. The point is inade more than once that of the patìents in the hospital are voluntari'ly committed: they have not been identified as "mad" and forcìbly imprisoned but have chosen to shut themselVes away. Thejr differences from "nonnality" - their 118 aggraVated idiosyncrasies or fears or physicaì disabilities' external manifestations of their alienation from society - have brought them there. Aìthough on the surface their differentness is comical, as Soon aS one goes deeper' as Kesey obliges the reader to do, one finds that the differentness and eccentricity are merely aspects of normality intensified and extended such that they control the whole life of the sufferer. In other words, Kesey makes us realize and accept that the seeds of the madness his characters exhibit are in all of us.

One reviewer of the novel has observed that "as the boarding- house provided a stock slice-of-lìfe locale for a previous generation of writers, the sanitarium seems to appeal to many modern lvriters aS a comparable microcosm of the times."4 In each situation, characters representative of the types found in the wider society are brought together to enact the central conflicts defining that society. Kesey's point in 7ne FLa¡ Ouey the Cuckoo's Nest is really that' as

Raymond Oldermañ puts it in his book examin'ing the "wasteland" image as the dominating metaphor of much modern American writing, "the true madness, the real dry root of the wasteland is not the patient's irrationality, but the deadly order, sYStem, and rationality of the institution. What is normal is perverted and reason becomes madness, while some small hope for salvation lies in the nonrational if not

s the downri ght i rrati onal . "

It is the same central pojnt that Heller is making in Cateh-Zl, though the renderi ng of i t i s di fferent 'i n the two novel s. Both novels are set in a World defined by the existential view, a world without an ultimate Power beyond humanity to appeaì to for iust'ice or moral guidance. The depiction of absurdity in Catch-Z\, however, is 1i9

'in total , extending to include characterization' while }ne FLst's )uer the Cuckoots Nest the effect of absurdity is complicated because the experience js rendered subiectively, through the perception of a narrator with whom the reader can identify sympathetical'ly' The bringing together of absurdist techniques and sympathetic characterization in the latter novel is achieved chiefly by means of its romance elements. !*lhereas the romance elements in Catch-ZZ operated mainly as a kìnd of jronic counterpo'int to the exaggeration and farce of the naryative, in One FLew Ooer the Cuckoots Nest it is the specific, individualized condition of conflict which is counterpo'inted and given depth through 'its l'inking to the archetypaì sjtuat'ion which the forms of myth and romance exemplify'

The basic plot of One FLøw Ouer the Cuckoots Nest is that of the romance - the hero battling all odds to overcome the enemy and save not iust himself but his peop'le - and minor elements of the powers romance method a'lso appear in modern guise: mysterious 'by the associ ated wi th the enemy (tne i nvi si ble mach'inery control I ed to Big Nurse for example), the increasing difficulty of the obstacles of be overcome, and the essential aloneness of the hero' The death the hero at the end follows his vjctory over the enemy and results in the liberation, even if limited, of others: several men check mental themselves out of the hosp'ital , and the ch'ief breaks out of his prison of self-'imposed silence and then escapes from the asylum' So there is the sense that McMurphy's rebellion against the system' though 'it ended in his death' was successfuì '

It is thìs ending that allows the mythìcaì and al'legoricaì of types of ìnterpretation. The book represents more than an image absurdity for it contains active revolt, progress towards a climax' t20 and above all, the implication of a resuìting change for the better his with the new beginning suggested in the Chief's description of escape:

Free (254-5)

of !,lhereas absurd'ist drama tends to present a static image symbol'ic the existentjal-absurd condjtion, one FLeu }uez'the cuckoots Nest suggests an alternative to pass'ive acceptance of that condition by pos.it.ing the value of challenging it. Thus the book contains w'ithin the itself the kind of movement which Frye described in relation to irony' development of literary fiction in general - the movement from of which is the literary manifestation of the ph'ilosophicaì attitude absurdity, towards myth.6 The incorporation of the romance element into the absurd'ist framework is what makes the transition possible in novels Iike one FLøw Ouer the Ctrckoots Nest'

It does not matter - that is, it does not undermine or invaìidate the signjficance of either FlcMurphy's rebelljon within the narrative or Kesey's effort in writing the novel itself'that the victory with which the story concludes is of such a temporary' provìdes limited nature, for the whole thrust of existentialism, which the philosophical environment within which Kesey has written' has been to bring people to the realizat'ion that nothing is permanent, fixed world which and unchanging; to believe so is to exist in a fantasy is all the time contrad'icted by the facts of experience.

*** 1,2I

CHAPTER 6

HERZOG

If I am out of my m'ind, it's all right wìth me, thought Moses Herzog' Some people thought he was cracked and for a time he himself had doubte¿ tnai he was-all there. But now, though he stil.l Uãfrave¿ odd'ly, he felt confìdent, cheerful , glalrvoyant and strong' He had falleir rnã.r-a spell and was writing letters to everyone under the sun. He was so stii^red by these letters that from the end of June he moved from p'lace to piace with a valise full of paperst H' y'i neyard' hãà carri ed thi s vai i se from' New York to Martha's 'later -Þut ieturned from the Vineyard immediate'ly; tryo days he flew to Chicago, and from Chicãgo he went to a village in western Massachusetts. Hidden in the country, he wróte endlessly, fanaticaì1y, to the n.ur¡.pup.ri, to peopìe'in public life,.to friends and relatives and at last to the deaà, iris own obscure dead, and finally the famous dead. It was the peak of summer in the Berksh'ires. Herzog was alone in the big old house, Normally particular about food, he now átã 5ilvercup Uieã¿ from the paper pãckage, beans from the can and American cheäse. Now and then he pìcked raspber¡ies in the overgrown gá.¿.n, liiting up the thorny canes with absentminded caution' As Ëð.-iié.p, he ð1.þt on a matiress without sheets -'it was his abandoneä marriagä UeO - or in the hammock, covered by hil qog!. fãli ¡.u.ded grais and locust and map'le seedlings surrounded him in tÀe yard. lr{hðn he opened his eyes'in the night, the stars were near iï[."tpirituâl ¡o¿iei. Fires, óf course; gases - mjnerals, heat, atôms,'Uut eloquent at five in the morning to a man'lying in a hammock, wrapped in his overcoat. When some new thoug his heart he went to the kitchen' 'whi f rom hi s headquarters, to wri te te pa'int was scalj ng lf,. Urick walls ãnd Herzog ped mouse droppings from the táUle with his slãeve, caÍ why fìeld mice should have ruã¡'-u paision for wai and hey made holes in paraffin- iàal ed þreserves; they gn cãndl es down to the wj cks ' A rat chewed intó a paät<ãg- eaving the_s_hape 9f ]ts-body ìn iñ.-lãyãrs ot stiðes. e othér half of the loaf spread with iam.- He could share All the wh'ile, one corner of his mind remained-open to the external world. He ñeard the crows in the morning. lheil f,?t:h He heart the thrushes at dusk. At nìght there ðâii *ur deìicioui. 'in ùãr u Uu.n owl .--W¡.n ñe walked the garden, excited by-a mental letter, he saw toiéi *iñd'ing about the iain spout; or mulberries - t22

birds gorging in the mulberry tree. The days were hot, the eveninés iluitre¿ and dusty. He looked keenìy at everything but he fel t hal f bl ind. His friend, his former friend, Valentine, and h'is wife' his exwife Madeleine, had spread the rumour that his sanity had co'll apsed. Was it true? He was taking a turn around the empty house and saw the shadow of his face in a grey, webby window. He looked weirdly tranquil. A radiant line wênt from mid-forehead over his straight nose and full, silent liPs.

Moses Herzog, a college professor' has just separated from his second wife, Madeleine, uJho, with their little daughter, has gone to ljve with her lover and Herzog's friend, Valentine Gersbach. Herzog, emotionally shattered by the break-up of his marriage, is staying'in his house in the Berkshires, trying to recover his peace of mind. He spends his time going over in his mind the stages of their relationship' reliving incidents from his whole past life, writ'ing'letters to people, famous and unknown, living and dead, in whjch he attempts to analyze both metaphysical problems and his own persona'l problems. Three different story levels unfold: the most recent events, following his divorce, hjs restless wanderings from l|ew York to Martha's Vineyard, back to New York, to Ch'icago, and finally to the Berkshires; the period of his marriage to l4adeleine; and thirdly, recollections of his first marriage and memories going far back into his childhood.

Although Herzog is Jewish, his Jewishness does not fully determine the nature of his crisis of faith or his particular prob'lems in living. 0n the contrary, in the crises and eontradictions of 1.23

Herzog's experience, Bellow portrays the cond'it'ion of man in the modern world. Like the protagonists of Bellow's other novels, Herzog feels himself lost and confused' st¡iving to make sense of life and death, to come to terms lvith the complexity of "truth" and

" reasorì" , parti cul arly as gui des for i ndj vi dual choi ce and acti on , and to create for himself a sense of dignity and meaningfulness despite the absurdity of his condition and of the world in general.

Many novelists since þJorld War II have considered these same "existential" questions and have come to cynjcal and nihilistic views of man and the possibilitjes available to him; Bellow's characters, though, includ'ing Herzog, learn to hold faith jn themselves and they majntaìn their belief that life, no matter how grim, incoherent and alien it seems, does have meaning and contain truths - even if the meaning and the truth a'lways remain iust outside their grasp.

A'large part of the complexity of the novel comes from the fact that, while Herzog tends to view the world existentially (for instance, he feels the presence of things in his environment in the

manner of Sartre's Roquentin, and he appreciates the relativity of values and morals and the way in which this iso'lates individuals from each other), existential ph'iìosophy and the romantic tradjtion from which it derives are also targets of his criticism.* Ironjcally,

* " Nietzsche and He'idegger both are subieets of more than one of Herzog's letters. At another point he refers to his academic studies which-had led him to "a new angle on the modern condition, showing how life could be lived by renewjng unìversal connections; overturn'ing the last of the Romaniic errors about the unìqueness of the Self. (+s¡ t24

and typically, for llerzog is continually unable to settìe upon certainties of belief, this attitude of opposition to indivìdualism is itself contradicted - in the very form of the novel which makes the consciousness and biased vision of Herzog the sole mirror of the reality to which it refers. Herzog, aS Dan Isaac puts it, "achieves existential dimension by always allowing Herzog's jdeas to grow out of the personal events and intricate emotions of his life."1

The "action" of Het,zog, hOlever, ocCupies only a small part of the whole narrativeo for almost all of the novel presents Herzog's thoughts, and events are chiefly stimu]i which propel him into reflection on related issues or memories. H'is mind ranges wide'ly' from the trivial ineident to the profoundest philosophical questions and what actionthere isisentirely subordinate to what is happen'ing in Herzog's mind.

The style of the novel, the blending of the intellectual and co'l1oquial voices in Bellow's dense, rhythmic prose, reflects the workings of Herzog's mind and his manner of making continual and vital connections between the problems of his own experience and the abstractions and generalizations of theory and philosophy lvhich is h'is way of countering the apathy which existential despaìr can gene rate .

One feels, behind the narrative surface, behind the fìimsy plot of Herzog's quest for revenge following his reiection by his wife, a more powerful conflict in the struggle between Herzog and his intellectual background or, at a deeper level again, between Bellow the author and h'is language: the kind of struggle described r25

by Tony Tanner2 to force meaning from empty or meaningless words, as the individual must create his own meanings in an absurd World.* Richard Pearce observes that, whereas Henderson assaults reality phys'ically'in h'is quest for meaning, Herzog assaults it with language, the ambiguity of his assault and, through him, Bellow'S assault, deriv'ing from "an agon between consciousness and grammar - between real'ity as it is perceiVed phenomenolog'ica'l'ly and the order requ'ired for ma!

The language through which Herzog's mental experience js med'iated - that is, Bellow's style - is above all what makes Herzog'interesting and convinc'ing. The style which Bellow has developed, a style wh'ich ut'ilizes, for example, a peculiar ambiguity of tense and a blurring of namator's and protagonist's "Voices", creates an effect which resembles most cìosely the dramat'ic monologue - even though Herzog is written in the third person - in its intimate revelation of the protagon'ist's consci ousness.

The nove'l begins without introduction, moving straight 'into Herzog's thoughts w'ith a statement of the problem which 'is to occupy him throughout: his condition of mental confus'ion. His "it's all right with me" implies a "don't care' or defiant

*Alfred Kazin is one who sees Bellow's greatest appeal in his ability to command language. For most writers today, he says, "language is salvation their conscious hope, theif fáeling,"thõir only means of transcendance."3 t26

attitude - which comes to be seen as ironical as the whole book is proof that he does care. At this point there is the conventional separation bes¡veen narrator and protagonìst, though later as we become more intimate with Herzog's psyche the di sti nct'ion between them i s bl urred.

The recurrence of the verb "thought", in the first sentence of the second paragraph, is the first occurrence of Bellow's manipulat'ion of tense to create an ambigu'ity about time which is one of his most effective ways of seem'ing to present Herzog's consciousness more djrect'ly, less obvjously mediated through the novelist-commentator's vjsion, than the third person novel usually permits. The time reference of the second "thought" is doubtful: we cannot be sure whether it refers to the same time as the first "thought" or to a time prev'ious to it. In this way, the merg'ing of past'incidents with present events which characterjzes Herzog's manner of thinking is reflected on the "surface" of the narrati ve prose.

The col'loqui aì terms for madness - "out of my m'ind" , "cracked,', Inot] alI there" - suggest a somewhat amused protagonìst, and a narrator who does not take Herzog's rumoured madness too serjousìy. As the rest of th.is first section is written in a rather formal style and vocabulary these expressions stand out, but they establish here Bellow's method of moving easily between different reg'isters and patterns of t27

language. Like Herzog's mind, Bellow's style ranges widely, taking words, expressions and sentence-constructions from everyvuhere and combining them in the long rhythmic paragraphs charact€ristic of h'is prose.

The form of the next sentence - "But now, though he still behaved oddly, he felt confident, cheerful, clairvoyant and strong', - exemplifies the double vision which Bellow manages to use to ironic advantage throughout the book. The subordinate "though" clause serves to develop in the reader the habit of seeing Herzog not only in terms of h'is own view of himself ("he felt") but also obiect'ively, guided by the narrator ("he behaved"). The list of adjectives in this sentence 'is typical of Herzog's manner of deal'ing w'ith expepience: he attempts always to include all the aspects of an emotion or state of mjnd rather than bejng satisfied with just one covering term.

Aìthough "now"seems to clarify the question of time a

little, seem'ing to refer to the present-tense reflection of the opening sentence and locating the narration jn a specific rather than an indefinite time, the sìight time ambiguity first indjcated by "thought" recurs in the following sentences. The pluperfect "he had fallen" echoes "he had doubted" whjch clearly referred to paSt time; "had fallen", however, acts as a kjnd of "past continuous", still influencing the present - that is' 128

the time when Herzog felt confident and was writing the letters.

"He moved" in the next sentence ("He v'Jas so stirred by these letters that from the end of June he moved from p'lace to place with a valise full of papers") is confus'ing too because we are uncertain whether the period since the end of June precedes the time of the first sentence (tfrat is, "moved" equals "had moved") or if it comes after it in time.

Gradually it becomes clearer, though it is never directly stated, that in the first two paragraphs the narration moves from the novel's present into the past, in that way providìng some clues about Herzog's background, then back to the present where the phrases "at Iast" and "fina1ly" indicate the passage of time and the return to the "now" of the opening.

This ambiguity about time is characteristic of the book as a whole and is one of the most'important elements in the creation of the personality of Herzog. For Herzog' chronological time is irrelevant; he is unaware of the hours passing or of the time taken to get from onç pìace to another, so deep is his absorption in his thoughts. Events from the past impìnge on his memory in random order, distant recollections hav'i ng the same force as recent ones. Qften present and past are confused in h'is mind as he relives emotionally what has

a'l ready happened. t29

The confinement of the novel to Herzog's frame of reference only is indicated also at th'is early stage by the simpìe device of the repeated "he" , I n the second paragraph a'll the mai n cl aus,es ' excepting only the first one, have "he" as their subiect ("he felt",

"he WaS sO Stirred", "he had Carried", "he wrote"), thUS unObtruSiveìy preparing the reader for the book's restrictjon to the single point of view.

This second paragraph acts in a way as introduction but 'it is a kind wh'ich suggests many smaì'l mysteries associated with the crumbs of background 'information which 'it provides. With the third paragraph, Belìow begins the graduaì revelation of Herzog's past and his return to sanjty which is the subiect matter of the whole book and is only compìeted at the very end of it.

The setting is defined more narrowly - it is mid-sunrner in the Berkshires - and specific details of Herzog's everyday life are giVen, counteracting the impression of a shadowy' restless fanat'ic which the summary ìn the preceding paragraph presented. The change in styìe noticeable in this section is largeìy a result of the increase in qualifiers. In th'is passage, in fact, it is the adjectives which carry the most significance, emphasizing the s'impl'icity of Herzog's everyday l'ife - he eats "SíLueacup bread from the paper. package", picks up the raspberry canes "with absent-mLnded caution"; and the deteriorat'ion of the house - "the ouengnoün garden" , "taLL beay,ded. grass", revealing a little more of Herzog'S past in ,,his aband.oned marylage bed"; and finally, in the two adject'ives used to describe the stars - "spiritual" and "eloquent" - ind.icating the qual'ity of Herzog's imaginat'ive life. Other 130

'left-branch'ing'r constructions - "Normally particular about food",

"NOu, and then", "AS fOr Sleep" - Serve tO SIOW the mOvement of the prose and give the impression of a narrator conscious of speak'ing to his readers.

rrherr As i n the previous pqragraph, is the subiect of almost all the main clauses. The breaking of the pattern which comes with "Tall bearded grass and locust and maple seedlings surrounded him in the yard", through the little shift in the narratiVe perspective, emphasizes Herzog's cìosed perception by omitting any suggest'ion that he is aware of his environment: the grass "surrounded him", he iS not "surrounded by" the grass.

In the description of the stars, Bellow's writing acquires a 'poeticu quaìity, largely through the "unprosaic" arrangement of the words - the repeated poem-like ellision of "the stars u)e?e neartl inStead Of "seemed tO be", "Fires" inStead Of "They were fires", iUSt "eìoqUent" instead of "they Were eloquent" - and through the controlled contrasting rhythms:

'in When hg ópened hfs éyes lhe níghtr.. tþe stárs we¡e néar ]'ike sp'i¡ituaì bodles. Fíres, of coûrse;- gases - minerals, heat, átoms, but éloquent at five in the morn'ing to-a mán lÍing jn a hánunock, wrapped in his overcoat.

Qften, throughout the novel, Beìlow seems to use the rhythm and sound of his prose, rather than its actual.referential content' to convey an impression of Herzog's state of mind, to suggest without stati ng the compl exi ty of Heì"zog's psycho'logi ca'l makeup, and the qualìty of the confusions with which he is troubled' 131

The rest of this introductory section fills in more details of Herzog's everyday life, describes how "he looked keenly at everything but he felt half blind", and finishes with a reference to his former friend Valentine and ex-wife Madeleine, the two people whom it is gradua'l 'ly reveal ed Herzog bl ames for hi s mental breakdown; then i n the following section Herzog begins the process of examining his past life to discover where it had begun to collapse.

Like the "Phaedrus" of Zen and the Ant of l,IotorcycLe Maintenønce, Bellow's Herzog is an 'intellectual , a univers'ity academic whose abilities to philosophize and deal with abstract problems have not prevented his world from crashing around him and almost crushìng him. The focus of interest or the point of view from which the 'in " story " devel ops , ho!'Iever, i s qu'ite di fferent the two novel s : while in Zen attention is gìven predominantly to the cause of Phaedrus'breakdown - the fault in Western society as a whole, the splìt between reality and abstraction - and to the narrator's attempted anaìys'is of that cause, 'in Heraog the involvement is much more wi th the mental 'ity, the psychol ogi ca] make-up, of the man himself and h'is'immediate psycho'logica'l reactions to situations as they happen.

The narrative strategy of the book is to set Herzog, as the experiencer of all that is described, into a variety of djfferent relationshìps: with other peop'le, with h'is former, remembered selves, with nature, with the self who is the letter-writer and with the self who is the ironic self-observer. Such a strategy creates numerous possi bi I 'i ti es for comedy and i rony of both s'ituati on r32

and language, while at the same time maintaining our sympathy for Herzog's troubles, his lonel'iness, half-madness, humil'iation and disillusionment.

Herzog is written in the form of a third-person narration, but it has similarities with the first-person or stream-of-consciousness novel. The other characters, for example, do not really have l'ives of the'ir own but are described and iudged entirely from Herzog's point of view and in relation to himself. Bellow, however, creates the possìbility of irony through the particular balance of the narrative approaches in which the book is written: there is the indirect free style by which Herzog's thoughts are transmitted, and the voice of the third-person narrator ("Herzog did thjs", "He saw that',), and also there is a third "Voice" v,rhich comes between these two, so that we are not sure who is speaking, whether it is Herzog hìmself thinkjng or the narrator commentìng on Herzog. In the followjng passage the three "voices" appear, the italicized words (my italics) represent'ing the ambiguous third voice'

Then he put on the madras iacket How did he look? 0h, terrì f i c - you I ook exqui si te, trloses ! Smashi ng !

