Self-Doubt: Revision and the Late Modernist Crisis of Conscience
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Self-Doubt: Revision and the Late Modernist Crisis of Conscience David Frederick Alan Isaacs UCL, PhD Thesis 1 Declaration: I, David Frederick Alan Isaacs, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Signed, 2 Abstract The thesis explores the textual manifestations of late 20th-century anxieties about continuities between forms of literary authority and forms of sovereiGn power. FocussinG on three authors – Philip Roth, J.M. Coetzee, Geoffrey Hill – who regard themselves as heirs and benefactors of traditional literary authority, but who write with a consciousness of its dubious foundation, it identifies as a common response to those anxieties a self-conscious aesthetic of self-doubt and self-criticism, in which the form of a Given work becomes inseparable from its own ethical interrogation. It is a revisionary aesthetic, one founded in the processes of negation, correction, substitution that constitute textual revision and manifest in the use of its tropes and effects. The aesthetic fosters an approach to literary text that favours the provisional over the conclusive: the text is always inadequate, always in need of improvement and correction. The thesis sets out to test the intuition that this revisionary reflexivity is not merely a formal or rhetorical device but stems from Genuine authorial anxiety and obstruction: that the struGGles of composition, its knots and aporias, become the orGanisinG principles of the finished (but unfinishable) texts. Its methodoloGy is therefore Genetic. It reconstructs the Genetic histories of some of these authors’ major works and, by tracinG their neGotiations with their own authority, attempts to excavate narratives of composition. It observes in each archive the development of a proGram of extensive revision that harnesses authorial doubt as a motor of creativity. It finds, with remarkable uniformity, that the texts are narratives of their own revisionary geneses, that they tell the story of the getting-it-riGht of their cominG-into-beinG. The doubt becomes the form. The thesis suggests, finally, that this revisionary ethic may function to allow the authorial will to power to coexist with a perpetual unlearning of sovereignty. 3 Impact Statement This thesis presents a considerable amount of previously unseen material from the manuscripts and notebooks of three major and much-studied 20th-century authors: Philip Roth, J.M. Coetzee and Geoffrey Hill. The material endorses, often broadens and sometimes challenGes what we know, or think we know of them. Further, its methodoloGy constitutes the speculative reconstruction of compositional process; the material is not presented statically, that is, but is enlivened, opening up new possibilities for our understanding of each author. It should be of considerable interest, therefore, to anyone engaged in the study of each. Genetic criticism is a burGeoninG academic discipline but its fundamental principle – that, as Finn Fordham has it, ‘formation shapes content’ – is hard, given the many necessary restrictions of archival research, to substantiate or prove. This thesis, which has had privileged access to a series of well-catalogued and thorough archives, constitutes an attempt to do both and hopes, therefore, to impact the discipline, and the general study of manuscripts. Putting the individual accounts in dialogue with one another suggests the development of a particular kind of authorship in the later 20th century, an authorship of intense ethical self-interrogation that questions the responsibilities, limits and possibilities of writing and the writer. The thesis has things to say, then, about later 20th-century authorship in general, which it hopes will impact any study of 20th-century culture. The ethical questions these authors have spent their careers responding to centre around issues of contemporary urGency: questions about authoritarianism, totalitarianism, the controllinG function of lanGuaGe; questions about race, Gender, sexuality, gender identity, about representation and appropriation; questions about privileGe and authority; questions about the proper relation between the human and the non-human. These questions have immediate academic application but they also dominate contemporary popular culture and news cycles. The opportunity this archival material presents to witness such committed thinkers workinG throuGh 4 answers to such questions at such proximity is, therefore, of both academic and general interest. As the sales fiGures of writinG manuals, writinG memoirs, and the continuinG popularity of author events will attest, the public hunger for insight into authorial process, routine and habit is considerable. The accounts contained in this thesis have plenty of such insiGhts from the notebooks and drafts of some of the recent Greats and may, therefore, satiate some of that hunGer. Finally, the thesis constitutes a tacit advocacy of second thouGhts. The mediums in which public debate is increasingly carried out tend to lionise first thoughts and shut down the possibilities of reconsideration and revision, demandinG apoloGy and contrition for transGression and error, manufacturinG scapeGoats rather than providinG modes of development and rearticulation. ThrouGh considerinG in detail how the process of thinkinG aGain can form the basis of an ethic, the thesis hopes to draw attention to some of what miGht be lost when it is only first thouGhts that count. 