Tedde, Adriano Antonio
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The Other America of Paul Auster, Jim Jarmusch and Tom Waits Author Tedde, Adriano Antonio Published 2019-10-23 Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate) School School of Hum, Lang & Soc Sc DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/2054 Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/388986 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au The Other America of Paul Auster, Jim Jarmusch and Tom Waits Adriano Tedde, PhD candidate School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences Griffith University. Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2019 0 ABSTRACT This thesis employs popular culture texts (works of literature, film, and popular music) as companions to the understanding of contemporary America. It is about artworks that form a cultural resistance that enables the appreciation of social issues and cultural decline in the United States. The authors of these artworks are novelist Paul Auster, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, and musician Tom Waits. Born between the late 1940s and the early 1950s, in different parts of the United States, Auster, Jarmusch, and Waits have produced a series of works that share strong similarities. In their novels, films, and songs, they portray an imagined “Other America” that is in stark contrast with the idyllic vision of the American Dream. Their America does not coincide with conventional middle-class values and goals of success, money and social upward mobility. It is an open, tolerant, and egalitarian country inhabited by marginalized “other Americans” who never escape from poverty and failure. On one side, their works appear to be the backbone of a 1980s counterculture, formed against the age of consumerism and hedonism, and critical of everything American. On the other side, they constantly evoke symbols of traditional American culture like the road, the frontier, the lone anti-hero, the adventure and hope for a better future. Therefore, quintessentially American narrative symbols survive in the alternative chronicle of a problematic America. Commonalities in the works of Auster, Jarmusch and Waits, are closely observed in this study; for instance the essential aesthetics, the recurring themes of decay and poverty, and the urban settings. The thesis also focuses on the affinity that these works have with a traditional American progressive thought. I argue that Auster, Jarmusch and Waits are heirs of a long- established lineage of American artists and thinkers. Like Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and many others after them, they have both criticized their country and embraced its original ideals of social justice and equality. Embedded in this tradition of American resistance, the texts examined in this thesis are ideal guides to the recent history of the United States. Although these works were not created with an overt political intention, their authors assume an accidental role of social commentators, by challenging the values of the dominant U.S. culture. Electing simplicity over wealth, and failure over success, their stories praise the universal needs and a Whitmanesque “absolute soul” that all humans share. The works of the Other America recuperate a culture of the people that defies current tendencies of isolationism, greed and selfishness that are typical of consumerism. Against the dominant culture, these artists propose a return to an ideal human brotherhood that is the main principle of a long tradition of Americans who, throughout the decades, formed a resistance against the surrounding culture. The Other America of Auster, Jarmusch and Waits might be fictional, but it is a reminder of life as it is, mirroring a harsh American reality of injustice, decay and sorrow. While so doing, it never abandons a utopian impulse for life as it should be, namely the realization of a society in which love is the only law. 1 Statement of Originality This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. _ ___ (Adriano Tedde) 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 7 Part One The Other America Chapter 1 The Democratic Dream. A traditional social critique in America 16 American Avarice 19 Absolute Soul 21 The imaginative Soul 25 To love a fascist 31 Chapter 2 Overview of three American contemporaries: The oeuvre of Paul Auster, Jim Jarmusch and Tom Waits 37 American fringe 52 Losers, drifters, and boozers 56 A sad and beautiful world 59 Alternative values 65 Enduring suffering 69 Part Two The American Dream Chapter 3 Road to nothing: The road book, the road movie, the road song and the use of American symbols in Auster, Jarmusch and Waits 72 “God knows I was feeling alive”: the Road Man revisited 77 Nature, Freedom and