The effect of this overlap is to give the impression of an ident'ificatjon between Herzog and the narrator, as if Herzog ìs observing himself, and his past selves as they were involved'in past experìences, and pass'ing iron'ic iudgements on himself. Thus, for the reader, there i s the f eel i ng of personal 'i dent'i f i ca ti on wi th 133

the protagonist that a first-person novel gives and also the ironic distance, with its comic possibilities, of a third-person narrati on.

There are in effect three levels of awareness in He?zog: there is the man lying on the sofa in the house in the Berkshires indulging in an examination of the circumstances which have led to hi s present psychol og'i cal state; there are, as r¡rel I , the recollected selves which are also self-conscious beings during the'ir time of part'icipat'ion in events; finally, there is the fused Herzog-narrator who recounts the whole story.

In most novels where free indirect style ìs employed, there are verbal cues indicating that the focus of narration is switch'ing from external to internal. This happens in Hez'zog ìn the fol'lowing example, where the first clause provides the cue:

He went on tak'ing stock, lying face down on the sofa' l,Jas he a clever man or an ìdiot? Ì'lell, he could not at this time cìaim to be clever , . . (9)

In other places there are no such indications/ or the 'indications are,'neutralized" by the kind of statement usually associated w'ith authorial comment:

A rat chewed i nto a package of bread Herzog ate the other half of the loaf spread with iam. He could share with rats too. (8) 134

The uncompleted letters which Herzog writes compulsively functjon as an extension of this pendulum-swìng between psychoìogica'l intìmacyand.irony.AtfjrsttheyareVeryshort,aphorismswhich In later sum up aspects of hìs state of m'ind at a part'icular t'ime' out in chapters they become ìonger, the arguments'in them are worked Herzog thjnking: môre detail and they show us the actual process of as a the way in which an encounter with another person'is used cataìyst setting off the train of thought, for example' or the way and real'ity in which h.is mìnd makes connect'ions between abstractions condition' or between h'is own conditìon and the general human suggested The compulsive, obsessive nature of this letter-writing'is stylìstically through the lìsts of syntagmat'ic words or phrases' the qualifications, and the detailed metaphors, which together represent sometimes' á ¿ominat'ing concern for exactness, even at the expense, of fluent argument or narrative'

Thesuggest.ionthatthereissomethingcompulsiVe,verg.ing styìisticaì'ly on madness, in Herzog himself thus is carried through The in a number of ways which emphasize his self-absorption' present' subjective treatment of t.ime, the merg'ing of past and descriptions of memory and intention, is used to thìs end. General of a certain period of time shift w'ithout grammatical indication ref I ecti ons on a the change to a s pec'i fi c occas'i on; Herzog ' s that partìcular aspect of a recollect'ion are inserted in such a way during the we cannot telr whether they are supposed'ly occur.ing tenses are episode or later (in the narrat.ive present); the same that the two used to refer to two different times, implying The experiences are equal'ly part of Herzog's state of mind' ' time reference' following passages illustrate these uses of ambiguous 135

All three take p'lace in the narrative present: that is, the time after the d'ivorce when Herzog is alone and trying to understand what has happened. The first describes Herzog at his house in the Berkshires where he begins the self-analys'is of which the novel consists. In the second he is remembering an episode wjth his wife Madeìeine. In the third he remembers a train ride he took after one of his visits with his son Marco. They refer respectiveìy to the three categories of tempora'l anrbiguity iust described.

His friend, his former friend, Valentine, and his wife, his ex-wife, Madeleine, had spread the rumour that hi s sani ty had co1ì apsed. l¡'las i t true?

. She put her hand in the font and crossed herself, ai if she'd been doing it all her life' 5ñ.1¿ léarned that in the movies, probably. But the look of terrible eagerness and twisted perplefity uñá upp.ul on her iãã. - where did that come from? (69)

. if existence is nausea then faìth is an ùncertajn relief Fine reading for a depressive! I et hi s head fal l H.rtog, at hi s desk, sm'il ed. -He lñto ñis rrands, almóst si lentìy ì augh'ing. But on the tra.in he was la5ðrìóuslV siuOying, [otally serious. (111)

Related to this treatment of time is the identification between Herzog's internal state of mind and his external environment'

There are no purety naturalistjc descript'ions of nature or of the c'ity: the surround'ings are always related directly to the human element. Herzog, in his state of heightened self-consciousness' 136

becomes very aware of his surroundìngs and his response to them provides a sounding-board - both for h'imself and for the reader - of his state of mind, and sets into relief by a kind of contrast his attempts to deal with the memories and the abstract thoughts which occupy him:

same time he sensed the danger of these multiple exci tements. ( 33)

Out of the burning, the dust, down the stairs he hurried underground He inhaled the odours of stone, of urine, bitterly tonic, the smells of rust and of lubricants, felt the presence of a current of urgency, speed, of infinite desire, possibìy related to the dri ve wi thi n himsel f , hi s ov'Jn streami ng nervous vitaìity. (Passion. Perhaps hysteria?. Ramona might reiieve him by sexual means.) (183)

The lists in such passages as the above transmit a sense of the pressure on Herzog of the "things'r making up hjs surroundings. People and pìaces and the memories associated with them are a continually present burden wh'ich prevents him thinking through to the solutions of the metaphysical problems he poses to himself. Enumerat'ion - of responses and ideas, the details of a p'lace or a person - and the addition of qualifications to simple statements represent Bellow's simpìest and most pervasive method of picturing Herzog's psyche. It is as'if Herzog feels a need to explain exactly what he means, almost to iustify hjmself and his reasoning and sometimes the listing suggests a lack of control, an inability to reject the considerations which intrude unasked into the main line of 737

hi s thought. This habjt of listing appears from the very beginning of the book:

Late in spring Herzog had been overcome by the need ló ãxpla'iir, tõ have it out, to iustify, to pul^in perspäctive, to clarjfy, to make amends. (E)

In the final section where his letter-writing mania reaches its height, the lists aìmost take over his whole thought-process:

euíL, accepting no abieet comfot't, The most absoLute, tte mìit ptLo"+ng qLestions (326)

The novel as a whole, like its protagonist, gives the impression of striving towards a certain form but never becoming systemat'ic. The progress of the action is continua'lly held up by the intervention of Herzog's reminiscences and letter-fragments and, the more importantìy, the apparent ìmpfications or s'ignificances of ,,present " events are conti nual 1y and i ron'ical'ly chal I enged and

undermined by means of the iuxtaposition. Thus the traditional novelstructure,relatinginsequencetheeventsfollowìngHerzog.s divorce from Madeleìne, is unbalanced by the subiective structure

where past memories and present experiences and abstract speculations share the same, neutral time zone because they are all equa'lly present in the one consciousness. The book finds its unity not in the logical cause and effect progression from one set of presentation circumstances to another, directìy related set but in the of that one consciousness with'its individual vúay of experiencing and respond.ing. In this sense Heyzog is circular and static: the 138

consciousness through which it is written is fundamentalìy the same at beginning and end, and at each po'int in the book the mind through which the narration is filtered is recognizably in the same state.

A number of critics, writing from different points of view, have commented that Herzog gives the impression of being static 1

The book does have a pìot, but it is so deep'ly submerged in the memories, self-ana'lysis and letter-protests to which Herzog continually subiects himself that the suspense, impetus and dynamism derived from the movements towards and from revelation and climax whjch are found in the traditional novel are very much diminished. Instead, certain quaf ities - structural and styl'istic - of Henzog create a resemblance to the lyric poem*: many of its sections share the circular, introspectìve form of the long med'itation set in mot'ion by a particular experience or mood. Herzog is in an "intense situation", fulI of b'itterness after his betrayal by his wife and friend, and this sìtuation or state of mind persists throughout the whole novel, everything that ìs related radiating from this centre. As in the poem, the language itself is the most immediate source of the reader's pleasure: the twists and turns of allusion and

*The comparison is made according to the view of ìanguage which sees poetry at lhe opposite end of a continuum from the pros.e of scienlifiiwriting, än¿ wnlch distinguishes certain "poetic"..anduIn "prosaic" qualities. It ìs the v'iew discussed by Bateson: prose tire languaje is the vehicle for the matter, in poetry the.matter is the vehíclã for the language. In prose, that is, the words tend to be submergedjn the ideas or things they represent. In poetry' on the other hand, the words are alwãys lìable to interfere with, and even in extreme cases to contradict, the theme or argument. 'Pure' prose is entirely a.matter of ideas; 'purg'_poetry is ent'irely a matter of phrasei. (. . .) Prose is essentialìy a mode of progression. A novel anä a treatise both take you from one point to another. A poem, on the other hand, stands still."o 139

connotation, the reversals of tone and mood, and the metaphors which fix precisely an attitude all draw attention to themselves, while the "ideas" and the significances of the action emerge almost independently as one is reading. In other words, it is Bellow's prose rather than Herzog's personality and life which chiefly susta'i ns our i nterest.

Involvement in the particular static situation or self- absorption of the k'ind with which Herzog is concetned creates for the speaker a certain licence to ignore the temporal, logìca1 and dramatic requirements of the usual narrative method and instead to find drama.in detajls of observation or thought which are irrelevant in terms of the "progression" of the story and to make time subjective so that events are given value accord'ing to Herzog's emotional states.

The danger of this approach js that the man Herzog may be seen as identical with the style, the language proiecting a direct and immediate image of the mjnd thinking, thus reducing the potential for critical judgement during the reading of the novel. Bellow, however, in general achieves a balance between a language which persuades by virtue of its wit, beauty and preciseness of metaphor,rhythm and so on, and content which urges quest'ioning of behaviour and motives and ideas. He does this by employ'ing sh'ifts in tone or style to indicate a shift in the speaker's thought and, simultaneously, establishing the overlapping and complimentary ìayers of irony as the different personages are given more or less attention.

Herzog is ironically aware of contradictions within himself and he is aware too that the answers which the great thjnkers have given to t,he problems of man and the universe are irrelevant to h'is ll r40

own problems. 0n another level, the narrator - whose "distance" from Herzog varies from paragraph to paragraph - provides an ìronic commentary on both his mental self-analysis and his act'ions' Then there is the irony built into the overall method of characterizat'ion for, as Irving Howe puts it, "Bellow has not provided a critical check: there is no way of learning what any of the other characters 7 might thjnk or feel about Herzog." The minor characters are sketched in sharply, "without the distraction of psychoìogicaì probe t,and or nuance" many of them - Valentine Gersbach and Sandor ons Hi mmel s te.i n, for exampl e - are ef fect'i vely cari catures , concentrati of grotesque or unsympathetic qua'lities' seen as they are through Herzog's biased vision. Thus, while the form emp'loyed by Be]low - the unrelieved focus on Herzog's activìties and state of mind - represents a total commitment to Herzog's experience' Bellow is not nearly so committed to Herzog's own estimate of that experience'

Herzog accepts that life is composed of ironies, that men are essentially aìone, separate from all other individuals, and that ìn emergencies one often cannot even reìy upon oneself. Herzog learns all this, and his discovery is often painful' but Bellow - or rather the narrator-persona mediat'ing between Bellow and Herzog - treats Herzog's experience comica]ly and takes pleasure in indicating the ironies by which Herzog is surrounded. The two processes which together make up the novel - Herzog's self-discovery and the narrator's added apprecjation of ìrony - merge in the conclud'ing section l^,ith its positive affirmation of the value of fiving and of the possibility of finding contentment in liv'ing' 141

All Herzog's letters, his self-examinat'ions and his diatribes against the living and dead represent acts of self- assertion and se'lf-preservation, and dramatize the assault made by existential'ism and the parallel movements of twentieth century thought on man's "compulsive need to synthesize, to make coherent sense out of the apparent absurdity of his world, to feel that his life has some transcendent meaning". e After the long'letters of the last chapter, Herzog ends in silence, with "not a sing'le Word". It is an existential gesture, a wil'lingness iust to let reality and himself be without any interference through language. In such silence Herzog experiences a kind of transcendence, nothing grand or likely to be long-lasting, merely a short respite from the threat of despa'ir. It is on this note of irony and ambiguity about the quality of Herzog's last experience that the novel concludes.

Wayne Booth, in his "classification" of ironic genres' cites

Hez,zog as exemp'lifying "The Celebrat'ion of Infinitely Ironi c Existence", a title which makes fun of the very attempt at such classification, but hjs description of the novel defines the balance between existential pessimism and qualified optimism which the book hol ds :

Hez,zog takes us through and beyond the abyss, 'proves' that talk about the void can be funny, not trag'ic, and di scovers for us that I i fe can be I i ved here and now, in spite of anything Nietzsche or Kafka can say.lo

In one very important sense, Henzog is an "old-fashioned" novel. Although in 'its structure, its psychological time scheme and ìts private moral and interpretative frame of reference, and t42

its idiosyncratic use of language a'lmost for language's sake, the novel clearly belongs in a "post-realist" category, it is set apart from the majority of the other post-ldor'ld trlar II novels wh'ich deal with the same "existential" themes - al'ienation from the environment and from others, the complexity of truth, meaning and self-identity' and so on - by its intrinsic seriousness. As pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, unì'ike many of his contemporaries, Bellow has not submitted to alienation or despair about man's condition jn the modern world, but has created "resiIient heroes" who maintain fajth jn themselves, in novels which are explorations of the paths by which such faith, and the moments of "transcendence" which define it, is reached. In depicting this psychological quest, Be'llow does not turn to parody, or to the black humour and fantasy often assocjated with modern parody. There is, as noted earlier, considerable, usually ironic, humour in Hez'zog, but it is of an jnward, self-mocking kind, reflecting the ambiguities of Herzog's own personality rather than the absurditjes of the external world. For Herzog there is no escape into fantasy: the realities of his prob'lems are too pressing upon him.

Similarìy, Herzog's achievement of mental stabif ity and temporary peace and contentment at the end is too ordinary, but too hard-won, too painfu]ly extracted from all his questionings and self-examination to be considered in the same terms as the romance v'ictory whi ch comes, often, seeming'ly inevitably or through some extraordinary, super-human effort of the hero. l,lhì le the romance form is based on the optimistic belief that goodness or morality or divine order must prevail and is therefore structured 143

to end affirmatjvely, and while in the romance-parody the positive conclusion is either an ordinary, non-heroic act exaggerated comi ca1 ly 'into gr"eat importance, or i s reversed compìeteìy into disaster, death or the hero's total failure, Beì1o*', novel in its form and his protagonist in his psycho'logical reconstruction reject the easiness of the romance attitude in favour of the harshness of present realities.

The conclusion of Herzog, with its sense of real' if ironic victory and the retreat from language and rational thought into silence, thus contrasts radically with the many "novels of the absurd" which end either in escape from or an act of defiance against absurdjty or with a sense that nothing basically has changed, nothing meaningful achieved.

Herzog at the end has a quiet kind of d'ign'ity - perhaps just because he has come through his experiences without losing his sense of compassion and wonder. He feels that, having hirnse'lf under control , he has his world under control, he can cope, he can live with the tension between sp'iritual desire and physical reafity. During the novel, Herzog has run the gamut of emotions and his questionings, too, have covered the full range, from the mundane to the metaphysicalT. This comprehensiveness gives Herzog a depth which the other novels examined in this thesis do not have. (Zen artd the Art of l4otoreyLe

Iuiøintenanc¿ covers simi I ar psychol ogi caì ground but i ts narrator's mind functions almost entirely on iust a couple of levels and many areas of h'is emotional life are passed over. Catch-Z2, in contrast to Herzog,is notable for its width rather than its depth: it resembles a net L44

spr€ading wider and wider as the novel progresses, to encompass the hospital, the Pianosa militqry base, the entire European arena of war, and finally, America and Western society in general.)

Herzog has learned to make do without external supports' religious or othen¡rise. Wylie Sypher's term "post-existential humansim"s describes the mental stance he reaches, or that Bellow presents through hìm. He has clung to a transcendent view of man's fate, although a1'l life seems to negate that vjsion, and finaìly' achjeving an objective view of his absurd predicament, he masters the courage to live in terms of the resulting tension. His last two letter-fragments, written as he waìts for Ramona in the garden of the house where he began his self-examination, express the balance he has struck:

I uiLL do no more to enact the peanLiavities of Life. Thís is done ueLL enough uithout nry speeLaL assístanee. (347)

Then, refusing either to sentimentalize or to deny the "holy feeling" which the sunset gives him:

. But this intensitg, doesn't it mean øtything? fs òt qn idiot ioy that makes this øtimaL, the most pecuLiaz, animaL of aLL, eæeLaim sornething? Artd he thinks this reaetion a a proof, of etermity? Ane he has it ín his bz,east?"ign, But f hape no arguments tBut to maJ

One coul d perhaps interpret this end'ing di fferently and accuse Herzog of comp'lacency and Bellow of having written a novel 145

which went nowhere, in which the protagonist learnt very little despite all his intellectualìzing, ureY€ it not for the passage which occurs a few pages beforen after his letter to God, in which Herzog, speak'ing directly and not as a letter-writer, expresses his new contentment then hjs understanding of its place in relation to the rest of his life:

Unbelievable! Hor¡¡ different he felt! Confident, even happy in his excitement, stable. The b'itter cup would come round again, by and by. This rest and well-being were only a momentary difference in the strange linìng or variaLle silk between life and void. (333)

This ability to experience happiness while remaining aware of the void within which life takes place - an ability wh'ich the concluding section reaffirms - is the quality which renders Herzog an "existential" or "post-existential herO", making him jn a sense both a symbo'l of and an example for contemporary man. L46

CHAPTER 7

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-F IVE

are.pretty All this happened,'bne more or less. The war parts' anyway' much true. guy I knew really uas shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasnrt-his. Another guy I knew really Qid threaten to ¡ravä fris personal enemies killed by hired gun-nen after the war. And so on. I've changed al I the nanìes. I real 1y di,d go back to Dresden with Guggenhe'im money (God love it) in 1967. It looked a lot ljke Dayton, Qhio, more gpen spaces than Dayton has. There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground. I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. 0'Hare, and we made friends with a taxi driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked uP at night as prisoners of war. His name was Gerhard Müller. He told us that he was a prisoner of the Americans for a wh'ile. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he sa'id it was terrjble at first, because everybody had to woik so hard, and because there wasn't much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had_! P'leasant little apaitment, and ñis daughter was getting_an excellent educatioh. H'is mother was 'incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So i t goes. He sent 0'Hare a postcard at Christmastime, and here is what it said: 'I wish you and your family also as to your friend Merry Christmas air¿ a hapÞy New Year and I hope that v're'll meet again in a world of peace and'lieedom in the taxi cab if the accident will.' I I ike that very much: ' If the acci dent wi I I . ' I would hate to tel'l you what th'is'lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and time. When I got home from the Second World lrlar iwenty-three years ago, I thought i't would be easy for ne to write about the dêstruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that 'it would be a masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subiect was so big. But not many words about Dresden came flîom my mind then - not enough of thern to make a book, anyway. _And not many words-come now, either, when I have become an old fart w'ith his memories and his Pall Malls, with his sons full grown. r47

The close developmenta'l relationships bebveen all of Vonnegut's novels create prob'lems in writing about SLatqhterhowe-Fiue in isotation from the others. 0f the other novels studied in this thesis' only Herzog occupies a similar position in relation to the earlier writings of its author. The other novels are all first novels which were quickly successful and gained popular recognjtion for their previously unknown authors. Vonnegut, however, had been writing novels for years before he achieved similar'ty popu'lar success with

SLaughterhoræe-Fíue.

