%7cj7 Y4 RETRO THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS By Robert N. Norwood, B.A. Denton, Texas August, 1992 Norwood, Robert N., Retro. Master of Arts (English), August 1992, 297 pp., introduction, bibliography, 11 titles. Retro is a novel which attempts to depict the psychological reality of the spiritually isolated individual characterized in traditional gothic novels, in this case the alienated individual in the contemporary American South. The novel follows the doctrine set down by Roland Barthes, Frank Kermode, and other postmodern critics, which holds that, as Kermode puts it, "all closure is in bad faith." Therefore, rather than offering resolution to the problems and events presented in the text, the novel attempts instead to illustrate the psychological effects its main character experiences when confronted with a world that offers only irresolution and uncertainty. The novel's strategy is to depart from conventional, realistic modes of narration and to adopt instead certain characteristics of satire, surrealism, and the type of grotesque often associated with the gothic novel. RETRO A Novel By Robert N. Norwood, B.A. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION...........................................iv WORKS CITED.. ........................................... xx RETRO...............................................1 I. STEEL PONIES .................................... 4 II. HEADLIGHTS.....................................41 III. WINGTIPS .......... ................... ........ 127 IV. HORN SECTION..................................162 V. FISHEY.ES.......................0.9.$.9.. 0.0.*.. ... 208 VI. SILO..... .. ................................ 247 VII. FIRE ESCAPE.............a......................267 VIII. TURNING POINTS.................................. 270 IX. SHOW PIECES..................................... 288 141 INTRODUCTION REALISM, GOTHICISM AND THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN NOVEL I. The realistic novel has dominated American fiction since the time of William Dean Howells and Henry James. Realism, in fact, as Howells himself defined it-- "nothing more or less than the truthful treatment of material" (qtd. in Kirk cxliii)--has become the controlling element in the American novel and the standard by which all works of fiction are judged for the majority of the reading public, for book reviewers, and perhaps even for most literary scholars as well. In casual conversations about books, in graduate classroom discussions about them, and in fiction workshops, the first comment one is likely to hear about a given piece is that it either is or isn't "realistic"; meaning, I would argue, that it does or doesn't conform to the standards of conventional realism, as if such standards were basic criteria any fiction must meet before earning the right to further discussion. Howells laid the foundation for this mode of critical inquiry by suggesting that all books, even those which have long been in the canon, should be first analyzed in this way: I am not afraid to say that the greatest classics are sometimes not all that great, and that we can profit by them only when we hold them, iv like our meanest contemporaries, to a strict accounting, and verify their work by the standard of the arts which we all have in our power, the simple, the natural, and the honest. (14) Aside from the fact that Howells deals here in the most nebulous terms--who decides what is "the simple, the natural, and the honest"?--he seems, incredibly, to suggest that one should only consider great those works of literature which appeal to the lowest common denominator, to the simplest, most limited perception of reality; and by implication, he suggests that those works which stretch the boundaries of the common perception of reality, which attempt to present a stylized view of the world, should be summarily dismissed as not worth the trouble. Howells' comments may in part be excused since he was reacting, out of a seemingly genuine concern, to a rather sophomoric trend in the contemporary fiction of his day, "the horrid tumult of the swashbuckler swashing on his buckler" (xiii-iv) as he called it; and admittedly Howells was instrumental in maintaining a vibrant and significant literature in the United States by promoting Realism at a time when American fiction was in danger of losing direction. Lamentably, however, Howells' populist mode of literary criticism is still with us. One need only read a smattering of current book reviews--in which inevitably the reviewer will attack a writer's every movement toward the "improbable" and exalt all wallowing in the pleasures of "everyday things"--or glance at a list of recent Pulitzer Prize Winners for Fiction to see how, in this respect at least, the banality and conservatism of late nineteenth- century America yet lingers. V What is perhaps most amazing about the popular demand for realism in serious contemporary fiction is that the followers of William Dean Howells have not yet proposed the wholesale revision of the American canon in an attempt to eliminate its romantic elements. These same implicit and explicit advocates of the realistic school, who are inclined to dismiss contemporary explorations of the romantic and gothic, would be hard-pressed to deny that the first bona fide professional novelist in America was Charles Brockden Brown, that our first significant literary theorist was Edgar Allan Poe, that the great American novel is still Moby-Dick, and that even in this century America has not produced a better novelist than William Faulkner or a better short story writer than Flannery O'Connor. Certainly there are exceptions, but for the most part America's greatest writers have traditionally been romanticists, and indeed, many of them have concentrated their efforts on the gothic mode. As Leslie Fiedler notes in Love and Death in the American Novel: of all the fiction of the West, our own is most deeply influenced by the gothic, is almost essentially a gothic one. In general, the European gothic reaches the level of important art only in poetry or drama, not in fiction; in America quite the opposite is the case. .................................................... Certainly the three novels granted by general consensus to be our greatest works [Moby-Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Huckleberry Finn] are gothic in theme and atmosphere alike. (142) vi So what then explains the pervasiveness, nearly the imperative, of realism in contemporary American fiction? Are contemporary writers, critics, and readers, while acknowledging the superiority of our gothic tradition, simply willing to concede that the time of our literary greatness and significance has passed and likewise the need for its most powerful and effective mode? Are we afraid the contemporary consciousness is not up to producing significant art? This seems to be the prevailing attitude. Frank Lentricchia, for one, sees this trend in American fiction as an unfortunate democratic, populist movement, a means of escaping the dread labels "pretentious" and "immodest" by hiding in a sort of linguistic mediocrity. In the Spring, 1990 edition of The South Atlantic Quarterly, Lentricchia takes the practitioners of contemporary American realism to task in stating that too many writers are "impressed by the representative directive of the literary vocation of our time, the counsel to 'write what you know,"' which he further defines as "the chastely bound snapshot of your neighborhood and your biography" (240) and "domestic fiction of the triumphs and agonies of autonomous private individuals" (241). Lentricchia's attack on "the new regionalists"- is similar to comments Frank Norris made nearly a hundred years ago about Howells' Realism, which he called "'the drama of the broken teacup, the adventure of an invitation to dinner"' (qtd. in Howells 279). In both cases, these critics seem, admirably, to call for a mode of fiction which addresses the problems of an entire society rather than the relatively vii insignificant problems of a few of its individual members, a bolder approach than Howells' "truthful treatment of material," a fiction of greater scope. II. Of course the ostensible reason some readers object so vehemently to stylized presentations, to those works of fiction which don't fall under the heading of realism, is that they regard them simply as examples of literary horseplay, inherently too capricious to warrant critical attention. They relate all stylized presentation to fantasy, vapid comedy, incomprehensible absurdity, or gratuitous horror. Fiedler assesses their attitude toward alternative fictional modes, in this case gothicism, as a sort of double-edged fear: Simply to acknowledge the existence and importance of such a tradition is embarrassing to some readers; for it means, on the one hand, a questioning of the sufficiency of realism, which justifies art by correlating it with science; and on the other, it suggests a disturbing relationship between our highest art and such lowbrow forms of horror pornography as the detective story, the pulp thriller, and the Superman comic book, all of which are also heirs of the gothic. (156) The reason realists assume defensive postures toward other modes of fiction is perhaps because even the most adamant practitioners among them realize their fictional strategy simply doesn't go far enough, that there are areas and levels of human consciousness realism cannot depict. viii All serious novelists are realists