the New Man: the American myth under scrutiny Hard travelling in the land 87 “Another word for nothin’ left to lose” 91 The regenerative power of the journey 93 Chapter 4 Surviving in the Other America: Hope and the comfort of humanity 98 Hopefulness in a hopeless world 104 Something kind about mankind 111 Dream away 117 3 Part Three The Democratic Hero Chapter 5 The needs of the body: Depictions of street life, wasteland, and downward mobility amid the culture of wealth 124 Nobody was born a bum 129 Those who can care 138 Chapter 6 The needs of the soul: Failure and adoption of simplicity amid the culture of success 143 A fully experienced life 149 As little as humanly possible: Rediscovering Thoreau 159 Part Four The Enemy of Conventional Society Chapter 7 Facing the crisis: American austerity and decline from Ronald to Donald 166 Far more poetry than justice 172 The sand’s at the bottom of the hourglass 179 Bad coffee and debris 185 The mutilated country 193 Chapter 8 Art as resistance: A utopian alternative in the age of consumerism, greed, and selfishness 196 Broken Things 200 Pre-fab doghouses, commercials and the arbitrary nature of reality 204 A sensible alternative: A counterculture of the 1980s? 212 Conclusion 219 Appendix 224 Bibliography 225 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisors Dr. Amanda Howell, Dr. Christine Feldman-Barrett, and Dr. David Baker for their guidance and support from the very first day of my candidature until the end. I am grateful for their precious advice, their continuous and prompt attention to my ideas, and for the engaging, mind-opening conversations about American politics, culture, history, film, literature, and music. It has been a joy to find responsiveness and approval for my personal perception of a faraway country like the United States. I could have not been any luckier in finding three knowledgeable, accessible, and supportive supervisors. I would like to extend my thanks to other scholars and Ph.D. students who welcomed me and enriched my academic experience at Griffith: Associate Professor Patricia Wise, Professor Sarah Baker, Dr. Lauren Istvandity, Dr. Claire Kennedy, Golie Talaie Kamalabad, Hafsa Khan, Somayeh Khani, and James Forde. A special mention is for Stefano Barone, in whom I found a friend with extraordinary intellect and knowledge. I would like to thank Serafino Murri and Dr. Paolo Simonetti, the first two experts of American cinema, music, and literature to whom I had the chance to describe my project, during a short stay in Rome in the months before my relocation to Brisbane. I am grateful to the staff at the American Studies Centre of Rome, where I found my first reading room for this project. It still is the most stunning building I have ever been able to study in. Special thanks go to Sara Piazza, author of the best existing publication on Jim Jarmusch’s cinema, for her invaluable research and writing tips. Her strong passion for the works of a great filmmaker was inspiring. My sincere thanks goes to Prof. Casey Nelson Blake, who provided me with the extraordinary opportunity to join the Columbia University Center for American Studies in New York as a Visiting Ph.D. Scholar, and for his guidance into the intellectual history of twentieth century United States. I would like to thank Ms. Angela Darling, too, for her crucial assistance in the organisation of my visit to New York. I thank Luc Sante for his precious comments on my project upon my arrival in the United States. Receiving a validation of my ideas from the only person who has written reviews and essays on Paul Auster, Jim Jarmusch, and Tom Waits meant much to the progress of my work. I thank Lyndsi Barnes and Mary Catherine Kinniburgh for their help, patience, and courteous manners during my archival research through Auster’s manuscripts at the stunning Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. I have a special gratitude for Dr. Christopher Florio at Columbia for his generous and open guidance in the history of American poverty. I am also grateful to Jim Cullen for his expert advice in the boundless domain of American culture. I thank Manuel Santoro, Emanuele Marchisio, and Fabio Sanna for the intellectual stimulations that have kept my brain active through the years, even in dull times. Their unconditional friendship has been one of life’s greatest gifts. I cannot forget two other close friends and mentors, Simone Desmarchelier and Steven Freeland, who have always been an inspiration with their life-choices from the moment we met. You are the best of Australia! I thank Pier Forlano, Gianludovico de Martino, Nicola Comi, Cristina Ravaglia, Luigi Tomba, Gino Moliterno, and Grazia Miccichè for their professional and emotional support in the not so easy transition that brought me from diplomacy to academia.