A]though SLaughterhowe-Fiue is able to stand compìetely alone, familiarity with the earlier novels illuminates it at many points. For the Vonnegut devotee, SLaughtey,hotne-Eíue reads ìike a compendium of motifs - characters, innges, phitosophical hypotheses' wh'Ole events - from the earlier novels. All six novels, from PLayen Píano up to SLaughtenhouse-Fiue, reveal Vonnegut's preoccupation with the Dresden fire-bonrbing and can be Seen aS attempts to amest this experience artisticaìly. As Jerome Klintowitz expìains it, the novels dramatize Vonnegut's maturing grasp of the Dresden experience and of the technical innovations necessary for its artistic presentation:

Topi ca'lly each novel is comp'lete i n i tsel f but in'generãl the matter of Dresden furnished the world picture for Piano PLayer, the psychological barrier for The Sirens of TLtan, the backdrop for Mothey, Itlight, the informing principle for Catts cYadLe, the clirax for God BLess You, W. Roseutatev', and finally the essence for Slaughterhouse-Fiue. L

SLaughterhouse-Eiue begins autobiographical 1y' wi th the author-namator relating the preìiminary stages of his attempt to write a book about the Allìed fire-bombing of Dresden in 1945 148

previously been unable to write which he w.itnessed, and which he has however' about. In the second of the ten chapter-like sections, autobiographygiveswaytobiographyandVonnegutabandonshiSown he claims story to telI about Billy PiIgrim, a felIow-Anerican whom Then, in the final section to have met ìn a Dresden prison camp. before concluding he returns briefly to first person narration

Bi 11y Pi'lgrim's storY.

not Bi]ly Pilgrim has ,,come unstuck in time''. Moreover, he own lifetime, but only travels backwards and fon¡lards within his p'lanet Tralfamadore' moves also from Earth and Earth time to the and vision of the inhabitants of whìch live accord'ing to a moralìty morality and existence quite oppos'ite to the conventional human segnents of world view. Each section in the book consists of separate and forth jn time' varyìng ìengths describing Biìly's movenents back hJar forms the wh.ile the account of h'is experiences during world II constantìy by switches major part of the narrative, jt is interrupted tootherperiodsoftime,amethodwhjchcreatesanimpressìonof d.isorder, of multiple connections and many poss'ib'le mean'ings ascribable to the different episodes'

LikeCatch.zz"SLaughtez.house-Fiueisawarnovelinwhich the satire extends to implicate the whole soc'iety which manufactured negates the the war. In slaughtez,house-FdUe, however, vonnegut possibility of abstract'ing war, of mentally institutionalizing it' atrocity' by focusing on the one particular historically verifiable reìationship to the and making us repeatedly aware of hjs own close subiect: he was actuaì'ly there , i n Dresden '

ThefirstchaptertestifiesthatVonneguthasnotfound L49

expression of the Dresden expe¡ience easy. Written in hjs own voice rather than from Billy Pilgrim's poìnt of view, the chapter serves as a prologue to the novel proper. It is sl'ightly more serious than the chapters vuhich follow, but nevertheless it establ'ishes the stylistic manner in which the novel aS a whole is written'

The qualifications with which Part one begìns,suggest an affectedly nonchaìent, uninvolved manner of narration: "All this happened, moke oT Leils," "The war parts are pretty rruch true." hJhile some critics have described such mannerisms negative'ly as "cute,,, they can be seen, alternatively, as one way of parody'ing the conventional novel form which takes it as an a priori assumption that the truth or othen¡rise of whatever is narrated is not to be questjoned, that a willjng suspension of disbelief is essential for the reading of a novel. In a number of WayS SLaughtez'house'Fiue represents a chal'lenge to the conventional novel form. The book challenges - both structura'lly and thematica]ly - the claim of the traditional novel to present an ordered, closed' valìd image of reality based on a fixed, internally coherent moral system. llJith these initial qualifications, too, Vonnegut is preparing for the interlocking of fact, fiction and fantasy which becomes his characteristic story-telf ing manner.

The cOlìoquial terms "War partS", "9UY", and the mgre Casual "for taking" instead of "because he took" lend the narration its determinedly informal, conversational tone while the italics - "I real1y did go back" - imitate the contemporary comic-book and teen-age habit of emphas'is. The parenthet'ical "God love it" fits with this rather self-conscious style of narrat'ion, and it 150

establishes the attitude of amused irony w'ith which one often feels vonnegut 'is writjng the novel. Later such parenthetìcal comments are dropped and the ironic viewpoint is stated with both more elaboration and more subtletY.

l^lhen Vonnegut describes Dresden '- "It looked a lot like Dayton,Qhio, more open spaces than Dayton has" - he maintains the informal, speaking tone by omitting the connecting "but it had"' Again, though, the simple stylistic mannerjsm can be seen, in the ìight of what comes later, to serve another function. Here, the omjtted words imply a need to hurry past the memory of what the open spaces in fact were: streets of houses levelled during the fi re-bombi ng.

Having established the colloquial, cool tone, Vonnegut uses jt to lead the reader into the false trap which all satirists emp'loy: that of letting the styìe divert the reader's attention from critical analysis'in order to iolt him back into crìtical involvement by an unexpected word or shift in styìe. Thus, in the Sentençe, "There must be tons Of human bone meal in the grOUnd", the word "tons" at the instant of first reading could seem to be used in its coì'loqu.iaì, exaggerating meaning of "lots of" or "many". Instead, the sentence as a whole, and in the context of the novel

as a whole, makes clear that the word is used much more l'iteraì'ly:

tons of human corpses uene buried during the Dresden fire-bombing' vonnegut has a fine control of this technique of lulling the reader 'in into a state of uncritical , amused acquiescence what he is say'ing' then jolting him with a fact or a part of a truth that shocks. Immediately after the iolt he switches back to his easy-going, informal 151

narration, as if to say, "Take it or leave it; it doesn't rea'lly matter. "

The third paragraph brings the reader closer to the narrator as he describes his own recent visit to Dresden and reveals that he paragraph was also there during the war. The paratactic sentence and structure is typìcaì of the novel's style. All parts of a sentence are given equal wejght, narrated equaìly ìacon'ica1ly without the subordinatìng or qua'l'ifying phraseology which impl ies hierarchical distinctions between the various 'items, and thus, at the sentence level, Vonnegut re'inforces the overall tactic of the novel which is to suggest that everything'in l'ife and' even more''in death is equa'l ìn unimportance.

Gerhard Müller is one of the two peop'le to whom Slaughtet'house- Fiue is dedicated (the other is Mary 0'Hare); perhaps he represents the Germans, particular'ly those who survived the fjre-bombings' The terms.in which his life is described - he had "a pleasant little apartment", h'is daughter ¡tas getting "an excellent education" - are those of shallow, poìite-society cliché and as such suggest a miìdly ìronic amusement on the narrator's part. As with the "open spaces'l which are revealed as containing "tons of human bone meal", there is a slight bu'i1d-up by indìrection or contrast to the "punchline" shock contained .in the next sentence. "His mother was inc'inerated in the (instead Dresden fire-storm." The use of "incinerated" here of, for example, "burnt" or "kilìed") is an indication of the seriousness of vonnegut's outrage at the Dresden fìre-bombing. "Incinerated" means that "reduce tO aSheS", "COnSume by fire" And SuggeStS a deStrUCtiOn was total. 152

The ,'so it goes" tag which accompan'ies each reference to death, physical or metaphorical ' appears here for the first time' At this point, it seems mereìy part of the detached, unemotional style of narration wh'ich the author has assumed. Later it will be set in its phi'losophica'l framework as part of the fourth-dimensional aspect of the extra-terrest¡ial Tralfamadorians' view of life. Müller's quaint phrase "if the accident will" in the next paragraph will also become part of the Tralfamadorian world vjew. It is one of the many little profound-seeming aphorisms whjch occur here and there and gradual'ly are seen to be related and to link up to form an inclusjve ph'ilosophicaì explanation of life: everything that happens'is an "accident" in the strict Sense of the word as chance or as "an event without apparent cause". As with many of Vonnegut'S techniques, however, it serves a Second function alSo: that is' to create distance between reader and narration, in this case by making

the character in some way ridiculous. Here it is Müller's ìanguage that is amusing; with other characters jt is their behaviour' appearance or attitudes.

t¡Jith the switch from narration to direct address to the reader,

Vonnegut becomes more serious, desp'ite the "lousy" which iust slightly counterbalances the straight description of his difficulty in writing about Dresden. The'logica'l non sequitur - that the size of a book's subject determines its status as a masterpiece and a financial success - emphasizes the problem frustrating Vonnegut's attempt to write: the oven¡lhelming hugeness of the destruction, of the surrounding circumstances (lllorld War II as a madness involving the entire l.lestern world), and his own response to it all. 153

"But not many words about Dresden came from my m'ind then - not enough of them to make a book an¡Âvay." Here Vonnegut gives the 'impression of being totally serious, perhaps because this js one of the very few sentences that begin with an abstnact subiect' instead of a pronoun or other human referent, and a change in sty'le' however s'light, often indicates a change in mood or tone" The second part of the paragraph provides the expected twist away from serious- ness, though there is an unusual amount of almost bitter se'lf-mockery here in Vonnegut's descript'ion of himself as "an old fart with his memories and his Pall Malls, wjth his sons full grown'"

chapter One goes on to relate various war memories of the narrator, h'is work experiences since the war, his attempts to write the book about Dresden, his visit to Bernard 0'Hare in search of corroborating memories, and quotat'ions from a history of the Children's Crusade, a 1908 history of Dresden, a biography of Céline, and that part of the Bible tel'l'ing the story of Lot's v'rife who was human enough to look back at Sodom and Gomorrah as they burned and was turned to a pillar of salt as punishment. The chapter concludes:

Peop'le aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore. I've finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun. Th'is one is a fajlure, and had to be, since it was written by a p'illar of salt. It begins like this: Listen: BíLLy PiLgrim has come mstuck in time¿ It ends like this: Poo-tee-ueet?

Although the author as the subiect of his own narration 154

disappears from chapter Two on, in chapter One vonnegut has laid down the techniques of hìs style and his overall approach to his material. The rest of the book resembles the usual novel, in that it tells the story of an invented character, Billy Pilgrim, whose behaviouris consistent w'ith the personal'ity al lotted him and whose story progresses coherently, not chronologicaìly in the case of SLaughterhouse-Fiue, since B'illy ìeaps from the present in which we that fjrst meet h'im backwards and fon¡lards'in time, but in the sense the items of information we gain about h'im are cumulative and

i nterrel ated.

Apart from the switch from first person to third person narration, and desp'ite the switches in tjme and place during the telling of the story, the style of SLaughterhouse-Eiue remains that established in the pro'logue - like, first chapter. It is a style which creates considerable distance between the narrator and his protagonist and between the reader and the events described' t^lith

Vonnegut, far more than with most modern novelists, We are av'Jare of the author as storytel I er. He beg'ins h'is account of Bi I ly' s adventures with the claSsic storyte'lìer'S command, "Listen"; and several times he interrupts the flow of the narration to speak to the readeLin the manner of earlier novel jsts for whom commentary on the action was an essential part of the narrative method'

Thus, while Slaughteyhouse-Fùu¿ is ostensibly Billy Pi'lg¡im's story, Vonnegut, through the cons'istent use of certain dìstancing

techniques, makes of his protagonist merely a puppet who moves

uncomprehendingly through a variety of expe¡iences, the significance

and relatedness of which only the omniscient narrator recognizes' 155

'is Like all the characters in SLaughtev'house-Fiue, B'illy Pilgrim a grotesque, cartoon-like figure. Vonnegut's first descript'ion of him clear'ly establishes his attjtude towards hjm: "He was a funny- looking chìld who became a funny-looking youth - tall and weak' and shaped like a bottle of coca-cola." (23) Billy remains a ridìculous figure no matter how grimly the circumstances in which he finds himself are described. This disaccord exemplifies vonnegut's general narrative methodt which operates by creatìng such disiunctions betvreen two or more of the elements of a scene: between characterization and situat'ion, tone and subiect matter, cliché o¡image and its 'l referent, cause and unexpected ef fect. I n B'i ìy ' s case the di stanci ng effect is.increased by the use of the hackneyed science fict'ion device of time travel, which further removes him from the realm of everyday' "real" experience.

Like many other contemporary novelists (among them, Bellow ìn

Henzog and Heller i n Cateh-Z2), Vonnegut deemphasizes character and

plot development while working for effects of emotional contradiction and intellectual ambiguity, together with the ironic or satiric insights which they 'imp1y. The random structure formed by the digressive' non-chronological, segmental method of narrat'ion precludes the emotional involvement and satisfact'ion of suspense, climax, and resolution, and

throws emphasis instead on individual moments of horror, irony or humour. As in catch-Z|, the technical features of sLaughtev'house'Fíue are Vonnegut's maior means of expressing a conviction that the world js incoherent and therefore cannot be imitated through closed or patterned forms.

Despite the structural complications assocjated with the 156

random switches in time and place, the sty'le of sLaughtev'house-Fiue ìs a very sjmple, uncomplicated one. Vonnegut writes as one man tellìng a story to another in the casual, familiar language of jn everyday usage. His style is often seem'ingly naive or child'like its lack of b'ig words and complicated sentence structures' He avoids the qual'ifying, subordinating and causal phraseology whjch suggests certain connections or relationships between various elements of experience and whjch thus eliminates other, possible connections' and he presents instead a successìon of d'irect statements that do not impty hierarchical distjnctions. Paragraphs are often rvritten without topic sentences, again with the effect of minimizing the significance of immediate connections and maximizing the possibility of connections with other references throughout the book.

Instead of employing the tradjtional methods, of chronologicaì narration and causal linking phraseology w'ithin the narrative, to elaborate his p'lot, vonnegut re]ies on a process of free association, allowing a considerable amount of anecdotal materjal to be suggested by a preceding phrase, image, or word. This habit of consistent digression is part of the'large-scale intention of frustrat'ing the reader's search for some controlling desìgn orimage or phiìosophical pos.ition within which to place aì'l the events of the novel . Jokes, songs, graffiti, historical record and raw statistics, tableau-like

scenes frozen in time tumble rapid]y after one another and, in

combination with the fragmented time structure within the narrative, they work aga'inst the sense of progression, cont'inually imped'ing the

narrative momentum, and creating an impression of simultaneity and stasis. There are no cl imaxes ' no resol ut'ions, and dramat'ic t57

confrontation ìs minimjzed by the pattern of interruption. By this means, Vonnegut reinforces the Tralfamadorian/existential vision of the equaì i rrel evance of al I hunnn acti V'ity i n a godl ess worl d where 'it 'is impossible to make any defin'itive moral iudgements at all.

The method of free association appl'ies not on'ly at the level of paragraphs but to the structure of the book as a whole. SLaughtenhouse-Eiu¿ is written in a brief segmentaì manner, organized as a collection of impressjons scattered ìn both t'ime and space' the connections between them often left unstated in such a way that, as Donald Ketterer says, "The surface of a Vonnegut novel becomes a kaleidoscop'ic mosaic or a i'igsaw puzzle allowing mu'ltìp'le possjbilities for the placement of each Piece."z Vonnegut's own descrjption of the Tralfamadorian novel would seem to apply equally to his own writing:

The books were laìd out - in brief clumps of symbols . each cìump of symbols 'is a brief , urgent message - describing a situation, a scene. hle Tralfámadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There i sn 't any parti cul ar rel ati onshi p between al I the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beg'inning, no middle, no end, no suspense' no moraì, no-causes, no effects. l,lhat we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time. (62-63)

Thìs "telegraphic schìzophren'ic"3 style of narration, with its secti ons of varyi ng ì engths i ts 'ironi c di sturbi ng contrasts , .and between the comjc, the mundane, and the horrify'ing, and its hihted connections between these djfferent states, graph'ically presents Vonnegut's sense of how life operates. His universe is a pìuralistic 158

seemì ng]y one and real i ty consi sts of the yok'i ng together of .irreconcilable points of view. It is'imposs'ible ever to know "true pojnts reality,,s.ince it cons'ists of the sum total of all individual of view.

'itself several The destruction of Dresden is described from different po.ints of view: statistically, jn terms of the number then killed and the damage done; historica]'ty, by a pre-war writer' raid while the by two post-war ex-soldiers, one of whom iustifies the Pilgrim' other critic'izes jt as militari'ly unnecessary; for Bi'lìy was like there are few words to describe what he saw' only that "It that the moon" (119); and the Tralfamadorians explain to Billy don't ,,there isn,t anyth.ing we can do about lwars], so we simply p'leasant look at them. ble ignore them. l,,le spend eternity looking at

moments. " (81)

þlith the structure developed i n sLaughtev'hot¿se-Fiu¿, vonnegut into the has found an extremely effectjve means of incorporat'ing In the body novel form an 'important concept of absurdìst philosophy' of the novel he employs all the stylìstic devices of indjrection' 'incongruj previ ous novel i sts and reversed expectat'ions , and ty whi ch playwrights have used to create for the reader an imag'inative experienceofabsurdity.Thesegmental,chronolog.icalìyand goes a step spat.ialìy random structure of the narratìve, however' sartre further and dramatizes the concept of cont'ingency which vision' For the showed to be a logical outcome of the existentjal that they existentialist alI events are "cont'ingent" ìn the sense each other: any occur individually and are essentiaìly unrelated to purely arbi trari ly f or no ,,mean.ing,, I i nk'ing two events i s ascri bed ' 159

event has inherent "meaning".

Dramatizing this concept, vonnegut's strategy throughout the novel is to po'int up the multiplicjty of meanings that can be ascribed to the most seemingly insignificant event or to the most comp'lex: Derby stealìng a teapot in the ruins of Dresden, or the Allied bombing of Dresden, explajned and iustified so contradictorily. To do th'is he ranges widely in his selection of narrat'ive elements' is Themes and techn'iques are taken from many sources' such that it .imposs.ible to label Vonnegui as mereìy a satirist, black humorist, or scjence-fictjon w¡iter. Real people and places appear on equal terms not onìy with the fìctional characters and settings of SLaughteyhouse-Fitte but also with the characters of Vonnegut's previous novels (". Lance Rumfoord of Newport, Rhode Island' and h.is bride, the formen Cynthìa Landry, Who had been a child.hood sweetheart of John F. Kennedy in Hyannis Point, Massachusetts"' green 82-834) and with the science-fictional Tralfamadorians, little

men from another Planet.

Fantasy and real i ty - Tral famadore and Dresden - are portrayed side by side as if both are equa'lly fantastic and equally rea'l ' The references to both recent polit'icaì figures and to characters of earlier novels remind us of the fictional nature of all experience: on the same in memory al1 experience, actual orimagined, takes qua'li ty and can be recal I ed only 'imag'inatì veìy'

Another outcome of his particular handling of fantasy and identify reality is that vonnegut makes'it impossìble for the reader to his moral standpoint. The targets of his criticism are so various the main that they .seem to have no common characteristic: although 160

satirical target is the institution of war, at d'ifferent times Vonnegut satirizes also, among other things, the Earthling concept of time, the greed of American cap'italism, and v^Jriters' conventions. Moreover, he uses the methods of satire to attack the concept of a world in which the definite answers that satire implies are possible; the reader is tempted into making easy moral judgements which are subsequently undermined, as in this passage:

Robert Kennedy . u,as shot two nìghts ago. He died last night. So it goes. Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died too. So it goes. And everyday my Government gives me a count of corpses created by mi'litary science in Vietnam. So i t goes. My father died many years ago now - of natural causes. So 'it goes. He v'Jas a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. (140)

For some crìtics, the divers'ity of Vonnegut's satirical targets and his failure to be concerned with the consistency of the issues jnvolved in them result in a diminishing of the effect of h'is outrages. Qthers see him as "just adding another technique to that repertoire of absurd techniques employed by Barth, Heller and Purdy. Like them, Vonnegut frustrates the reader's expectations in order to bring about an experience of the absurd."6 Vonnegut's satire has, however, a more pos'itive function than this, in that it attacks the sense of complacency which leads people to attempt absolute moral judgements, and forces the reader instead to consider the mu'ltip'le'

equally valid iudgements that any s'ituation is capable of eliciting.

The uneas'iness feìt by critics who describe Vonnegut's novels as "satires" probabìy comes from the definition of the term itself. 161

the According to the traditional understanding of the literary modes' satirical method implies a standard from which the sat'irist operates and it is not possible to have a sat'irist who reiects all ethical absolutes. Northrop Frye, distingu'ishing between irony and satire' describes satire as "miI'itant irony: its moral norms are relatively clear, and it assumes standards against which the grotesque and the absurd are measured whenever a reader is not sure what the author's attitude is or what his own ìs supposed to be, we have 'irony with relatively littìe satire. "7 Satire cannot ex'ist in a world of relatìve values since'it implies absolute values which transcend the individual. Vonnegut, though, does reiect all ethical absolutes. H'is basic world v'iew is existential , and he stresses the futility of man's search for meaning ìn a world where we are all victims of a series of accidents, "trapped in the amber of this moment Because this moment simpìy is." (56)' even while he again and again presents the inexplicable meaningfulness of death' pip Yet, âS Frye says elsewhere, the great sati¡ist does more than things apart; he is "an apocalyptic vis'ionary for his caricature leads us irresistably away from the passive assumptìon that the unorgan'ized data of sense experience are reliable and consistent"B our and inv'ites us to See "the infinite wh'ich was hid."e A change in percept.ion makes for a new kind of contact with the world.

In the end, the "theme" of sLaughterhouse-Fioe can be no more than this: that grìmness and beauty coexist in the world' or simuìtaneously and independentìy, and all attempts at rationalizing person is expla.ining theìr ex'istence are equaì1y ìnva'l'id when a of the novel confronted with actuaì experience. Towards the beg'inn'ing 162

the Tralfamado¡ian view of death, the ultimate experience, iS is explained: "When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks that the dead person is in a bad condition at that particular moment, but that the same person is iust fine'in plenty of other 'it goes"' moments." (25) The appropriate response to death is "So 'image of It comes with increasing momentum' culm'inating in the final Dresden. In thìs way vonnegut dramatizes for the reader that whatever

scheme one may dev'ise to handle the idea of death, noth'ing can

di m'i ni sh the f act of i t.