5 Contents Acknowledgements 7 A note about the archives 8 1. Introduction 10 i. ‘writing-in-the-tracks’ 10 ii. ‘The shame of beinG a man – is there any better reason to write?’ 14 iii. ‘finality without end’ 35 2. ‘The force of gravity’: Philip Roth’s Revisions 54 i. ‘a nasty narcissist lost in a hiGhly polished hall of mirrors’ 54 ii. ‘I’ll never write about Jews again’ 65 iii. ‘the manuscript was the messaGe, and the messaGe was Turmoil’ 72 iv. ‘What’s so wonderful about being a fucking Roth?’ 81 v. ‘Who owns Anne Frank?’ 87 vi. ‘This obsessive reinvention of the real’ 108 vii. ‘the reign of error’ 113 3. ‘Second thoughts to the power of n’: J.M. Coetzee’s Revisions 124 i. ‘there is always one more revision to do’ 124 ii. ‘Coetzee has asked me to revise my essay’ 126 iii. ‘always the thinkinG reverses its direction and accuses him’ 135 iv. ‘Skip the ‘realism’’ 153 v. ‘The question is, does he have it in him to be the woman?’ 170 1. ‘The woman he goes to once a month for sex.’ 171 2. ‘A girl is friendly, makes overtures.’ 175 3. ‘His daughter’s intense disappointment.’ 183 4. ‘Unfinished to perfection’: Geoffrey Hill’s Revisions 198 i. ‘a click like a closing box’ 198 ii. ‘I dislike the poem very much’ 209 iii. ‘sparks breaking out of the circuit’ 218 iv. ‘I/imaGine sinGinG; I imaGine GettinG it riGht?’ 229 v. ‘to no conclusion from now on but to no conclusion’ 248 5. Conclusion 283 Bibliography 289 6 Acknowledgements I am Grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s International Placements Scheme for awardinG me two Grants to visit the J.M. Coetzee archive at the Harry Ransom Centre in Austin, Texas and the Philip Roth archive at the Library of Congress in WashinGton, D.C. I am Grateful to both institutions for makinG me welcome, for their culture of affirmation, and to the friends I made at each for their support, enGaGement and companionship. I am Grateful, too, to the brotherton Library at the University of Leeds for allowinG me access to the Geoffrey Hill archive. I would never have considered applying for an English Literature degree, or an MA, or a PhD, without a host of inspirinG teachers too numerous, of course, to name, but includinG: John VenninG, Martin Golding, Jennifer Wallace, Christopher Tilmouth, Robert Macfarlane, Michael Sayeau, Nick Shepley, Eric LanGley. The influence of each is present in this thesis. Particular thanks to my secondary supervisor, Julia Jordan, for her encouraGement, her clear-sightedness and her generously discrete nudges off various cliff-faces; the debt my work owes hers is evident in my introduction. Thanks, finally, to my primary supervisor, Philip Horne, for his support, encouraGement, Guidance, wisdom, patience and kindness. His work is felt everywhere in the thesis. I would like to thank Roberta Klimt for sharinG her extraordinary expertise on Philip Roth, and for her unflaGGinG Generosity. Thanks, too, to Alister Wedderburn for a probing and challenging exchange of emails, from Australia, without which my Coetzee chapter would look very different. Thanks, for all kinds of debts, to my UCL ‘mentor’ Christopher Webb, to ImoGen GreenhalGh and Zachary Seager, to Shani Bans, Jess Cotton, Dai George, George Potts, Orlando Reade, Christy Wensley, Harvey Wiltshire. It has not been easy and I am Grateful for the support of all my friends, but for specific acts of kindness when it was needed most, thanks to: Iona Carter, Julien Godfrey, Jane Hall, James InGram, James Keay, Ross MontGomery, Edward Rice, Freddy Syborn. Thanks to my family for puttinG up with not seeinG me for a while, to my parents for literally everythinG, and to my mum for continuinG to make it possible. And thanks to Maia for all her insights, for GivinG me a reason, for everything to come. 7 A note about the archives. The Philip Roth archive is housed at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The J.M. Coetzee archive is housed at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas. The Geoffrey Hill archive is housed in the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds. When referencing the archives, I follow as closely as possible both the catalogue marks of each library and the organisational habits of each author; I have tried to be as thorough as I can. When it is interestinG, useful or possible, I reproduce the marks of manuscript revision; when it is disorientinG or obfuscatinG, I do not.