In his "war book", Vonnegut uses the fire-bomb'ing of Dresden

in much the same way as Heller uses the death of Snowden in Cateh-2z: -tn as the cl'imax and key to the whole story. As catch-22, the narrative moves apparently randomly backwards to this episode, touch'ing it only briefly before returning to the amused or iron'ic exam.ination of other things. The full account of the destruct'ion of

Dresden comes almost at the end of the novel, but in the meantime from Vonnegut has circled around this central point and approached it

many different angles: he has given Billy's experiences as an ordìnary American before and after the war, his experiences during the war and leading up to hjs imprisonment'in the Dresden s'laughterhouse' and his experiences of future and extra-terrestrial t'ime in hjs dealings w'ith the Tralfamadorians. It is as if, like Heller' Vonnegut is only able to approach his most horrifyjng experience after he has comic surrounded it with a veil of irony' ca¡icature, and apparent

i rrel evance.

to Both catch-ZT and sLaughterhouse-Fiu¿ represent attempts deal with the artistic problem created by the acceptance' or even 163

just the awareness, of the ex'istential view of life which pervades the modern consciousness. Recognition of the omnipresence of absurdìty in the world entails the difficuìty of dealing with human emotion and morality. The recognition that an act of violence' an act of love, or an act of hypocrisy have equaìly'little meaning or signjficance in the overall totality of life seems to negate the vaìidity of any personaì response to or moraì judgement made about day' such acts. For the maiority of people, iust living from day to and coping with experiences as they happen, absorbs most of their mental and physical energy and leaves them little opportunity to wonder about the ultimate sign'ificance or meaninglessness of their existence. For the novelist, however, Who chooses to write within an existentialism-influenced framework, the prob'lem is how to describe the experiences of real horror - or real beauty for that matter - which occur in a world where everything is seen as absurd in relation

to everyth'ing e'l se '

A'lthough neither Heller nor vonnegut resolves this dilemma on the ph'ilosophical level, jt features powerfully in their novels' The simple chief means by which the problem is expressed'is through the of narrative technique of flashback, by which partia'l reconstructions the key incident acquire a cumulat'ive import and dramatize the actual i mpressì on i s psychol og'i ca] experi ence of the author-narrator: the explore created that the narrator, unable to recall the incident and it fully aìl at once, approaches it tentativeìy, one part at a time' finally moving away to other, easier thoughts in between times, until thewho]eepiSodeisclearìybutbriefìyilluminated. 164

The tens'ion underlying SLaughtethouse-Eiue, and the feeling juxtapos'ing of many interlocking layers' come from the narrative of the various areas of Billy Pilgrìm's experience. The narration shifts uneasily between the reaì horrors of the war, the fantastic vision of the Tralfamadorians with their philosophy of pass'ive acceptance of all parts of tife includìng death - wh'ich to them is mereìy a relatively "bad" moment among all the eternally existing moments of an individual's existence, and the dreary mindlessness of everyday peacetime American life. All, one feeìs, are somehow interconnected, perhaps onìy because they are experienced by the same person, but

Vonnegut insists also on their separateness, and in Breakfast of

Chønpione., his novel which follows SLaughterhouse-Fiue, he provides a direct statement of this intent:

Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done. If all writers would do that, then perhaps c'itizens not in the 'literary trades w'ill understand that there around us, that we must is no order in the world i0 áãupi ouiielv.s io ihe requirementi of chaos itself

vonnegut is often described as a satirist in the mould of Swift and Twain; his satire in SLaughteyhotne-Eiu¿ ranges widely' from social manners'in New York to the mentality which totalìy destroyed Dresden "to hasten the end of the war". 0n the other hand, though,the Tralfamado¡ian phjlosophy seems to deny the deep al I ocati on of s'i gn'i f i cance to ei ther the tri vi al i ti es or the given anger and pain of human existence. The "So it goes" response to death in all its forms should neutralize any feelìngs of grief or outrage, s'ince, in the Tralfamadorian fourth dimension, all moments of life are inevitable, co-existent and. eternaì. Through this 165

science-fiction device, however, Vonnegut is challenging the existential tenet, that all events in life are equally unimportant and meaningless, by setting beside the phi'losophizing the meaningfuìness of what happened at Dresden and revea'ling painfulìy h'is own inabiìity to describe the nature of that meaningfulness other than i ronical ly.

For Jerry H. Bryant, among others, SLaugfuterhouse-Fioe represents a fa'ilure on Vonnegut's part to solve this dilemma and answer the question l,'lhat is the significance of human suffering? in an existential world where "there is nouhy" (56) and where everything happens onìy "if the accident w'il l " (9) . Bryant, apparently judging SLaughteyhouse-Fiue as a novel in the traditional sense, concludes: "Immobilized by the conflict between the horror of his vision and a rationalizing fantasy, [Vonnegut] forfeits the possibiìity of expressing either with any persuasive clarity."tt If, however, we regard SLaughter*touse-Fiue as a Tralfamadorian-type novel - which its segmentaì structure strongly suggests it is intended to be - then Bryant's kind of criticism is irrelevant, since Vonnegut is writing a book w'ithout the usual causal'ly connected beg'innjng, middle and end; he ìs present'ing various images rather than a comp'leted action. The conclusion of the book crystallizes the contradiction and the ambiguity contained within 'its series of messages or moments and paradoxicalìy provìding its chief themat'ic un i ty:

And somewhere 'in there was springtime. The corp se mines were cl osed down The Second l,lorl d War in E ur0pe v',as over. 166

Bitly and the nest wandered out onto the shady street. The trees were leafing out. There was nothing going on out there, no traffic of any kind' There wai only one vehicle, an abandoned wagon drawn by two horses. The wagon was green and coffin- shaped. Bi rds were tal ki ng. tPoo-tee-ueet? | One bird said to BillY Pilgrim' ( 143)

Springtime, the new leaves and the birds seem to suggest hope' that life continues despite occasional death, that a good moment is coming; but the reminders of death are equa'lly strong - the corpse mines, r'ifIe p'its and coffin-shaped wagon. The final , meaningless question of the bird negates the attempt to see the promise of new life as a counter to despaìr. We are left with just a scene' composed of various elements, merely one moment among the many which make up the whole book

There has been no climax, no resolution. The death of the protagonjst, Biìly P'iìgrim, in 1976, has been recounted in Part Six' not as a dramatic event, the conclusion of a meaningful existence' but merely as a brief experience between two other experiences an hour apart in 1945. The novel's conclusion describes the end of the l¡lar but it offers no sense of victory at all, on e'ither the national or the i nd'i vi dual I evel .

In this respect, perhaps ' more than any other, SLaughtev'hotrce- Eiue is different from the other American novels of the sixties and seventies which deal with human suffering and confusion. That element' other which in some cases is clear'ly identifiable as romance, and in cases comes closer to myth, is missing totalìy from sLaughtenhouse-Fíue' and the Romance and myth revolve around the hero/protagonìst's action 167

resolution of the story is the success or failure of the hero in act'ion. In SLaughterhouse-Eiue, Billy Pilgrim occupies the hero's position but his action is shov,,n as having no effect either on the outcomes of events or on his own. intellectual development. Billy floats, uncompla'ining and only m'ildly curious, through events, taking on the shape they g'ive hjm. He has an affinity with Dostoevsky's Prince Myshkin, in their shared simplicity, gentleness, and automatic love for all those w'ith whom they come in contact, but he has not the Prince's intuition or his self-awareness. Billy's life is so stereotypica] that, as Richard Giannone Says' an account of it inevitably takes on a contemptuous tone.t2 Billy is presented as a puppet, with no control over his own destiny, a comical figure whose emot'ions move us hard'ly at all. He sets out to do noth'ing in particular and he achieves nothing through his own effort. He is in aìl ways an "anti-hero" for, apart from his position as the main male character in the novel, he has none of the qualities of the tradjtjonal hero of fiction. Depending on one's attitude towards the existential version of human existence, Billy Pilgrim represents the "existential marìrr, accepting his fate uncomplainingly, existing without appeal to any higher force, seeking no y,aison d.'êtye, or he is a parody of such a man.

Yet, despite the lack of the romance elements which render other fictjonal characters such as Yossarian or McMurphy larger than life and seemingly symbolic of a wider segment of humanity than by their own particular experience they match with, B'illy PiIgrìm does acquire a kind of symbolic status, mov'ing from stereotype a distance towards archetype. Several features of the novel contribute to this 168

impression of Billy's widened sìgnification. The sty]e of detachment' the objective rather than subiective description of Billy's experiences, "freezes" Billy, makes hjm a figure to be contemplated coolly, evaluated, not emotionally entered. The encircling backdrop of World l,Jar II and the Dresden fire-bombing particularly, a real event yet one too vast and many-sided to be comprehended by individuals' becomes the analogue for a1l catastrophes involving human pain and Billy is seen to represent the hapless, confused victim of such events. His name links him ironical]y wjth Bunyan's P'i'lgrim and implies some kind of Everyman role for him; Billy, the modern piìgr.im who does not know what he is searching for' makes no "progress'¡' spi¡itual, intellectual or material through his own strivings, he giblical mere'ly survives until his appo'inted time to die. The web of references, taken from both 0ld and New Testaments, rejnforces this quasi-religious analogy, at the same time that it gives "chronological depth" to the background of holocaust. Like many elements in

SLaughterhouse-Eiue, these references work at several different levels'

They can be seen as more or less incidental, merely providing amusing of or ironic images or comments on events. There are, though, enough them associated with B'illy to make of him a caricatured christ- figure. His compassion for everyone he meets and his commitment to preach ,,The Gospel from Outer Space" - novelist Kjlgore Trout's

revision of the New Testament to make the world safe for the the New "nobodies" in it - align him imp'lic'itìy with the Christ of segments descri bi ng Tes tament, and thi s i S v'i vi d]y re'i nforced i n those prison camp: the German train in which the Amerjcans travel to the him sleep because Billy has nightmares the other men will not let angle on the with them on the fìoor' so he sleeps standing up "at an t69

corner-brace, self-crucified". (58) Finally, Vonnegut makes the connecti on expl i ci t, when he exp'l ai ns the book 's epj graph :

Billy cried very little, though he often saw things wort"h crying abóut, and in that respect, at least, he resembled the christ of the Carol: The cattLe qre Louing' The Baby a¡akes. But the LittLe LoYd Jesus No crn¿ing He makes. (131)

The philosophìca'l or moral centre of SLaughtez;l'totøe-Fiue is'

however, far from being a Bibl'ical one. The "new Gospel " of Kì'lgore Trout together with the Tralfamadorian message provide an alternative to the Christian view of time, existence, and death' one which fits with the modern technologjcal world and peop'le who "[have] found life meaningless, partìy because of what they had seen in the war"'(70) RichardGiannone,whoexaminesindeta.i.lthecontributionofthe Biblical references describes this alternative thus: "The GospeL fz'om hutey Space does speak to our Sense of crisis by proposing an eschatology of the singìe moment ." He goes on:

There is, in sum, a tension among three shaping forces in- SLaugú.tuyhoæá-Fiue: the ancient Christian news of victoiy"over death; the Tralfamadorian message of no death;" and the message implied in the reader's üñiòlálng consc'iousneõs abòut the respective choices of each message.l3

Possib'ly G'iannone'is ascribing more importance to this aspect of the novel than its placing or emphasis within the total structure warrants. It is arguable whether Vonnegut's intention in the book is to stipulate "the obligation of spiritua'l nurturance among persons", as Giannone claimsra; as aìready indicated, SLaughtev'house- plot Fiue has no true conclusion, no "resolution" on either the

or i ntel ì ectual I evel . 170

The novel provides no comforting answers to questions about the purpose of life and the nature of death. tJhat it does do is provi de a fonm for writing about the existential experience' about a world which is chaotic and apparently purposeless, in wh'ich i nd'iv'idual s I ì ve wi thi n qui te separate real'i ti es and attempts at communication only reveaì more sharply the absurdity of trying to make meaning. The disiointed fragments through which Vonnegut recountS events, the fractured chronology' and the very appearance of the paragraphs on the pâgê, the "c'lumps of symbols", to use Vonnegut's own term, make the structure'itself of the novel an analogue of the experience it describes. 0n the title page Vonnegut refers to SLaughtezttouse-Piue as a novel "somewhat 'in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore¡rand it is worth referri ng aga'in to h is descri pt'ion of the Tral famadorj an novel s when one'is tempted to define more neatly what it is that gives the book its impact:

There isn't any particular relationship between al1 the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefúlly, so lhat, when seen all at once, the¡r produce an image óf life that is beautiful and surprisi.ng and deep. There i s no begi nn'ing, no mi ddl e, no end, no suspense, no moral, nõ causés, no effects. (62-63)

The novel in itself makes up a statement of ambivalence, a challenge to the traditional claims of historians to provide "true explanatjons" of events which'in their hugeness and horror are beyond comprehension, descriptjon, or explanation,'and of noveljsts to i mj tate or refl ect real i ty i n thei r ordered , ì og'i ca'l accounts of experi ence. *** t7L

CHAPTER 8

THE DICE lVlAN

I am a ìarge man, with big butcher's hands, great oak thighs-', rock- jawed freadl and massive, tfiicf-lens glasses. I'm six foot four and weigh close to two hundred and thirty pounds; I look like Clark Ken[, except that when I take off my business suit I am bareJ,y faster than my w'ife, only slightly more powerfuì than men half my size, and leaþ Uu.ildìngs-not át all, no matter how many leapsrl'm gi ven.

As an athlete I am exceptionally mediocre'in all major sports and in several minor ones. I play daring and disastrous poker'and cautious and competent stock market. I married a pretty former cheerleader and rock-and-roll singer and have two love'ly' non- neurotic and abnormal children. I am deeply re'lig'ious, have written the lovely first-rate pornograph'ic novel , Naked Before the I'lorLd, and am not now nor have I ever been Jew'ish. :' I realize that it's your iob as a reader to try to create_a credible consistent patlern out of all this, but I'm afraid I must add that I am normaì]y atheistic, have given away at random thousands of dollars, have been a sporadic revolutionary against the governments of the United States, New York City, the Bronx and Scarsdale, and am still a card-carrying member of the Republican Party. I am the creator, as most of you know, of those nefarious Dice Centers for experiments in human behavior which has been described by the Jo'uyrnl of AbnonmaL PsychoLogy as 'outrageous', 'unethical', and 'informat'ive'; by The Neu rork Times as 'incre¿ibìy misguided and corrupt'l by Time magazine as 'sewers'l and by the- Euevgr,een Reuíeú as rbrilliant and fun'. I have been a devóted husbañd, multìple adulterer and experimental homosexuaì; an able, highly pra'ised äna'tyst, and the only one ever dismissed from bolh tñe Þsych'iatrists Ássociation of New York (PANY), and from the Americañ medical Association (for 'ill-considered activities' and 'probabìe incompetence'). I am admired and praised by thousands of dicepeople throughout the natjon but have twice bäen a patient'in a mental institution' once been in iail, and am currentiy a fugitive, which I hope to remain, Dle willing' at least uniil I ñave comp'leted this 430 page autobiography. lW prjmary profession has been psychiatry. l4y pass'ion, both as psyc-hiät.isf and as Dice Man, has been to change human-personaìity. ftlìi'.. Others'. Everyone's. To give to men a sense of freedom' .tfrilaration, ioy. Tô restore to-life the same shock of experìence we have'when Uárä toes first feel the earth at dawn and we see the L72

ees like horizontal lightning; ps to'be kjssed; when an idea tfre mi nd, reorgani zi ng i n an i me. Ljfe is islands of ecstasy in an ocean of ennui, anq after the seldorn-seen. At best we wander from one age-of-thirt, iánã is grain of much-worn sandbar to the next, soon familiar with each sand we see.

TheDíceManisprefacedbyaparodyoftheopenìngofthe Saint John,s Gospeì - "In the begjnnìng was lìhance, and Chance was 'its with God and Chance was God '" - and narrator-protagonist determinedly breaks all of the Ten Commandments, startìng with adu'ltery and culminating'in murder. Luke Rhinehart, the narrator' got stage is a successful New York Psychiatrist, but he has to the His where life seemS to hold little meaning or interest for him' life as the "Dice Man" beg'ins after a drinking and card-play'ing session one night when he notices a card propped against a die he face-up has been looking for. He decjdes that if the die has a one any other he will go downstairs and rape his colleague's wife, Arlene:

number and he will go to bed. It is a one; so he rapes Arlene' Thinkjng about jt aftenvards, his conscience is clear since the rape at the "was obviously dictated by fate" (59) and he becomes excited thought of having found a way of liberating all the "minority roles"' the unfulfilled desires that people are taught to suppress' From then on he lets a throw of the dice dictate his actions and as he becomes

accustomed to the new "dice Iife" he develops a pseudo-psycholog'ica'l theory to validate it, expands this to include "dice therapy" in his treatment of his patients, and eventually establ'ishes a pseudo- reì'igi ous cul t organ'i zed around the "CETRES" (Centers for Experì ments L73 in Totally Random Environments) whose purpose ìs "to líberate their clients from the burdens of individual 'identìty." (345)

The novel begins as a mixture of satire (of contemporary psychoìogy and the modern psychiat¡ic profession) and a kind of comic-erotic fantasy, but it becomes more and more farcical and exaggerated and the satire is progressiveìy overwhelmed by the other mode. The blend of comedy and satire at first'is similar to that in Catch-Z¡ but because the balance is not mainta'ined nearly so effectively,the force of the novel as a whole is greatly weakened'

Compared to Cateh-Z2, The Dice Mayt is less successful particuìarly as a satiric novel in that it lacks a consistent attitude or a consistent focus of concern. Its style is predominantìy ironic, using simi'lar dev'ices to achieve thìs effect to those of Cateh-Z2, and the main target of the satire remains throughout modern psychoanalytic theory and practjce, but there are a number of disconcerting stylistic changes which do not reinforce the satiric approach and, also, a consìderable proportion of the narrative which seems to have lost s.ight of the satiric focus and degenerates'into erotic comedy for comedy,s (or eroticism's) sake or eìse presents a logically and convincingly argued case for an alternatiVe approach to practìca1 psychology which'is at odds with both the satiric and the pure'ly comic tendencies of the book. This problem does not become real'ly noticeable for some time: in the earìy chapters Rhinehart manages a styìe which allows for a smooth Ûìovement between these various emphases and it is only when his "djce-l'ifel proper has begun that the distract'ing breaks in tone occur.

The sel f-descri pt'ion wi th whi ch the book beg'ins establ i shes the autobiographicaì format and the conversational attitude towards 174 thé reader through which the story is told. However, the apparent'ìy familiar narrative method 'is deceptìve. Although The DLce Man has a first-person narrator who begins his narrative in the present tense' the possibility of an intimate literary relationship between reader and narrator - which such introductory technìques usual]y signal - is prevented by the same kind of distanc'ing techniques as those used in catch-Z|: comic exaggeration, repeatedly incongruous qual'ification' apparent contradictions, all devices wh'ich prevent sympathetic .icat.i i s i denti f on w'i th the narrator. The " Dear Reader" conventi on also mocked. Instead of being used to ally the reader with the narrator and his commentary on events, the two remarks to the reader on this first page - "I realize that it's your iob as a reader to try to create a credible consistent pattern out of all this, but "' and "as most of you know ." - merely emphas'ize the reader's confusion about what the narrator is referring to. Thus, from the start, conventjon - literary convention in thjs instance - is upset and the method and theme of the novel as a whole are introduced'

Other dev'ices re'inforce the sense of obiecti vi ty. The introductory descriptjon which Rhinehart g'ives of himself is a very self-centred one ("I" is the actual or imp'lied subiect of kernel psychological sentences thirty-seven times) yet 'it contains very little revelation and'in fact gives a completeìy inconsistent picture of the 'impression man. The present tense, instead of creating an of intimacy readerrs or immediacy, aS it usually does in modern fiction, adds to the bew'ilderment, and thus his distance from the narrative' by suggest'ing that all the contradictory qualjties are simultaneous'ly present in the subject, not that they occurred at separate tjmes'in the past' Deletion of the "I" in certain places sets paralIe'l and contradictory 175

Statements si de by side, increasing the impression of inconsistency by removing the suggestion of time having passed between them, as in the second paragraph: "I am deeply religious, have written the 1ove1y, first-rate pornographic novel ."

(Later, in apparent contrast, the description of Arlene, which is typical of the book's method of characterization, is quite consistent but ìts use of static, obiective verb forms - passive, impersonal and intransitive forms - means that "Arlene" does not emerge as a real, ììv'ing character but rather as a cartoon-like' two-dimens'ional image:

in a bun (43)

Presented in this way, the characters resemble spec'imens' amusing and often rather grotesque, which the narrator regards from a safe distance.)

As in Catch-Z¡, repeated exaggerative terms ("eæeeptionaLly ,'rm,tltipLe or near- mediocre,' , adulterer") in combination with negat'ive powerful") negative qua'lifìcations ("barely faster", "only slightìy more interrupt or inhibit psychological understanding of and identification with the characters. It becomes a general rule in the novel that any posit.ive (usually 'in the convent'ional ' moral sense), optimistic statement of the narrator-conmentator is irnonically quaìified soon after.

with The narrative and commentary deal chiefly with surfaces, act.ions rather than feelings and motives, and generally there is no t76 attempt to explain or interpret the characters' behaviour. The frequent use of noun or adjective-noun constructions ("with no conscious intention", "with relative content"), which have a more abstract, statjc effect than verbal constructions, Serves the same purpose of imply'ing detachment. A preference for nominal over verbal forms of expression could possibly be shown to be a characteristic of comic-Satiric writ'ing in general . In The Ùice Inlan in any case a nominal style predominates: noun-noun constructions ("thirteen-second inVolVement"), pass'ive verb forms, abstract nouns

(frequently used as sentence subjects) recur in the narrative and are part'icuì arìy usef ul when Rhi nehart 'is parodyi ng psychol og'i cal or bureaucratic jargon, Which tends to be an extreme form of nominal, abstract writing.

There is not, though, the sìmple sentence structure which often accompanies a nominal styìe. Instead, there is considerable sentence variety: Simple compound structures and long, rhythmic lists are interspersed wìth patterns of complex subordination. In this introduction all three forms are used to bring out the contradictions 'in the narrator's character; in particülar the list'ing, which is a typ'ical sat'iric method, is used to ovenvhelm the reader with the apparent inconsistencies. The format is that of a "What am I?" riddle. At this stage the confusion is amusingly 'intriguing' or perhaps jrritating for some readers. In these first three paragraphs a consjderable number of conventional beliefs are briefly challenged: that sjze determines strength, that to be non-neurotic is to be normal, that rel 'i g'ion and pornography are i ncompat'ibl e , that mos t Ameri can novelists are Jewish, and so on. We seem to have a narrator who likes to see himself as a man of contrad'ictions and society a'lso as 177

contradictory and absurd. He appears to be a self-conscious cynic who criticizes or mocks iust for criticism's sake.

There is, however, a connecting thread which links these apparently unreìated targets and which becomes the major thes'is around which the novel is developed: that 'is, that the single- interpr"etation view of l'ife which stereotypes and categorizes peop'le and behaviour according to iust a few conventjonal critenia is absurd and psycholog'ically restrictive. Instead, the novel promotes a "multi-lateral" manner of interpreting life, one which recognizes the many sides of an experience or personalìty and accords them equal val'idi tY.

Thus, despite its predom'inantly comic plot, The DLce Man is

based on a psychologically and phììosophical]y sound propos'ition and the passages of "straight" argument support it convincing'ly. 0verall' though, Rhjnehart does not succeed in effectively combining the two approaches, for the periodic seriousness ìs undermined by the

fantastic comedy of the action. This problem will be returned to

I ater.

The final part of the introductory sect'ion begins to explore the psychologìca'l reasoning which led up to Rhinehart's formulation of his dice-based theory and therapy. The tone here is much more serious, contrasting with the opening paragraphs in jts lack of the bizarre contradictions. There are fewer adiectjves, the lists are congruent ("freedom, exhìlaration, joy"), and the static, para'llel constructions give way to a syntax which has the argument moving for'ward instead of standing stilì. As well, the grammatica'lly incomplete sentences, again by contrast with the opening paragraphs' L78

the cold, self-consc'ious suggest a more "human" enthusiasm instead of con trari nes s .

Inthisfourthparagraph,Rhìnehartseemstobemockingthe to change the enthusiastic styìe of the naive optimist who wants been to change personaìity' world. He writes, "my passìon has a string of Mine. gthers,. Everyone,s .," and follows with however' w'ith a over-detailed examples. The paragraph is resolved, when an conclusion that has the impact of a genuine insight: ". .ideasuddenlyspr.ingsfull-blown.intothemind,reorganizingìnan instant the experience of a lifetime.''

Simìlarìy,thenextlittleparagraph'beg'inning"Lifeìs is]andsofecstasy.inanoceanofennuì..,hoversbetweenthe exaggerated,jronicemphasisoftheopen.ingandseriousness¡the problemisthatwearenotyetsurehowseriouslyWearetotreat directed at himself the narrator, that is, how much of his irony.is poss'ible that this ambiguity and how much outwards at soc'iety. It ìs intended to prevent about the narrator's point of view is del'iberate, kinå of narrator he is the reader iumping to conclusions about the dea]ingwith,abouthow.,reliable''heis,tousetheterminthe I sense gi ven to i t bY WaYne Booth '

Amoredetailedsty.|isticstudycouldanaìysetheprecise effectsofotherincreasinglyfrequent.|yuseddevicessuchasthe and lìsts of three, four or more items whjch suggest over-emphasis exaggerat.ion,theparadìgmatic.incongruityofphraseslike.'her sjmiles and metaphors' and modest obscene nightgown", the incongruous theincongruousadverbsandadverbialclauses.Incombinationwjth eachotherandwiththecomicepisodesoftheplot,however,their generaìeffectistoupsettrad.itionalvaluesandexpectationsin 779 order to support the proposìtions around which the novel's story is cons tructed.

Nevertheless, there are several places where these stylistìc devices are absent, for instance when Rhjnehart is discussing his theory of the burdensome nature of the "sense of self". Here, the argument follows smoothly and logically, without the irrelevant similes, deviant epithets, and so on. Perhaps it is the context of the book as a whole - the comic exaggeration of the action and the self-conscious'irony of the narration - that makes one wonder how seriousìy the author intends us to take these theories. The interactìon between the comic and the serious, on both the styì'istic and the narrative levels, creates the impression of a kind of uneasy imbalance for the reader: whìle the propos'itions may be valid ('in the sense that they conform to conventional reasonìng and logic), their app'lication'in practice is made ridiculous. Th'is impress'ion of imbalance imp'lies a general incompatib'ility between satire and overt moral prescri ptions.

Part of the stated intention of Rhinehart the narrator is that "[his] style shall be random", in order to illustrate his chang'ing roles and the different facets of h'is personality. A variety of styìes is parodied - from the abstract style of theoretical psychology to a fervent account of the stages lead'ing to rel'igìous conversion - deliberately breakìng any stylistic contìnuìty that has been established. At another level, psychologica'l continuity is interrupted by the swìtch from first-person narration to the third person wh'ich 'is fi rst occurs in chapter fifteen (p. 104) when Rhinehart p'laying the role of Jesus. A number of other episodes are narrated in the third person, contrasting with the predominant use of the first person and 180 serving to reinforce the novel's proposition that each individual is many persons and p'lays many different roles.

According to Timets book reviewer' the author of The Dice

Man, whose name'in reality is George cockcroft, did intend the argument to be regarded critically. Cockcroft took the hero's name as his pen-name "because the book is'in part autobiographical and I wanted to force the reader to take the book more seriously than he would a novel."2

gnce: He seems in The Dice Man to be trying to do two things at to satirize modern theory and practice of psychoanalys'is, and to suggest an alternative way of viewing human persona'lity which reverses the convent'ional view of the ideal social human as one who is stable, reliable and predictable. Thus there js a double framework or underpinnìng for the predominantly comic-erotic plot. Yet there is an incompatib'ilìty between the two intentions - just because they are both aimed at or focused on the same aspect of society'

The awareness that a man wears many different masks in hjs l'ife is the basis of much fiction. Generalìy, though, the character's presentation to the world of a certain mask ìs dependent on circumstances, wh'ich are outl'ined ìn the novel . Rhinehart takes the

assumpt'ion of masks out of the hands of circumstance and places it back with the individual, making the adoption of masks or roles a del i berate choi ce . He argues convi nc'i ngìy ' as a d'isgruntl ed psychìatrist, for a change in the way we vjew human personaìity' but he proceeds to undercut and undermjne the argument by the ludicrous activities which exemplify the theory and which are also used to satirize the psychiatric profession. 181

and Ltke cateh_zz, The DLce Man is based on a single "joke" But unlike the full novel is a series of variations on the theme' are much the those of Cateh-Z|, the variations in The DLce Mqrt all to operate at same. In Catch-zz, the "catch" of the title was shown ng al I the characters al I level s of the mi I i tary organ'izat'ion , affectì sufferer individuaìly while centring on Yossarian as the chjef The concept around caught in the middle of all that was happening. for providing a whìch The Dice Mqn is built has a sim'ilar potentiaì 'in Random Man 'in opposition comprehensive view of society general: the psychology' to all the conventions and habìts of American society and be mad' Rhinehart defying the belief that to be schizophrenic is to dictated by a chance admits he is insane, but, he argues, is the evil premedjtatedly by throw of the dìce any "worse" than evil committed and energy on the normal people? The novel depends for its motivation among currently fash'ionable idea that the normal and well-adiusted see the world most us are real'lY cYazY and it is the insane who

cl earl y .

ForRhinehart,hov,/ever,andalsoforthosewhomheinitiates means little more into the new relig'ion, to lead a d'ice-oriented life Many of the than to sampìe previously untasted sexual delights' from sexual scenes involving one character or another's liberat'ion c bui I d-ups and cl i maxes i nhi bi t.ion are amusi ng]y re]ated, the eroti be.ingneat.lycounterpojntedbytittlecomicobservationsand Rhinehart,sownsarcasticdetachment,asinhjsf.irstsexua] encounter with Arlene:

dance. 182

'Come,' I found myseìf saying, after our mutual moment of awe (56)

The reason why the ioke becomes repetitious and loses the poy,rer to hold the reader's interest wh'ich it had in the beginning is that there is ljttle sense of underlying suspense or of movement towards some kind of resolution - the k'ind of suspense which the 'tn part.ial accounts of snowden 's death create cateh-Z2 . t'lhat shoul d be the climax, both structura'l'ly and moralìy - the dice-djctated murder of Qsterflood - becomes merely one more sexual orgy' The victim h'imself is made a brutal' unsympathetic man and his death leaves the reader unmoved. Murder is not shown as the ultimate consequence of follow'ing Chance but as iust one of many equaì consequences. Cockcroft/Rhinehart has neither reversed the conventional range of values, as a satire aims to do, nor provided a criti ci sm of them, but has simp'ly neutral i zed them. Thus, wh'ile

The DLce Man nay not satisfy the moral expectations of the reader conditioned by the tradit'ional novel, it does illustrate the essential absurdity which existent'ialism uncovers, that "morality" is imposed on Society and jndividuals and is not inherent r¡rithin them'

0n another level, the sty'listic, the novel fails to live up to the reader,s expectations and in this case the expectations were set by the author himself in his Preface:

'The style is the man'' once said Richard Nixon and devoted h'is I i fe to bori ng hi s readers .

soon to be rePeated. iB3

A cunning chaos: that is what my autobiography shaìl be. I shall make my order chronological But my style shall be random, with the wisdom of the Dice.

As it turns out, however, there js not a great deal of stylistic variety. The parodies of different types of ìanguage situations from the typical therapy session (chapter 3) to the Bible to the kind of "investigative reporting" found in weekend newspapers - are generaì1y successfully done in that they are close enough to the originals for the models to be readiìy recognizable but still manage to reverse or rearrange the values and attitudes associated with those language models. Yet their potentìal for exempìifying the stylistically l'iberated writer is greatly weakened because the same narrator (or commentator, in the case of the chapters written in the third-person) is speaking in each of them. The same cynical or tongue-in-cheek, unemotional detachment with which the narrator begins his story preva'i'ls throughout the novel ' even when he has switched roles (in chapter 40 for example). When there is a marked change of style, as when Rhinehart takes on the role of Jesus and adopts New Testament syntax and terminology, one finds a close, easily recognizable correspondence between style and subiect - thus the style is hardìy "random".

There ìs, also' a sameness of character and incident. Rhinehart h'imself, although he tells the whole story, remains a flat' unsympathetic character with whom it ìs difficult to identify: we are given little insight into his deeper thoughts, he exhib'its no genuine, strong emotions (apart from, perhaps, the ennui with which the story began) and, most important'ly, the quality of h'is relatìonships with other people is not shown to us. The other 184 characters themselVes are virtual]y caricatures, defined in terms of their part'icular id'iosyncrasies, and there 'is, in general , the Sense of a lack of psycho'logicaì complexjty. Rhinehart reacts in the same way to all the other characters and describes them all in the same manner; that iS, however serious they seem to be in the way they act or speak, the narrative method is aìways to make them ridiculous'

The chapter where Lil finds out about Rhinehart's "dice-life", for example, begins in the slightly over-sentimental styìe common t0

rnodern "romance" novels.

the moon'li ght

As soon as the emotion beh'ind the brewing confrontation begins to

come to the surface and therefore involve the reader in it, it is turned asi de:

'I've been experimenting, Lil,' I began for the third time, 'with þracticing-eccentric behaviour in ordei to discôver the variety of human nature'' i pãuse¿: wide-eyed she wai.ted for what I was going lo'iày. Narrow-eyed, so did I. (205)

This method of characterization is typicaì of conventjonal psychologica]ly comedy where the characters tend to be two-dimensional, f.ixed peop'le in order that attentjon can be focused on the intricacies of the p'lot. Such a presentation in The Dice Inan effectively aììows for inclusion of the parodies of television talk shows, iournalistic sensationalism and professional psychoanalytical iargon -'language rather areas which also deal with surfaces and general statements than individuals and specific problems. In The DLce Man, however' this constantìy fìippant, ironical treatment of the characters and 185 their behaviour is unsatisfactory for the singìe reason that the theoretical, non-ironic sections explaining Rhinehart's "philosophy" are included as an important part of the whoìe novel. Because the theory is presented serious'ly, tnre expect to find that theory realized in the plot in such a way that we can beg'in to make judgements about its validity or its'irrelevance'in relation to the society we know.

The d'ifferent narrative forms - the serious, comic and ironic - are linked in a way by the misattributed quotations ("In the immortal words of J. Edgar Hoover: 'Unless ye become as little children, ye

¡r rr t shal I not see God , ' t¡lhi ther and why , ' as General Ei senhower once said, 'have the joys of life all flown away?"'), â device which is used to good effect to suggest other, ironjc interpretations of the originaì speaker's mean'ing. These quotations encapsulate the mirror- image or tangential truths that irony is capable of revealing in a manner more effective than the settìng side by side of comic-ìronic

si tuatj ons and di dactic theorì ztng.

There is one other narrative form used which upsets the balance between real'ity and satire for the reader: the fancifulness

of the dream mak'ing up chapter 39 and of the ending - Epilogue. The dream places the whole Story as a crazy, absurd fantasy and the

endi ng, s'imi lar'ly, reduces the book to simply a too-long fantasy taken to its l'imìts. The point wh'ich the novel has been making al'l through is summarized very effectively on the page preced'ing the Epìlogue, when Rhinehart is contemplating the poss'ibif ity of a life-long prison sentence as a result of his dice-directed activities:

'Create the opt'ions, shake the dice. All else is nonsense,' [Jake said.] tBut ¡tnr worried. It's me that may get two hundred and th'irty seven Years.' 186

'l^lho 're you? ' Jake asked ì azi 1y. There lvas a'long pause and by now a'11 three of us were staring into the redglow. '0h yeah, I keep forgettin g I said, pulìing out a green die . 'I am ( 430 )

By this stage it does not seem important what happens to Rhinehart. He has kept his distance from the reader so well that there is litt'le sympathy for his predicament - in contrast, again, to catch-2T, where Yossarian's anti-institution struggle became one that involved the reader's moral sense (should Yossarian accept the Colonel's deal or not?) and thus his sympathy. The reader's intellectual enthusiasm in watching characters act out a totaììy unconventional approach to life, one wh'ich most people must have 'long imagined at some time for themselves, was probably exhausted before and his interest maintained chiefly by the 'increasing perversion of the characters' act'ivities, rather than by either the psychological theory or the satiric offshoots of the p1ot.

The novel concludes without the romantic reassurance that man's actions of themselves can result in his psychological, intellectual, or spiritual development or liberat'ion, which novels like Catch-2T or One FLeu Ouer the Cuckoots Nest do imply at their conclusions. It ends instead ín media res, Rhinehart faced with yet another new option.

The DLce Man, then, approxìmates more closely than most so-called novels of the absurd to the existential vision of human existence. Morality is not a relevant issue: success in surviving and in satisfying sensual desires ìs all important. Rhinehart'the Dice Man is a descendent of Camus'Meursault; they share a habit of detached observation of life, coloured by irony and based on emotional 187 indifference. Rhinehart, however, js a very seìf-conscious Meursault, del'iberateìy exaggerating h'is qualitjes and making out of Meursault's passiVe cynicism and calm truthfulness a comic extravaganza jntensified by vigorous satiric atta¿ks on anything which opposes his determined hedonism.

The theme of Ltvtyangey provides the starting-point for Ílte

ùLce Man. Meursaul t was condemned and executed not so much because he murdered but because he failed to exhibit the "appropriate" emotional responses at certain crucìal times, beginn'ing with his mother's death. The DLce Man, simi'lar'ly, explores the confìict between the peculiar freedom which the "d'ice life" offers - the freedom to exhibit aLL the sides of one's personality - and the laws and rest¡ictions of ordinary society, in this way pointing up many of the absurditìes inherent'in the organìzation of society and' more part'icularìy, in society's attitude towards and resentment of "insanity". Rhinehart, the "dice man", attempts to systematize the existentialjst theory that existence is governed by Chance and has no intrinsic "mean'ing"; he himself selects the options for action in each situation but a throw of the dice decides which one he will follow. This is a potent'iaì]y very exciting narrative "gimmìck" which'is capable, like Heller's "catch-Z?", Of involving all aspects of modern life: poìitics, econom'ics, religìon' v',ar-making, as well as psycho'logical and personal relationsh'ips. It is unfortunate that a narrator-protagonist was chosen whose primary interest apart from psychology is sex.

It is interesting to set The DLce Man alongside Henzog and Zen

and, the ATt of Moto?cycLe Ma,intenar¡ce fOr, although quite different in tone, p'lot and narratìve method, they do have a s'imilar concern in 188 that they both deal with the middle-age panic experienced by the heroes of many contemporary American novels. The symptoms of this condition tend to be the same: "the taste of a stale marriage is on 'li 'is [the hero's] ps. A run-of-the treadmi I I iob under his feet and grey rather than great expectations cloud h'is eyes."3 In Henzog and Zen, Bellow and P'irsig g'ive us convincingly detailed psychological portraits of the'ir protagonists as we follow them in their explorations of their memorjes, motives ¿nd emotions. The Dice Mørt, however, ridicules this kind of intense self-examination, both by mocking similar occurrences of it in the various characters and by having a narrator who shows no emotional depth and has no scruples, neither soc1ety's nor his own self-imposed standards, against which to examine himself. Irlhereas Herzog's (and Pirsig's) self-analysis represents an attempt to "harmonize" himself with his social environment, Rhinehart reacts by cutting himself off completely from the behaviour and moral code of h'is socìety. Because of this, the book loses contact with "rea1ity" and moves into fantasy.

There is no sense of achievement or victory in The DLce Mqrt, no sense that the protagonist has struggled with himself and his environment and achieved some new degree of understanding. In this it differs from most of the other novels examined in this thesis and from the current Ameri can novel i n general . The di fference can be traced to the absence of the romance element, the ameliorating quaìity 'is wh1ch suggests through association with tradition that there value for the individual 'in opposing the absurdity of h'is env'ironment' even if the "victory", as it is iî Catch-22 and in Heyzog, is relevant only to the one indiv'iduaì and will leave the rest of the world quite unaffected. Luke Rhinehart js, thus, far more an "anti-hero" than is Yossar.ian,.who has often been awarded the title; but this is in line +++

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6BI 190

CI1APTER 9

ZEN AND THE ART OF IV|OTORCYCLE IVIAINTENANCE

I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, inai 'it is eight-thirty in tle morn'ing. .The. wind,.even ai silty miles an hour, ls warm and humid. When it's this hot and rrggy ai eight-thìrty, I'm wondering what it's going to be like in the afternoon. In the wind are pungent odors from the marshes by the road. l,le are'in an area of lhe-Central Plains filled w'ith thousands of duck hunting s'loughs, heading northwest from Minneapo'lis toward the Dakotasl Thi; highway ii an old concrete two-laner that hasn't had much traffjc sjncõ a iour-laner went in paralleì to it several years ago. !,Jhen we pass a marsh the air suddenly warms up aga'in. I'm happy to be rid'ing back into th'is country.- It is a k'ind of nowhere, tainôls for nothing at all and has an appeal because of-iust that. Íensions disappear ãlong old roads like this. l"le b-ump a'long the beat-up concrete'between tñe cattails and stretches of rneadow and then more ðattails and marsh grass. Here and there is a stretch of open water and if you look closeìy you can see-wild ducks at the ebge of the cattaiis. And turtles. There's a red-winged bl ackb'i rd. I whack Chris's knee and po'int to it. " l^lhat I " he hol I ers . "Blackbirdl" He grabs the back of my helmet and hollers, "I've seen Lots of those, DadI" ,'0h:" I holler back. Then I nod. At age eleven you don't get very impressed with red-winged blackb'irds.

jOUrney Zen and. the Az.t of Moto,cycLe Maintenancel deScribeS a through the American Rockjes undertaken by the narrator and his young 191

son. During the journey, the narrator mentally examines issues which have recently become ìmportant to him, phìlosophical issues whjch have also dominated his personal l'ife: the shift in western thought from ,,classical,, to "romantic " ways of ìnterpreting the world' the consequent split 'in the modern psyche bätween the techno'logicaì (represented by the motorcycìe itself) and the imag'inative life' the loss of an apprecjation of what he terms "Quality". As he mentally del'ivers these lectures - or "Chautauquas" - the narrator is both examjn'ing contemporary Ame¡ican society and, s'imultaneously, conduct'ing a profound psychologìcal examinatjon of himself as he attempts to find and]ay to rest the ghost of the person he once was, the person he names "Phaedrus" Who underwent a total mental breakdown when he was unable to resolve the confljcts aroused by his intellectual search for Quality.

In structure Zen and fhe Dice Mqn might appear to be very similar: a narrator writing ìn the first person retrospectively about the peniod in his life when he began to quest'ion accepted values and to form a new "philosophy" of his own. Both narrators use a combinatjon of logical reasoning or argument and act'ion exempìi- fy'ing the argument to present the'ir theories, but the proportional uses of each mode are Very different: jn The DLce Man action predom'inates over commentary and argument, in Zen action js sub- 'is ordinate to phi'losoph'ical di scussion. Thi s d'ifference probab'ly a log'ical outcome of the proposìtions around whjch each book is written. The Díee Man claims that human be'ings are too confined by the limited number of roles they can p'laY, bV society's restrictions on allowable behaviour; zen, howevel, is concerned with an abstract' 192

intellectual discussion of the concept "Quality"- The difference in the proportions of act'ion and abstract commentary in the two books is a maior outcome of the extremely different approaches taken towards the two propositions: the one a comic-satiric approach' the other quite serious.

Qne could, even, queStiOn whether Zen js really a "noVel" at all. hJhile The DLce Man is clearly a "novel", a fictional account in of experience despite the shared narne of its author and narrator' Zenlhe tone ìs so often didactic and the "story-ìine" so often held up whìle the narrator continues his internal ph'ilosophica] debate that one might wonder whether the book should be regarded rather as autobiography or philosophica'l treatise. Pirs'ig's Note prefacing part I indicates his didactic intention. and the personal experience from whjch the book began: "What follows is based on actual occur- rences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes' it must be regarded in its essence aS fact". The term "novel" has' however, become sufficient'ly ìoose to cover any ìong fictionalized rendering of the 'illusion of reality, and fictionalized biographìes and autobiographies, which render the thoughts and motives of their subjects when these could not be known' are often indistinguishable technjcally and thematically from novels, stories about ìmaginary characters.

The sty'le of narration which is employed throughout zen is a traditionally "noveìistic" styìe: the regular use of incidental detail (that is, details not'logica]1y connected with the ph.ilosophicaì argument), the continuing, developing and thematicaìly 'ind'ividuals' consistent plot based on conflict between the management 193

the of suspense and the encouragement of involvement by the reader in narrator's situation are major characteristics of the book which link it to conventional novel forms.

Unlike The DLce Møn, Zen attempts to create an impression of closeness and intimacy between reader and narrator' Ihe Ùice Møt' uses stylist.ic devices which encourage detachment and lack of emotional .involvement in the narrator's story and wh'ich also carry the comedy and irony, while Zen, fron the very beginning, has a style promot'ing identificat'ion with the narrator and thoughtful consjderation of what he 'is saYing.

Zen begins, like many modern novels about the individual ìn contemporary society, in the middle of a situation. The narrator' writing in the first person, uses the present tense - "I can see by my watch that it is eight-thirty in the morning" - the effect of which .is to create a sense of immed'iacy and have the reader imagine himseìf participating'in that s'ituation and experiencing things as the narrator does. Other stylistic devices work to the same end: the colIoqu.ialisms ("muggy", "a kind of nowhere", "whack") and abbreviations characteristic of famiIiar speech ("I'm happy", "There's a red-winged blackbird"); the continuous aspect of several verbs (,'I,m wonderìng", "to be rid'ing" ) which suggests an ongoing action; the general, unobstrusive verbs, which create an impression of observation only, without intrusive critical judgement or analysis; the famiIiar use of "you" inviting the reader's particìpat'ion and drawjng his attention more closely to the scene; and the predom'inance of concrete nouns and correspond'ing scarcity of abstract nouns and

expressi ons . 794

Throughout the book, Pirsig uses such intimate presentation of natural scenery as a starting-point for his inner speculations. The surface familiarity of tone is matched against the carefulìy ordered phraseo'logy and subord'ination of tradit'ional rhetoric, and in a sense it reflects the dichotomy in Pirsig/Phaedrus' own psycholog'ical makeup; the desire to live in the "real world", the physical world, and a desire for more than the real world seems to offer.

In the descri ptj ve passages P'i rsi g deve'lops a smooth ' rhythmi c prose, carefully but unobtrusively organized both to carry the thought fonvard'in a particular direction and to refer back to and include previous happen'ings and allusions. His method and tone are ' exemplified at the very beginn'ing of the novel. A rhythm is established in the two opening sentences, tripart'ite in structure, the inserted phrases introducing the motorcycle which is to be a central thread of the book: "I can.see by my watch, without tak'ing my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it'is eight-thirty in the morning. The wind, even at sixty miles an hour, is warm and humid". With the third sentence, the paragraph, in a manner favoured by Pirsig through- out the book, acquires internal un'ity: the main reference in the first sentence ìs time, in the second it is the hot wind, and in the third

sentence time and the heat are brought together: "l,,lhen it's this

hot and muggy at eight-th'irty, I'm wonde¡ing what it's going to be like in the afternoon".

A similar rhythmic balance, this time of repetition and

oppositìon, comes with the two-part sentences at the end of the

second paragraph: "When we pass a marsh the air suddenly becomes

cooler. Then, when we are past, it sudden'ly warms up again". Then 195

the movement havìng established the smooth rhythm and linked this to of the bike, Pìrsig is able to use a change in the rhythm to reflect ng the jerkiness i n the b'ike' s movement and to si gna'l a sharpeni beat-up and narrowìng of focus, hjs and ours: "we bump along the 'imaginative'ly - concrete .. ." The reader is invited to part'ic'ipate ,,if you look clearly" - as the elements of the scene are itemized: the the wild ducks, the turtles, and the blackbird' which prov'ides introduction link between observat'ion and action, and results in the of the narrator's companion, his son Chris'

The descrìption of the scene is brought to an end with the

shouted conversatjon between the two. A descript'ion of another'

remembered scene follows but this one is significant'ly different in the way it sums up the narrator's feel'ings about the area in abstract terms:

Cold morn'ings long ago when the marsh grass had. turned browñ I every foot of these sloughs is humming and crickjng and buzztng and chirping' u community oi mill jons of living.things livinq"ftolã out their lìves in a kind of benign contiñuum. (4)

Throughout the book the narrator has a habit of reducing the experiences'important to him to phìlosophical abstractions as he does in the passage iust quoted. In the opening section the movement from the specific to the general is espec'ia1ìy c1ear. Localiz'ing details - the cattails, the yed-uinged blackbird - define a particular Scene, which in turn evokes memories of an earlier exper.ience, and the two experìences are brought together in the abstract sununation of their signifìcance for the writer. 196

!-lhile the "story" aspect of the novel concerns the trip made by the narrator and his son across America on a motor cycle' this trip is subordjnate to the mental progression or journey: the narratorr s attempt to think I ogjcaì ly through a phi I osoph'ical problem and to piece together what he recalls of his former, insane self and his th-tnking, finally to bring the two mental paths together. It ìs very much the narrator'S own story. The two journeys are fu]ìy mediated through his consciousness, and other characters are important on'ly to the degree that they affect his mental progress: they are not presented as psychologically rounded figures, as the narrator himself acknowledges:

I suppose if I were a novelist rather than a chautauqua oratbi^ I'd try to "develop the characters" of John and Sylvia and Chris with action-packed scenes that would a-lso reveal "inner mean'ings" of Zen and maybe Art and even Motor cycle Maintenance. That would be quite a novel, but fór some reason I don't feel quite up to it' fñ.V're friends, not characters and. as lYluia-herself onãä said, "I dón't Iike being an obiectI" (130)

Structura'l'ly, the novel js bu'ilt around the two paral'lel movements: the one tied to the physical, natural world, the other involving the psycho'log'icaì, abstract world. similarly, the novel is determined styl'istjca'lìy by this oscillation from the physical to the abstract, the narrator's participation in both' and his attempt to make sense of and unite the two. Tenses change according to whether the narrator is speak'ing in the present, of himself "now,' during the motorcycle journey, or of his past self "Phaedrus". There is as well a second use of the present tense - to make generalized observations about life - which links the two periods of time and the two personalities: 197

InastunnedstatePhaedrusbeganalongseriesof lateral drifts tfral ied him'into a iar orbit of the mind, but he eventualìy returned along a route we are now iðiló*iñg, to thä doors of rhe un.iversiry itself. Tomorrow-l'll try to start on that route' At Laurel , 'in sìght of the mountains at last' wê stop 1òr ihe níght. ihe evening breeze is cool.now' ii-ão*t down oif the snow I feel happy to be here, and still a little sad to be here too' 5ót.[imes it's a little better to travel than to arri ve. ( 111)

Having established this pattern of tenses, the present for himself, the past for Phaedrus, during the greater part of the novel, Pirsig is abìe to use a breaking of the pattern to emphasize his one of the book's key episodes, when Phaedrus, exhausted by .intellectual confrontations in the phiìosophy c1ass, realìzìng that begìn "everythìng he has been do'ing has been a fool's mission to with" (389), gives in to total psycho'logìcal breakdown' The whole is ep.isode is recounted in the present tense, as if the narrator reliving it minute for minute in the recollectjon.

Similar sh'ifts, from first person narration to a form of third person narration, also underline the duality in the narrator'S personaì.ity and experience. He uses the first person to speak of himself in the novel's present (on the motorcycle trip), in the novel's past (h'is experiences before this trip began), and as a comnentator-philosopher outside of clock t'ime. When he speaks of his former seìf, Phaedrus, however, there is a sw'itch to the third person,,he,, and the narrator writes as an Qmniscient reporter and perìods of commentator on Phaedrus' actions and thoughts. The two

tjme and the two persona'lities come together as the narrator gradually fits Phaedrus' thoughts and experiences into hjs own 198

psychol og'i cal pattern and personal i ty:

passing How can I love all this [the valleys he is throughl so much and be insane? . I don't beli'eue -tt'. 'is The mythos . The mythos i nsane ' That' s what he beli.u.ä. The mythoi that says the forms. of this ;;.iã are-real uut ir¡e Qual'ity oï this world is unreal ' that is insanel And in Aristotle and the ancient Greeks he believãà he had found the villains who had so shaped lñe mythos as to cause us to accept this insan'ity as reaìitY. That. That now. That ties it al1 together' It feels relieving when that happens (346)

As well as these obv'ious changes, from present to past and ilIil to ,,he", there are various smaller and subtler sty'listic techniques that smooth the transjt'ion from the physical world to the abstract. Scenery, or more particu]arly' Some tangible obiect' or a physicaì action is used to'injtiate a meditation on a related' abstract topic'in a way which typ'ifies the manner of the book's progression' In the followjng passage the repet'ition of the word "holler" indicates very cìearly this process of usìng the physical world as a "lead-'in" to the intellectual:

Ahugeflockofred-wjngedbìackbirdsascendsfrom nestõ in the cattails, õtartled by our sound' I swat chris's knee a second time then I rernember he has seen them before. "tlhat?" he hol l ers aga'in you' st'i I there I "Just checki ng to see i f re I ' " holler, and nothing more is said. unless you're fond of hollering you don't make great conversations on a running cyc1e. Instead you spend your time beìng aware of thingi and meditating on them 'is What I'd l'ike to do is use the time that com'ing We're now to talk about some th'ings that have come to mind. 'in such a hurrY most of the t'ime r,,le never get much chance to talk. The result is a k'ind of endless daY-to-daY shal lowness (7) 199

paraìleled þlhat this technique does on the 'intellectual level is by both the l'inguistic device of expressing abstract ideas in fam'iliar, informal ways - through col'loquialisms ("catch on"' ,,conned"), verb contractions, the famil'iar "you" - and on the syntactic level, where grammatically incomplete sentences represent the ongo'ing process of thought and the complex sentences tradjtionally associated w'ith abstract thought are rep'laced by ìess formal ' compound sentences ioined by "and" or "but" '

looking for the truth", and so jt goes away' Puzzling. (5-6)

The source of tens'ion or "interest" in Zen is the conflict - or the relationship - between the narrator's past and the present' Stylistically, there is a tension between the set of devices which suggest informality, the conversational manner of everyday speech, and the set of devices wh'ich are traditìonally associated with abstract commentary: series of coordinate phrases or sentences elaborat'ing particular concepts, much repet'it'ion referring back to 'imagery, key words in previous sentences, little concrete few are adverbs of manner. The way ìn which the two language schemes played against one another thus parallels close'ly the surface 0r ,,p'lOt,, StruCture, the narrator'S present-tense search fOr hiS past seìf and all that self believed in'

It is an effective dev'ice for suggesting the two personalities withìn the narrator and for bringing to the surface the tension 200

between abstract thought and experience of the real world, between

Zen and motorcycle maintenance, which is the thematic core of the book. often, however, Pi rs'ig deal s too heavi 1y wjth the 'language intellectual sìde and his veils rather than clarifies his argument. Qften, too, the trans'itions between the two forms of language and thought occur abruptly, seem'ingly randomly in that they emphasize no illuminating contrast, s'imilarjty, or sh'ift in perspective between the two.

At t.imes, the lectures, ot "chautauquas" seem to grind on too long: the argument becomes "wool'1y", hollow, occasionally exasperatingìy gìib. No doubt the impatience with the protracted lectures arises partly because, like most phi'losophical-sociolog'ical theories, Phaedrus' "Qua'lity" theory seems to neatly explain the f undarnental prob'lems underlying the society wi thout hol ding out believable hope of a cure.

It is fascinating, almost in the way a detective thriller is fascinatjng, to watch Pirsig reassembf ing the structure of Phaedrus' mind and h'is intellectual expìorations, but it is difficult to share Pirsig/Phaedrus' excitement at his discove¡ies. While the presentation of the convolutions of Phaedrus' thesis is peculiar to him,the idea and the conclusions he comes to are familiar ones.

Readers of the book tend to remember the phiìosoph'ica] discussions as mereìy one element of the boOk - albeit the most structurally important and the unifyjng one. There are many layers, many threads worked together. As one crit'ic summarized Zen:

Pirs'ig combines a fractured soul's search for wholeness in a shaÉtering personal and social world with a metaphysical 201

'i thri I ì er story, al ong wi th si de gni ps nto the arts of removing mentäl "stuðkness", teaching rhetoric, spotting bad mechanics and p'lanning the best route for a cross- 2 co un try cy c'l e- tri p . l^lhat one mjght calì the "novelistic" elements - those involving

S uspense, confl i ct between i ndi vi dual s , the use of i nci dent and ìandscape to imply mood or insight - cut into the heav'iness and compìexity of the "Chautauquas", sometimes fulI ep'isodes, sometimes iust a few sentences providing the contrast and reljef. As previous'ly noticed, the skilful jntercutting of the geographical journey w'ith the other iourney of psychologica'l reconstruction gives the book its strength, and also gives it an allegoricaì significance as a statement about modern American society.

At fi rst the two journeys are gi ven more or less equal treatment, but gradualìy the deeper story assumes greater prom'i nence unti I towards the end the i ntercuts from the external world are no more than very brief passages. If Zen is set besides the "ordinary" novel of plof and character development, it must be judged negativeìy because of its imbalance bebleen "essay and fiction, Chautauqua and Chris, edification and experience" as one reviewer put it.3 The relationship between the narrator and his son is cìearly sketched and details filled in through the stage by stage account of its disintegration as the motor cycle iourney progresses. Chris, s'itting behind his father day after day' is obviously crying out for attention, but almost all of the narrator's mental energy is devoted to the reconstructjon of his past l'ife and hìs past self. As a result, when the "essays" go on and on, the 202

reader feels a certain sense of frustration and impatience as chris, going qujetl y crazy himself in his aloneness, is ignored'

yet Zen is not a novel prìmarily about a father-son relationship' but'instead is written as a kind of confess'ional autobiography' a totally egocentric book, and the episodes involv'ing chris serve a part.icul ar purpose - that of bal anc'i ng the narrator' s I i mi ted point of v'iew and creating the ironjc distance between the narrator and his reader which makes the book challenging at the tjme of reading and haunting 'in retrospect. The Chautauquas are about the everyday need to un'ify experìence' to combine abstract "qua1ity" with liv.ing to harmon'ize the spiritua'l and the technological . Paradoxically' the more infrequent the references to Chris become, the more his gap "presence" is felt and the more the reader becomes aware Of the between the narrator's theorizìng and his pract'ice' As the narrator goes back jn time to find the source of Phaedrus' - his own - madness, his son is moving s]owly towards a breakdown of his ouJn.

The final cl.iscussion of Phaedrus' investìgations of Plato and Arjstotle, with its 'long paragraphs, precision of definitjon and argument, and repetition of earlier Chautauqua theses, culminates in the descript'ion of phaedrus' mental .oìlupr.. This episode ìs a focal point in the book as the full account of Snowden's death is in Catch-Z|. Pjrsig has used a "flashback" technique wh'ich is sim'iìar to Heller's'in the way'it heightens suspense and gives the novel a,,controì point" towards which everything moves seemingly inevitably - even though we are in effect going back'in time and not fon¡ard. Apparently d'isconnected fragments of memory and 'in sensatjons of ddid uu graduaìly fill details in the background 203

to Phaedrus'breakdown, and as well they are used to introduce

the questions about insan'ity and sanity which make a powerful undercurrent in the book.

The sty'le by the tire of thìs episode has become sìower,

wearier: the abruptness of the broken sentences and verb contractions and the rhetorical questions which helped to enliven the philosophizing are replaced by reguìar, unstressed phrases connected smoothly and forebodìngìy by "and". The subdued tone is continued as the narratjve moves towards the final episode of the motorcycle trip which will contain the resolution of all the different journeys. In the fol'lowing passage, pirsig descr.ibes the disintegration of the sense of self which brought on phaedrus, breakdown and then switches to an appropriate'ly bleak account of the last stage of the motorcycle trip:

He crosses a lonesome valìey,.out of the mythos, . or emerges as if from a dream, seeing that his whole consciousness, the mythos, has been a dream and no one,s dream but his own, a dream he must now sustain of his ou,n efforts. Then even "he" disappears and onìy the dream of himself remains with himself in it. And the Quality, the az,etè he has fought so hard for, has sacrificed for, has nevey betrayed, but in all that time has never once understood, now makes itself clear to him and his soul is at rest. The cars are thinned out to almost none, and the road is so black it seems as though the headìight can barely fight 'its way through ihe rain to reach ir. (3e0 - 3e1)

!,li th the next sentences , whi ch are contrasti ng]y short and abrupt - "Murderous. Anything can happen - a sudden rut, an oil slick, a dead animal ." - the rhythm is broken and the narrative is quickly brought back to the form, though not the mood, 204

of the beginning,the narrator's awareness of what he is seeing being externalized through hjs shouted conversation w'ith his son.

The conclud.ing section is beautifuìly handled. The fog, the ocean, the cliff edge, the coldness and later the contrasting warmth, Chrìs' eerie wailing and the whjne of the truck's gears: all these elennnts are used naturally but powerfully to convey the emotional 'impact of the resolution of all the conflicts. The narrator realizes that

in all this Chautauqua talk there's been more than a touch of hypocrisy. Advice is g'iven again and again to elim'inate subject-obiect duality, when the biggest duality of all, the duality between me and him, remains unfaced. ( 395 )

To calm Chris he has to assume Phaedrus' voice and is thus able to reconcile that past self with his self now by answe¡ing Ch¡is' question:

"t'Jere you real'ly 'insane?" Why shouìd he ask that? No. (403)

Hav'ing recognized the answers to all the quest'ions he has been asking and achieved the fusion of his selves, the narrator continues the motor cyc'le journey, movjng appropriately out of the fog into warmth and sunshine.

Zen and the Art of MotoTcycLe Maínterrnnce, unl'ike the other novels djscussed jn this thesis and unljke the majority of contemporary Amerìcan novels, js real1y a "post-Existential" novel 205

because while its author accepts the premise of exjstentialism that the world lacks a God-ordained order and meaning, he attempts to go further and explain why ljfe stìll seems to have meaning for men despite its man'ifest absurdity by explicating the pre-Aristotelian concept of Quality - excellence or oneness. One of the fundamental points of most exìstential writ'ing'is' as was noticed earl'ier, the rejection of order and of rational systems of thought. Pirsig' also, attacks the dual'ist systems of rationality which have developed from Aristotle on in hJestern thinking and which distort the ancient Greek, supra-rational principle of aretà: the systems which separate subject and object, mjnd and matter, illusion and reality, romantic and classic, self and not-self, truth and not-truth.

P'irsig's descrìption of romantic, as opposed to class'ic thought' is of a manner of perception which is inmedìate and recoils from form, proceeding by feeling and intu'ition rather than reason and laws.

Modern existentìalism can be Seen aS an extension and expans'ion of the romantìc movement in that, like the proponents of romanticìsm, exi stenti al i sts affi rm the supremacy of i nd'i vj dual experi ence over philosophica'l or sociolog'ical generalization, and deny the exclusive categorization of experience into fact/realjty and imagination. This exjstential conflict between the real'ity of immed'iate percept'ion and the human tendency to rat'ionally analyse experience provides the novel's themat'ic starting point and g'ives it jts form.

Existential.ism, however, unlike most romantic'ism, denies idealism, the belìefs that the world is progressjng towards a perfect state, that evil and sufferìng are necessary to ach'ieve 206

some greater good. Certainly, in Zen the narrator-protagonist experiences the destructjon of his idealjsm and comes to a state of equilib¡ium where he js psycholog'ically in a position to accept equal'ly both the beautjful and the distasteful in himself and in ìife. He has endeavoured to resolve the romantic-classical battle neither by joining one side to vanquish the other, nor by compromising with some form of golden mean' but by recogn'izing, liv'ing' and yoking the extremes together.

Yet the novel as a genre, as an outcome of its traditional

form perhaps, seems to deny the logical premise of existentialism

that all human activity is ultimately pointless; for, merely by recounting the expe¡iences of an ind'ividual or a group of characters and indicating that the characters have undergone certain changes during thejr experiences, the novelist impìies that there is value in the experiences. The value, sometimes imp'lied and in other novels overtly recognized, is ìn the learning process wh'ich the characters have passed through. Novelists who show themselves

aware of the absurdity of life also tend to see value, firstly in the recognjtion and understanding of that absurdity, and secondìy in the developrnent of personal relationships as the on'ly avai lable counter to ìt.

Pirsig attempts to go beyond mere acceptance of absurdity and meaninglessness. Zen is an attempt to yoke together both the romantic escapism through which people try to deny the absurdity of Ijfe and the technological "real'ity" of life through his concept of "Quality". The argument for Quality with alI jts convolutions, sometimes seems contrived and irritating'ly messian'ic' and one feels 207

that the "Chautauquas" might have been better inten¡oven' rather than just alternated with the passages of narrative: that the novelist's job iS to "show" rather than to "tell". Right at the end of the book, Pirsig does succeed in merging narrative and discourse: Phaedrus' conflict with the Cha'irman of the Committee on Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods which externalizes and therefore dramat'izes his internal, personal intellectual conflict, clarifies the nature of the problem around wh'ich the whole book has been constructed far more effectively than the long-winded Chautauquas have done, and the classroom breakdown preludes the total psychological breakdown, creating a sense of frightening ìnevitability.

The shifting from the present of the motorcycle journey back through memory to the past when Phaedrus was still alive makes

Zen and. the Az,t of Motor,cycLe Maintenqnce a modern, psychO'lOgical form of the medieval romance quest. As in the romance, the important events of the quest take place away from "civilization" - cities and familiar associates. The medieval kn'ight on his horse, accompanied only by h'is squire, becomes the modern former academic on his motor cycle, his son providing a kind of foil against wh'ich he reveals himself the more clearly. People met a'long the way do not become involved with the protagon'ist, and are sometirnes seen almost symbolically, in terms of one part'icular characteristic (the welder, for example, ìn Chapter 29, who personifies craftsmanship). Places, too, often are given symbolic signìficance' representìng different stages on the spiritual as well as the geograph'ica'l iourney: Bozeman, with its summer heat and the eerie qu'ietness of jts university where Phaedrus had hjs breakdown and 208

son to go on where John and sy]vìa now leave the narrator and hjs alone,themountainwh.ichthetwoofthemsetouttoclimb,the takes ocean road wjth the liftjng fog where thejr reconciliation external condi ti ons p'l ace - i n each case, the des cri ptjon of the corresponds precisely to the emotional states of the narrator'

of Following the romance tradition, the narrator-protagonjst Zen undertakes a journey i nto darkness ' i nto madness, and beyond death: Phaedrus, his former self, had to be killed for his intellectual audacity by electric shock treatment known as ,,Annihjlation ECS" through which'la whole personality had been ghost liqu'idated without a trace." (84) Pi rsig is haunted by the ghost back to l'ife of Phaedrus and to find peace he has to bring the in jn order to merge wjth hjm and overcome the dislocation he feels fear well' h.is soul. It is a terrifying task and Pirsig conveys the h.is descriptions of the'incursions of Phaedrus into his awareness and the havìng strong resemblance to the Gothic novel of suspense the supernatural - a form which was itself a later development of

romance.

Immediately after the reference to the "technolog'ically faultless act" that destroyed Phaedrus, Pirsig switches from the technologìcal and rational to the 'i rrat'ional which has becone equally a part of his vision of the world: I'm like a cìa'irvoyant, a spirit medium . 'i i s recei vi ng meiiages f rom änotfrer wbrl d. That i s how t ' I see tfri'nôi-wiifr ty o*n .y.t, and I see th1ngs with h'is eYes too. He once owned them' TheseEYES!Thatjstheterrorofit.Thesegìoved hands oncá ä"1 And if you can understand the fee'l'ing that, thän you can understand real fear - that coméi iró* 'is you the fear lfrut comes from knôwing there nowhere can poss'iblY run. (84-5)'* 209

Through his struggle to escape thjs nightmare condition, the narrator achieves a certain heroic stature, although his failure to recognize and deal with the division between himself and his son means that his "heroism" is significantly qualified. Through memory and analysis of the past, he has pursued the truth about himself in the knowledge that he might not return from the darkness. He surviVes the ordeal, however, emerg'ing stronger, clearer-sighted' reconciled in the end with the son whom, during his madness, he had deserted. The book ends, in a final parallel w'ith the romance, with a sense of victory:

Trìals never end, of course. unhapp'iness and misfortune are bound to occur as'long as people live, but there'is a feeling now, that was not here before, and is not iust on the surface of th'ings, but penetrates all the way through: l4|e've won it. It's go'ing to get better now. You can sort of tell these things. (406)

It .is a victory, though on the personal , psycho'logical level on'ly and it is not matched by a sense of intellectual victory. There is not the feeling that aì1 the phjlosophizing, all the Chautauquas, represent an essential part of the narrator's seìf- recovery, and h'is opt'imism about the future is not based at all f.irmìy on his intellectual yoking together of the classical and the romant'ic, technoìogy and myst'icism, which he has made the maìn

concern of the book.

Yet although Zen and. the Ay,t of MotoncycLe Maintenance does not prov'ide a satisfy'ing alternative to existentialism, it is 'important as an example of a particular kind of response to the twent'ieth century "loss of faith", a response which has resulted in almost a "Sub-genre" of semi-autiobiographical Ame¡ican writing. 2L0

Since the appearance of Zen and the Art of Anchery, as far back as 1953, there has been a series of books in which Eastern mystìcism and Western rationalism have been brought together in an attempt at harmonization of the two ways of coping w'ith life.

Many of these books have been criticìzed for thejr failure to find a balance between the phiìosoph'ica1 and the personal, to show hou the spiritual attitudes of Zen Buddhism might be realized i n acti on wi thi n the i nsti tuti onal i zed, technol ogy-ori ented soc'i ety of modern America. This failure, wh'ich is often a faìlure of both form and content, ffiâY reveal itself in an extreme earnestness and a lack of the wide-rang'ing Sense of irony we have come to expect in contemporary w¡iters. In this regard, a reviewer's summ'ing-up comment on the most recent of these books is also pertinent to

Zen anÅ. the Art of MotorcycLe Maíntenanee:

IThe author's] excursions into intellectual history and "one's true nature" distract from his sensuous

There'is little humour in Pjrsig's book, certa'inly none of the bizarre, absurd comedy found in much contemporary literature, and only a vague, undeveloped sense of the kind of ironic self- mockery whjch characterizes Herzog and other modern introverted, questi oni ng fi cti onal protagoni sts . P'i rsi g the narrator takes himself compìete1y seriously, and the irony contained jn his relationship with his son, which the reader recognizes ìong before the narrator does,'is not at all of a leavenjng k'ind but is oppressively

sad. 2TT

gne feels that Pirsig is immersed so far in the autobiographical content of h'is book that he has not been able to stand back far enough from the personal experience to see and to explore its 'noveljstjc' elements. Whether this is a weakness - of narrative concept'ion or of the author's perception itself - or merely a characteristic of the book whjch distinguishes it from the other novels looked at in this thesis, is debatabìe; one could perhaps see this kind of book as another response to the modern revolt against the conventional fictional techniques for patterning, distorting and explaìning the real'ity they purport to mi rror truthful ly.

In several regards, Pirsig skirts the borderline between serjousness and parody. The choice of the motorcycle to b'ind together the travel narrative, psycholog'ical analysis and metaphysical inquìry has comic potentìal - in the way that Melville's fascination with whaling and the details of its operat'ion could have underm'ined the seriousness of Ahab's quest for the white whale. Instead, Pirsig insistantly and uniron'ica1ly presents the motorcycìe as an example of rational or classical thinking, even while'it functions also in the narrative as the romantic means of escape from the monotonous' structured everyday world to the world of nature whjch'is apprehended sensuously and intuitiveìy. The parallels between his journey and the American romant'ic myths - of the explorer leaving behind w'ife and

home to travel west'in search of wealth, material or spiritual, drawing strength from nature rather than relat'ionships with other

humans - are implìc'it but are left submerged in the bu'i1d-up of factual deta'il about the iourney. Similarly, the almost comic nature of Phaedrus' obsession wìth defining 'Quaì'ity' 'is hinted at

sometimes but not followed up. In their length and tendency towards 2L2

tedjousness, the Chautaaques - and sometimes, too, the investigations into the nature of motorcycle maintenance - approach parody of the rational process of anaìysis itself, and Pirsig seems to make of Phaedrus almost a caricature of the modern, university-based philosopher. HoweVer, the narrator's concern with discovering the connections between his former and his present self is so intense and serious that we are forced too to regard Phaedrus as a tormented truth-seeker rather than as an obsessed and therefore comi ca1 1y patheti c character.

Thus, because the narrator takes himself so serious]y and because there is no counterbalancing point of vieW, the reader is asked to take the book's intellectual propositions seriously too, but in the end they are not fully convincing. Unfortunately, this means that the other side of the book, the story of the relationship of the narrator with his past self and with his son, the resolutjon of which depends so heavily on the resolution of the'intellectual problems, is not sat'isfyingly concluded either for we are left unsure whether Pirsig has exp'lained how the cure was effected or not.

To cri ti c'ize P j rs'ig's attempted resol uti on of the problems he has raìsed'iS not, however, to condemn the book as a whole. There are many sect'ions where the physi cal, psychological and phì losoph'ical worlds merge beautifully, many insights into the way the thinking mind operates, and a series of reflections which seem to illuminate the workjngs of modern soc'iety. In Zen ottd the Art of Motot'cycLe Maintennnce, Pirsig develops perhaps a prototype for a new kind of "novel of ideas" which may be able to provìde a counter to the negativism of existentialism which predominates in contemporary

I i teratu re . *** 213

CONCLUS I ON:

Works of fiction are written within a certain framework of belìef' beliefs about what is good or bad for man and society, what is.the aim or purpose of living, what man can and cannot achieve. The framework of bel ief may be largely 'imp'lic'it, expressed, for example, in the limitations of the protagon'ist's goals and achievements and established more by what is unsajd, assumed, than by narrative commentary or overtly didactic p'lot outcomes; or partìcular moral issues may be expf icitly examined through the action of the novel or pìay.

The history of the novel is a history of man's confl'icts w'ith the dynamic moral values or forces operating jn his social env'ironment. The fiction produced during a certa'in period is often characterized by recurrent concern for particular issues, a certain way of seeing and presenting the relationships between individual men and between men and soc'iety, which is significantly different from that of other times and other societies. Many influences play a part 'in thjs constant alteration of sensibility - h'istorjcal events, denlographic changes' artist'ic, intellectual and spiritual movements, and so on - and the noveljst's constant task is to find means of expression wh'ich adequately convey his own ìnter"pretation of the operations of his world.

In a large number of novels wrjtten in America sìnce hlorld hlar II the informing principle and the framework of bel'ief ìs provided by the exjstential concept of absurdity, of a lack of rationalism, div'ine control, or reliable pattern in the universe as a whole and, specifically, 214

Absurdity .in contemporary industrial'ized and institut'ionalized society. potent is felt to permeate alì aspects of man's ex'istence but its most symbol jn the novel is the ìnstitutionalized bureaucracy and its 'is the typical manifestation in indiv'iduals madness, alienation from be mode social norms of behavjour and perception. Ambiguity must the of of expressing such an expe¡ience of life, for the contrad'ictions of which contemporary society ìs seen to be made cannot be resolved accordì ng reconci I ed wi th man ' s i nnate desi re for order: the "'logjc" jn to which bureaucracy is seen to function js ìllogical terms of own perverse common sense and straightforward effic'iency, but has its is tO COnS'iStenCy, and hOW iS One tO defìne "madness" if to be "Sane" and conform to an illogical, senseless system wh'ich denìes the value val 'idi ty of i ndi vi dual experi ence?

contemporary novel'ists of the absurd share a recognitjon that absurdity permeates the lives of all peopìe, not iust those who are en'ce the superì or.in stat j on, i ntel I ect or the quáì i ty of the'i r experi ' people' Hamlets of the world. Their protagon'ists tend to be ord'inary not outwardly very different from the'ir fellow men, and the style in which they w¡ite is based on colloquia'l rhythms and vocabulary' even 'is i dì osyncrat'ic i f th'is col l oqu'ial ness woven i nto more compl ex or structures in the course of the narration. In th'is respect - the - assumpt'ion of the equal ìmportance of individuals' expe¡ience existential phìlosophers and noveljsts are contjnuìng to affirm a fundamental tenet of romantic'ism, though without the idealism of

romanti c'ism.

Equaììy'important in the development of a body of fictjon qujte js jnc]us'ion separate from the fìction of pre-liJor'ld l/\|ar II Ame[ica the 'incorporation of certain romancei elements. The of romance techniques 215 in novels about contemporary society qu'ite subtly alters the way in wh'ich a novel is read or evaluated and gives the reader certain' perhaps unconscjous, expectat'ions about 'its outcome and the "po'int" from bejng ntade in it. The romant'ic view of the ìmagination, drawing s'ituat'ions the romance tradition, sees novels as deal'ing wjth extreme personaì redempt'ion ìn whìch men have a chance of achìevìng a nleanjngful by capturìng a new, more ìnclusive insight into humanìty and self' and something of this view remaìns'in many contenìporary novels of the absurd as a counterwe'ight to the pessimism whìch ex'istential'ism may ìntply. of Through associatjon wjth traditional romance' even'if in the form parody, contenlporary narrat'ives and their protagonists often acquìre 'importance' deeper significance, sometimes even a kjnd of allegorical

The use of romance elements to dep'ict l'ife from an existential point of v'iew'is also the source of some of the rnaior techniques of fantasy characteristjc of many contemporary novel'ists' MethodS tradi tì onal ]y associ ated wi th dream or madness , whi ch comb'ine the ìnexplicable and ì11ogical w'ith the fanlil'iar and rat'ional , are used 'l'ife reguìarly to record happenìngs in everyclay directly and thus "to bring about the experjence of the absurd in the reader by frustrating I h'i s expectati ons of real i sm" .

The novels chosen for examjnation in th'is thesis exemplify in d'ifferent degrees the preoccupations indicated above' The awareness of absurdity informs thenl all. In Henzog and The Art of I'lotorcycLe are Iutaintenanee 1t js thematically peripheral: the protagortìsts confronted by a wìde va¡iety of problems both abstract and immediate whjch are not all experienced as absurd situations but their psychologicaì state and the'ir attempts to resolve their internal of confl'icts cannot be fully understood or appreciated except in terms 216 the existential/absurdist framework in whjch they occur ' Catch-Z2 provides a kind of d'iagram of the functioning of the institutional'ized bureaucracy, its network of rules and controls encompassing not iust the milìtary but all areas of American soc'iety. One FLeu )uer the

Cuckoots Nest, treating similar subject matter (tfre individual versus the institution) but from a much more subiectìve point of view, provides almost an image, a tableau-like'impressìon, of the cond'ition of absurdity. In contrast to these four novels, The Dice Man ìs an escapist fantasy; ìts protagon'ist attempts not to oppose the enforcers of absurdity but rather to defeat them at their own game by taking the "absurd logic" accordìng to which society is seen to functjon to an extreme, by deifyjng chance, which is at the heart of exjstential/absurdist ph.ilosophy, even wh'ile he asserts the indiv'idualism which jnstitutions deny. SLaughterhouse-Fiue, even though its styf ist'ic techniques and themes match with those of the other novels wr"itten wìthìn an existential framework, is on jts own in relation to almost al1 contemporary American writing by vjrtue of the fact that it is not confined to partìcular indiv.iduals in society but takes in the universe and reaches into the metaphysical implicat'ions of existential phìlosophy: human existence is seen as part of a kind of cosmic ioke, the ultimate absurdity because no-one was responsible for the ioke - it iust'is.

In all s'ix novels, the protagonist's "madness" is the measure of his encounter with absurdity. All are classified as insane because they do not conform with what is expected of them, but they aìl know that what they have experienced - Yossarian''s fear of flying more bombjng missìons, Rhjnehart's frustration at not being perm'itted to express hi s ,'mi nori ty sel ves " , the ch'ief ' s knowl edge of the combì ne ' s network of invìsible wjres and the Big Nurse's fog nlach'ine, Pirsig's Reason' need and jnability to defjne the relationsh'ip between Qual'ity and 2L7

Herzog's rejection by hjs wife, B'i1ly Pilgrim's encounter with the Tralfamadorians - is as val'id and as important, âS "sanerr as anyth'ing ìegit'imized by those in authority. Thus, in terms of human experience, the experience which readers of the novels share wjth the novels' protagonists, the officially "insane" are seen to be in effect sane' of sound mind, if onìy in the sense of being true to themselves and thejr own perceptions 'in the face of the absurdity by which they are surrounded.

0f the novels considered in this thes'iS.- Cateh-z2 conveys most forcefully the experience of absurd'ity per se, but it is SLaughterhouse- Eiue which is most accurately classified as an "existential novel".

Unl i ke the other wri ters , Vonnegut al I ots I i ttle si gni fi cance to the experience, even the suffering, of one 'indivjdual over another; his protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is an effectiVe "anti-hero", in the sense that he has none of the traditionally heroic qualities - courage' 'intelìigence, strength, and so on - and in the sense that we are not permitted to identify wìth h'im or sympath'ize with his predicament by the intervention of black comedy at al'l points where pity or empathy m'ight be aroused. The existential dogma dramatized in the treatment of B'illy Pilgpim - that all events are equally meaningless, and equa'lly mean'ingfuì, merely contingent rather than causally related - is re'inforced 'in the novel's structure and style, 'in the segmentaì, chronological iumbled organ'izing of the narration and in the paratact'i c, non-climatic story-telling manner . SLaughterhouse-Fiue challenges our habit of linear, rational thinking' ourinab'i'l'ity to accept either the simultaneity and equality of all recounted experiences or the actual patternlessness of real'ity, thus dramat'iz'ing

i n fi cti on the tenets of exi stenti al phi ì osophy. 2IB

All sjx novels can be seen as representing various ways of coping with the existential reductjon of human experìence to absurd'ity. Each begins by placing the'ind'iv'idual'in opposit'ion to a centajn institution wjthin society, then lets the impììcations about human existence 'in general rippìe out from that spec'ific conflict. SLaughtenhouse-Fiue, taking black humour to the extreme, makes all human suffering, and aspiration, part of a cosm'ic ioke in which "God" has no part and man has no say whatsoever. Billy Pjlgrim's response is to drift through

I i fe as i f anaesthet'ized, doi ng what he i s tol d, rare]y compl ai ni ng. Catch-2T, like SLaughterhouse-Fiue, has its startìng-point in war, the mìlìtary'institutjon, but suggests that there is value of some kind in self-assertion and rebellion agajnst jnstitutional absurdity and that escape from jt ìs possible, although we are left to wonder at the end, 'is. escape to what? One FLeu Ouer the Cuckoots Nest, similarly, about the value of rebellìon, but also about self-sacrifice, which alters the tone of the novel and holds out a stronger, even if ilìusory, hope of attajning freedom. The Dice Man, too, beg'ins w'ith revolt, against 'insti tut'ional 'ized psychi atry, but becomes pure escapi st fantasy ' a way of avoid'ing the absurd demands of contemporary society by refusing to acknowledge either them or any other moral demands at all' by concentrat'i ng ì nstead on sat'isfyi ng onìy one ' s i mnledi ate sensual demands . For the protagoni stS Of Zen and the Av't of Motot'cycLe Maintenqnce and

Herzog, awareness of the existentìal absurdity wìthin which contemporary life js lived is an essential part of the'ir psycholog'ical makeup; each attempts through'intellectualizing to find a way to live with such jdeal awareness, Pirsig through a compromise between hìs desire for the "Qual'ity" and the rawness of immed'iate personaì experìence' Herzog by seek'ing to appraìse honestly the mean'ing of the great philosophical questions in relation to h'is own experience and by learning both to l'ive 279 without having the answers to those questìons and to fjnd contentment simply in transitory moments of his existence.

Apart fron Slaughter'!rcuse-Fiue, then, the tone of the conclus'ions of these novels is one of compromise weìghted towards qualifìed optinlism, As prevìously po'inted out, the poss'ib'ility of such resolutions is an outcome of the use of romance in the narrat'ions. The power of the romance element lies in the implicatìon which it carries, which'it acquired when the romance form flourished as the ch'ief story-tel1ìng mode and which'it retains as the sub-stratum of the modern novel form, that a man finding h'imself in an extreme situation - one of physical danger, 'inter-personal confrontation, or psychological conflict - may find some personal redemption, perhaps by first rebelf ing against his circumstances, in his painfully acquired jnsight into humanity and in!o himself. Although ex'istentialism, as philosophy and ontology, is a contrad'iction of th'is view of man's condjt'ion, the two co-ex'ist in the contemporary novel. Existential'ism permeates the perception of both authors and protagonìsts, and it seems to touch men's lives when they come into contact with the workjngs of the great pub'lìc jnstitutions; the vast modern bureaucracy is both symbol and manifestation of the absurdity which existential'ism cod'ifies. The treatment of the conflict by means of tradit'ional romance devices places the protagonist, however unwjllingly, jnto the role of hero, standing for every man' so that he has simultaneously both unìque and universal signìficance. Saul BelIow's desc¡iptìon of the contemporary nove'l is apt here:

The power of public l'ife has become so vast and threaten'ing that prìväte l'ife bannot mainta'in a pretence of its importance. 9ul äonditjon of destructab'ility is ever-present in everyone's mjnd The self is asked to preparê itself for sacrifice, and th'is'is the sjtuat'ion reflected in contemporary Amerjcan f ictjon.2 220

Whether or to what degree the protagonist is felt to have achjeved victory in relation to the "System" is chiefly a matter of emphasis and tone, the author's stylistic handling of the conclusion, but what is important in the contemporary American novel in genera'|, no matter how strong the use of parody or comedy, ìs the feel'ing that the conflict does have some sign'ificance,'if onìy as a defiant celebrat'i on of i ndi vi dual i sm.

The other major d'istjnguishing preoccupation of the contemporary novelist is his concern with language, the f iterary med'ium itself . The loss of confjdence'in the power of art, and of language'in partì cul ar, to convey truth , moral i ty or mean'ing regard'ing the real world is closely related to the loss of faith in the old values and systems of meaning which influenced the development of existential phìlosophy. The result, for lìterature, has been a refusal to take art'seriously' and a series of efforts to use literature itself as a vehicle for exploding its traditional pretens'ions to reflect or to explain life.

Amer.ican f icti on si nce worl d war I I , "post-modern" fì ct'ion as it has been termed, is characterized by its questionìng and rejection of the traditional novelistic conventìons; durjng the sixties and seventies, simple linear narrative increas'ingly gives way to comp'lex artifice and'realism''is superseded by "improvìsational modes, science fiction, the surreal, the absurd, and the consciously contrived mythic and fabular".3 The writer is self-consciously present in his fiction, draw'ing attention to 22L

the artifice of his work through the style ìtself and through the blatant parody of traditional forms and techniques.

The novels examìned jn the preceding chapters all challenge, through narrator's sty'le or protagon'ist's experience or both, the validity of language, but ìn comparison with the intrusive parody and authorial manipu'lation of a novel by Barth, Nabokov or Pynchon, they fit more eas'i'ly into the tradjt'ions of comic and satiric wri ti ng.

Terms Iike "metafìction" and "surfiction"4 have been coined to describe the kind of fictìon that explores the poss'ibilitìes of fiction,chal'lenges the traditìons that govern it, and a number of critics and writers - perhaps the best-known be'ing John Barth whose own novelS contain the progression from realism to reflexive parody - have suggested that this is the only poss'ib'le path for fiction of the future, that the novelist will never again be able to take his craft seriously, as anyth'ing more than a self-contaìned artifice' jn the way that his predecessors did.

The novel, however, began in parody, wjth cervantes' ironjc use of the chivalric romance, and all new developments have to d1fferent degrees been based on reiect'ion of earlier forms in favour of variations on them whjch are felt to convey the writer's image of real'ity more accurately. Thus, the current emphasis on the actual processes of narration is likely to come to be seen as only a phase - 'intellectual perhaps the clìmax - of the twentieth century d'issatjsfaction w'ith the forms of the past, and of the insistent promotion of individuality and self-assertion in literature and'in the culture at 1arge. 222

The danger for the self-consc'ious novelist js in being content with technical experiment, in giving free rein to any 'impulse of inventìon in the belief that to exclude it míght be to risk his artistic integrity by yield'ing to traditìonal ideas of the proper contents of a novel. When the irony of a novel becomes completeìy internal or reflexive, hav'ing no relevance to the historical and soc'ial circumstances of the novel's readers, the novel wìl I come to be seen as merely si l'ly or sel f-i ndul gent.

Robert Coover claims that the contemporary novelist is moving beyond "mere h'istory",5 but jt is unlikeìy that, if the novel js to continue to ex'ist, it will be able to do without "the pressing actual i ty of hi stori cal time, or of an 'indi vi dual I i fet'ime" .6 Contemporary life is still too'interesting to the writers and readers of novels to be'ignored; the conflicts and ironies arising from human behaviour - the trad'itional core of the novel - w'ill continue to demand recounting in fjction. The modern explorations of the literature-life relationship through the fictional medium itself will have given writers of the future a deeper ironic sense of the tension between "the coherence of the art'ifice and the death and .imp'lì di sorder ci t i n real time outsi de the art1 fi ce. "6 The sensibilities of readers, too, will have been altered by such novels dS Catch-22, The Sot-tleed. Facto? and SLaughterhouse-Fiue; language can no longer be regarded as a neutral medium for translat'ing experience, but must take its place as just one of the elements of a fi cti onal constructi on.

0f the novels examjned 'in th'is thesis, the two which seem to

'i ndi cate most I i kely poss'ibl e future di recti ons are Zen and 223

SLaughtei|touse-Fíoe. Although Zen is very much self-oriented, it

also implies a turning av\,ay from the lonely, defiant assertion of individuality for its own sake of so much fiction of the sixties and seventies and a movement instead towards reconciliation and

harmony between man and the technological, and natural, world

contai ning h'im. The i nfl uence of Eastern phi ìosophies, whi ch

emphasize wholeness and the relationshjp of people and the obiects in the world, is only slowly penetrating the general culture and

sti I I tends to be treated rather superf i c'ial ly and sentimentaì'ìy ' but may become more powerful as American literature oscillates away from the sel f-consc'ious i ndivi dual i sm of the post-war decades.

Vonnegut, while he describes in his novel a new' as yet unrealizable form of fictjon in the Tralfamadorian novel, also creates 1n SLaughtey,house-Fiue a kjnd of synthes'is of the major pre- occupat'ions of wri ters of hi s tjme. Li ke Nabokov or Barth, he cosmically emphasizes the processes of narration, but at the same tjme he employs historical fact, the bomb'ing of Dresden, and his emotional response toìt, as the thematic core of the book. Thus he brings together the techniques and attitudes of realism, fantasy, parody , comedy, horror, sc'ience fì cti on, and sati re i n a mel d'ing which makes a strong iron'ic statement about contemporary culture.

It seems clear, then, from the continuing experimentat'ion by Amerjcan novelists, that the fictional forms of the past are far from

exhausted and, too, that ex'istentialism and the despairing questions prov'i de the about exj s tence f rom whi ch i t devel oped w'i 1 I conti nue to impetus for exploratjons in fiction of the 'inev'itable confrontations between reality and the Dream jn Amerjca. In presenting these 224

I

I confrontations, writers of the s'ixties and seventies have developed,

I I through their use of romance in varjous serious and mock-serious forms, and in their intense and creative quest'ioning of language l and the ìiterary art itself, â literature which is distinctively American and at the same time sounds the central concerns of

Western experience in the twentieth century.

I

I 2?5

|\IOTES TO C|JAPTERS

Throughout this thesis I have follov¡ed the procedure of supplying page references for quotat'ions from the novels examined parenthetically in the text. Fult details of the editions cited are given in the Bibliography.

I NTRODUCTION

1 A term used, often very vaguely, to refer to the complex of ideas and ideals reappearing consistent'ly in Americans' images of themselves, in literature, rhetoric, art, propaganda. At the core of this group of myths and images is an optimistic belief in the possibility of renewal in its many forms and of deueLopment touards a better state,

2 A. De Toqueville, quoted in Chase, The Amexiean NoueL and íts

Tz,a&Ltion, p. B.

3 D.H. Lawrence, Stu&ies ín CLassic Amerieqn Fiction' p.1 ft

4 Malcolm Cowley, Introduction to The Ameriean Romanties (Amev'iean Litenæy Szæuey, ed. Stern and Gross).

5 D.W. Noble, The Etez,rnL Adan and the Neu WorLd Gæden, p. 225.

6 Lionel Trilling, "Manners, Morals, and the Novel", in The Libev,aL Imagination, pp. 214-L5.

7 Lionel Trilling, "Art and Fortune", The LíberaL Imagination, pp.260-26L.

8 Bancroft, quoted in D.',,J. Noblê, oP. cjt., p. 6.

9 D.t¡J. Noble , op. cit. p. f9S. 226

Tony Tanner, City of llonds, p. 230 and elsewhere.

Frank Kermode, The Sense of an En&Lng' pp. 129-30-

John Barth, "The Literature of Exhaustion".

C.B. Harris, Contempor.arV Amenican NoueLists of the Abstæd'

p. 230.

Northrop Frye, Anatonry of Criticism' p. 33.

Ibid, p. 50.

Ibid, p. 33.

Karl Jaspers, quoted in Ihab Hassan, RadieaL Innocenee, p. 119.

Walter Kaufmann, ErLstentiaLism from Dostoeosky to Sat'tz'e, p. 13.

M.A.K. Halì'iday, ErpLorations in the Ewtctíon of Løtguage, p. 119.

Richard Ohmann, 'Ana]ysis of Prose Style', in Love and Payne' Contenrponary Essays on StyLe, p. 181.

I.A. Richards, quoted in S. Chase, The Tyranny of Words' p. 32.

Jonathan Raban, The Techvtíque of Modezm Fiction, p. 159.

L.T. Milic, "Theories of Style and Their Impìications for the Teaching of Composition", in Love and Payne, p. 17.

Ibi d.

Cf. Love and Payne, p. 266.

L.T. Miìic, op. cit., p. 17.

Martin Price, "The Irrelevant DetaiI and the Emergence of Form," p. 527.

See Leo Spitzer, Linguistics qnd Literazg Forrn. 227

29. Martin Price, op. cit., p. 530.

30. Leslie Fiedl er, No! rn Thrmder, p. 11.

CHAPTER 2

1 Malcolm Cowìey, Introduction to Amer'íean Líterary Suruey. (ed. Stern), vol. 4.

2 Alan Trachtenberg, Haruard Guide to ContentpordvA American Writing, p. 3.

3. Richard Chase , The Amev"Lcan NoueL cnd its IradLtion, p. 2

4 George Perkins, article on James in Anerican Literatu.z'e to L9oo (ed. James Vinson), p. 205.

5. A. De Toquevi'lle, quoted in Chase, op. cit., p. 8.

6. Rìchard Poirier, AWov,LdELseuhene, p. 10.

7. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of tVrc Seuen GaþLes.

8. John Hawkes, interview in Dembo, The Conternporazg Wz,itez', p. 3

9. John Barth, interview in Dembo, The Conternporary Wz"Lter, p. 23.

10. Ludwig t'littgenstein, quoted in D.F. Pears, Wíttgenstein, Fontana, I97I.

11. George Steiner, "The Retreat from the ldord", in Language and SíLenee, pp. 44-5.

12. Ibid, p. 39.

13. Tony Tanner, Cí,ty of I'londs, p. 15.

14. Richard Poirier, ,4 llorLd ELseuhere, p. 19.

15. Cf. I,lalker Percy, The Message in the BottLe" 228

16. Tony Tanner, op. cit., P. 16.

17. John Barth, The End. of the Road, p- 82.

18. ibid, p. 83

19. V. Nabokou, intervìew in Dembo, oP. cit., P. 46.

20. George Steiner, op. cit., P. 52.

21. Arnold Hauser, The SociaL History of Art, vol. IV' p- 226,

22. Andrew Hook, Dos Passos: A CoLLection of Cz"LticaL Essays, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. : Prentice-Hall, P. 100.

23. Ibi d., p. 95.

24. Patrick Masterson, Atheism and ALíenation, p. I29.

25. Martin Heidegger, quoted in Charlseworth, The EæistentiaLists, p.9.

26. Arnold Hauser, op. cit., P. 224.

27. C"B. HarriS, Contemporax'A American NoueLists of the Absut'd' p. 19.

28. Raymond Oldermann, Beyond the t'tlaste Land, p. 6

29. Gjllian Beer, The Romønee, p. 3.

CHAPTER 3

1 Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absund, p. 25.

2 See for example, John Aldridge, "The Heresy of Literary Manners," in rhe DeuiL in the Eiz'e.

3 John Aldridge in ríme to l4uder and Cz,eate, George Steiner in Language øtd SiLenee. 229

4 [{. Kaufmann, EæistentíaLisn from Dostoeasky to Sartre, p. 72.

5 rbid.

6 Soren Kierkegaard, ConeLu&Lng unscíentifíc Postsct'ipt, transl . in rhe Modern Tradition (ed. Ellmann and Feidetson) p. 857.

7 W. Kaufmann, EæistentíaLism fnom Dostoeu.sky to Sartreo D. L2.

I Ibi d.

9 Arnold Hauser, The Socí,aL Histony of Art, vol. IV, p. 220.

10. Sartre wrote enthusiast'ically of the Americans, Dos Passos in particular, in "American Novelists in French Eyes," AtLantie MonthLy 178, 1946. The greatest literary development 'in France between 1929 and 1939 was the discovery of Faulkner, Dos Passos, Hemingway, Caldwell and Steinbeck To writers of my generation, the publication of The 42nd Par.aLLeL, Light in August, A FareweLL to ,4ø?s evoked a revolution similar to the one produced fifteen years earlier by the ulysses of James Joyce

11. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sùsyphus, transl. in Ellmann, p. 844.

12. Jean-Paul Sartre, EæístentiaLism and Hwnøtdsm, transl. in Ellmann, pp. 827-28.

13. Cf. Richard Lehan, A Dangev,ous Crossfug, pp. 162-3.

14. Livio Dobrez, "Modern Existential Philosophy ", P. 166.

15. Paul Bowles, The SheLteníng SkA, p. 160.

16. Ibid., p. 140-141.

L7 . Ibi d. , p. 105.

18. Paul Tillich, quoted in S. Finkelstein, EæistentiaLism and ALienatíon in Amer,ícan Litez,atzu,e, p. 11.

19. Ihab Hassan, Contentporaz,g Amez,icøt Litenature, p.51. 230

20. Max Schul z, BLaek Humour Fi'ctLon of the Siæties, p. 18.

2t. Robert Buckeye, "The Anatomy of the Psych'ic Noveì," p. 33.

CHAPTER 4

I The absorption of the term "catch-Z?" into the popular vocabulary is the strongest indicatjon of the validity of the novel's view of modern life.

2 Cf. M.A.K. Halliday, "Descriptive Linguistics in Literary Studies," itt Pattev'ns of Language, p. 59.

3 Jan Solomon in "The Structure of Joseph Heller's Catch-Z7" analyses the two plots. Although Doug Gaukroger argues convincingly against Solomon's analysis, it remains true that the sh'iftings between the plot and sub-pìot make for confusion and distortion of the narrative surface.

4 Norman Nailer, The Naked øtd the Dead, London Panther Books, p. 606.

5 Sanford Pinsker, "Heller's Catch-27 : The Protest of a Puer Etez,n¿s, " p. 151.

6. Richard Lehan , A Dangev'otæ Crossing, pp. 162-3.

7. Martin Essl in, The Theatt'e of the Absurd.

8 Cf. Robert Brustein, in G.A. Harrison, The CvLtie as Antist, p. 48.

9 Joseph J. l¡laldmeir, "Two Novelists of the Absurd: Heller and Kesey, p. I92.

10. Ib'id., p. 195. 23r

11. Constance Denniston, "The American Novel: Two Studjes in the American Romance ParodY. "

12. John Colmer' Approaehes to the NoueL, p. 7.

13. Ibi d.

14. Northrop Frye, Anabomg of Critieism, p. 34 and elsewhere.

CHAPTER 5

1. M.A.K. Hal'liday, in Patterns of Language, pp. 56-61'

2 See, for example, Richard Blessing and Raymond 0lderman (tne aiìing King/Father ritual'istically ki'l1ed by his successor/ son), and Terence Martin (the hospital as matriarchy).

3. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of CrLticism, p" 50.

4 Time, 79 (Feb. 16, 1962), p. 90.

5. Raymond 0lderman, Beyond the LlasteLand, pp. 39-40.

6. Cf. Northrop Frye, Anatunrg of Cz'iticisn.

CI-IAPTER 6

1. Dan Isaac, "Orpheus Transcend'ing," pp. 125'7.

2. Tony Tanner, City of Wonds, P.

3 Alfred Kazin, "Imagination and the Age," p" 35.

4 Rìchard Pearce, "The Ambiguous Assault of Henderson and Herzog in Rovit, Saul Bellow . , P. 78. 232

5 See, for examplê, E. Rovit, ''Be]low'in 0ccupancy,' and K.M. Opdahl , The NoueLs of SauL BeLLou, p. 143.

6 F.l{. Bateson, EngLish Poetry and the EngLish Language' pp. 16-2I'

7 Irv'ing Howe, in G.A. Harrison, The Critic as ArtiSt, P. 184.

8. Ibid., p. 183.

9. Howard M. Harper, Despez'ate Faíth, p.

10. Wayne Booth, A Rhetonie of Inony, p. 212-

11. Forrest Read, in his review of Herzog, has a long list of the roles played by Herzog at different times.

12. Wy'lie Sypher, The Loss of tLte SeLf .

CHAPTER 7

1. Jerome Klinkowitz, The Vonnegut Statanent' p. 16.

2. Donald KettereY, Nør,) Wov'Lds for' )Ld" p. 316.

3. Vonnegut's description, on the title-page of SLaughtenhouse-Fiue.

4 The Rumfoord family features in Sirens of Titan. Similarly, Bernard B. 0'Hare and Howard l^l. Campbeìl link Mother Night

w t th SLa,tghterhous e -Fiue.

5. Cf. Jerry l-1. Bryant, The ûpen DeeLsion, p. 324.

6. J.E. Kennard, Nutnber and Nightrnane' p. 103.

7 Northrop Frye, Anatorny of Critiaùsm, p. 223.

8 Northrop Frye, FearfuL Sgrmnetz'g: A Stuáy of WiLLiøn Blake, p. 200.

9 From Blake's Marniage of Heauen øtd HeLL, L4. 233

10. Breakfast of Chønp'Lons, p. 195.

11. Jerry H. Bryant, The }pen Deeision, p. 324.

12. Richard Giannone, Vonnegut, p. 88.

13. Ibid., p. 93. t4. rbi d.

CHAPTER 8

1 llayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fietion, p. 158 ff.

2 Time, 98, E4 (f''¡ov. 1, 1971), p. 68.

CHAPTER 9

1 In other places in this chapter the novel js referred to simp'ly as Zen.

2. M.K. Stone, Review in Christian Centwy,92, P.448.

3. W.T. Lhamon, Jr., Review in Nan RepubLíe, 170, p. 26.

4. See, also, zen, p. 28.

5. Uns'igned review in Time, Aug. 7, 1974.

CON CLUS I ON

1. J.E" Kennard, Number and Nighhnar¿e) p. 33.

2 Saul Bellow, quoted in Paul Levine, "The Intemperate Zone", p. 506. 234

3 Cf . [{.H. New in Litev'arg Historg of Carnda (ed. Carl F. Klinck), Vol. 3, p. 234.

4 Cf . Malcolm Bradbury, The NoueL Todny' p. L2.

5 Cf. Robert Alter, PartiaL Magic, p. 231.

6 Robert Al ter, oP . ci t. , P . 235 . 235

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UNSIGNID REVIEI^JS

Review of Catch-ZT, AtLantic Monthly, 209, (Jan. 1962), 98.

Review of cqtch-zz, Librayy Journa.L, 86, (Nov. 1, 1961)' 3805.

Review of catch-2r, Nation, 193, (Nov. 4, 1961), 357.

Review of Catch-Z2, Times Liteyary SuppLement, (June 15, 1962), 441. 248

(Feb' 1962)' Review of Cuckoo's Nest, Neu Ioz'k Times Book Reuieu' 4'

32.

Review of Cuekoota Neet, Time' 79, (Feb' 16, 1962)' 90'

Review of one FLeu ouey the cuekoo's Nest, Neu Yorker, 38' (APril 2t, 1962), 181.

Review of The Diceman, Books and Bookmen, 16, (Sept. 197I)' 50'

Review of rhe Di,ceman, Listenen, 86, (Sept' 30, 1'97L) ' 453'

Review of The D.Lceman, PubLishez,s weekLy' 199, (July 21, 1971), 63'

Revjew of The Diceman, Spectator,, 227, (Sept. 25, 1971) , 448.

Rev'iew of The Dieeman, Times Literaty SuppLement, (Sept - !7, 1971),

1106.

Review of The Dieeman, Tíme, ([lov. 1, l97L), E4'

ReVieW Of Zen and. the Az,t of MotoycycLe Maintenance' Christian Century, g?, (APril 30, 1975), 448'

Review of Zen, Economist Suyuey, 253, (Nov' 30, L974), 91'

Review of zen, Neu RepubLie, !7I, (Dec. 2!, 1974),24'

Review of zen, speetaton, 233, (Dec. 14, L974),764'

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