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The Afterlife of Raymond Carver: Authenticity, Neoliberalism and Influence

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The Afterlife of Raymond Carver: Authenticity, Neoliberalism and Influence The Afterlife of Raymond Carver: Authenticity, Neoliberalism and Influence A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2017 Jonathan N P Pountney School of Arts, Languages and Cultures 2 Table of Contents Abstract 4 Declaration 5 Copyright Statement 6 Acknowledgements 7 Introduction 8 i. The Emergence of Neoliberalism 9 ii. Carver, Neoliberal Hegemony and Craftsmanship 13 iii. Theoretical Approaches to Carver’s Influence 25 iv. Gordon Lish and Tess Gallagher 31 Three Case Studies 36 i. The Transatlantic Political Convergence and Stuart Evers 36 ii. Diminished Class-Consciousness and Denis Johnson 43 iii. Transnational Adaptations and Ray Lawrence’s Jindabyne 47 iv. Raymond Carver’s Afterlife 49 Chapter One – ‘Carveresque Realism’: Raymond Carver and Jay McInerney 53 i. Early Years and Correspondence 53 ii. Vintage Contemporaries 1984 60 iii. Carver’s Realism, Minimalism and Literary Accuracy 68 iv. Carver and John Gardner 73 v. McInerney’s Early Fiction 79 vi. The Calloways: An Example of Carveresque Realism? 86 Chapter Two – ‘The Transpacific Partnership’: Raymond Carver and Haruki Murakami 101 i. Carver’s American Postwar Context 106 ii. Humiliation, Consumption and Idleness in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? 108 iii. Murakami’s Japanese Postwar Context 115 iv. Humiliation, Consumption and Conformity in The Elephant Vanishes 120 v. Turning Points: The Impact of Life-Altering Events on Carver and Murakami 127 vi. Residual Spirituality in ‘All God’s Children Can Dance’ 135 vii. Residual Craft in ‘Kindling’ 138 3 viii. Epilogue: ‘The Projectile’ 142 Chapter Three – ‘Why Raymond Carver?’: The Equivocal Carver in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman 144 i. Neoliberalism, NAFTA and Alienation in Iñárritu’s Early Trilogy 147 ii. Iñárritu’s Preoccupations and Carver in Birdman’s Opening 153 iii. Divergent Approaches to Adaptations of Carver’s Writing 157 iv. ‘Why Raymond Carver?’: Riggan’s Conservative Carver 160 v. Riggan’s Theatrical Adaptation of ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ 163 vi. Revision, Opposition, Appropriation: Mike’s Radical Carver 173 vii. Surface, Ephemerality and Riggan’s Alter Ego 183 Conclusion 190 Bibliography 195 Word Count: 79, 593 4 Abstract This thesis explores the afterlife of Raymond Carver in relation to a number of important writers and artists that claim Carver as an influence and who are working within countries or cultures that have recently made, or are in the process of making, the transition from embedded liberalism to neoliberalism. This project argues that while Carver’s influence has been conventionally limited to what critic A.O. Scott calls ‘a briefly fashionable school of experimental fiction’, in recent years his writing has come to represent a ‘return’ to a more ‘real’ form of literature, one that, his advocates would argue, is more ‘authentic’ than other kinds of recent writing. Carver’s ‘authenticity’ is closely tied to the idea that his fiction is a response to his own working-class experience and is seen to be more broadly synecdochic of the socioeconomic struggles faced by many other Americans during this period. Given the cultural and aesthetic differences between Carver’s life and work, and those studied in the main chapters of this thesis – Jay McInerney, Haruki Murakami and Alejandro González Iñárritu – I argue that Carver’s afterlife is best viewed as being a social phenomenon, born out of the social relations, historical circumstances and economic forms that resulted from the US’s move to neoliberalism in the late-1970s. My introduction historicizes this transition and argues that while Carver may have struggled to make productive sense of his socioeconomic circumstance, it affected his life in very pointed and particular ways, trapping him between the conventional American dream of individual freedom and equal opportunity and the reality of inequality and social immobility. For those who claim Carver as an influence, his fiction represents a zone where the difference between hegemonic narratives and lived experience is explored and embodies a model of how to negotiate, for better or worse, the complex and shifting foundations of this recent political transition. My introduction then continues to argue that of equal importance to Carver’s afterlife is the fact that, in his late-writing in particular, Carver’s work represents a ‘retreat’ from the short- term, competition-based notions of neoliberal labour towards a non-incorporated residual alternative that has particular artisanal tenets associated with craftsmanship. Carver’s texts operate beyond their initial cultural and historical moment by becoming distinctive sites of resistance to the hegemonic norms of late-capitalism. In this way, I argue, Carver’s ‘authenticity’ combines with a consolatory craftsmanship to become a coping mechanism that offers other writers and artists working in neoliberalism a way of navigating a world which seems to exceed the frame of conceptual mapping. By working through a series of short case studies on Stuart Evers, Denis Johnson and Ray Lawrence, and then moving on to more detailed explorations in my three central chapters, this thesis will consider how this is the case in relation to a number of important artists who claim Carver as an influence. Chapter one utilises my archival research to historicize the relationship between Carver and McInerney and argues that Carver’s pedagogy pushed McInerney towards the idea that the writing process is connected to residual narratives of American craft. It also contends that many of the orthodox ideas that Carver held about literature proved particularly enabling for McInerney’s novel Brightness Falls, which, through parody and satire, signals a retreat from postmodern experimentation towards a more ‘Carveresque’ realism. Chapter two similarly chronicles Carver’s relationship with Murakami and argues that, for Murakami, Carver’s fiction is an important example of writing that explores the difference between hegemonic narratives and lived experience. The chapter moves on to argue that what some critics view as Carver’s reformed post-alcoholic fiction helped facilitate Murakami’s own unorthodox spiritual response to the twin tragedies of the Kobe earthquake and Tokyo gas attack in 1995. Chapter three proceeds on slightly different lines in that it considers Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and argues that while Iñárritu uses Carver as the foundation for his film, the film is particularly interesting because it is, itself, a study of Carver’s afterlife. My final chapter suggests that while there is merit in viewing Carver as an ‘authentic’ artist (a kind of model for negotiating neoliberal culture), the totality of that solution is more ambivalent than his advocates might initially suggest. 5 Declaration No portion of the work referred to in this thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. 6 Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=2442 0), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/about/regulations/) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses 7 Acknowledgements Thanks to my supervisors Ian McGuire and Ben Harker for their support, criticism and guidance throughout this project. Thanks also to Matthew Francis, Jem Poster, Katherine Stansfield, Rhodri Brady, Dan Meiring, Barrie Hope, Neil Hume, Peter Knight, David Alderson, Greg Lainsbury, Sandra Lee Kleppe, Phil O’Brien, Jonathan Carswell, Nick Brake, John Robb and Robert Skipper. Robert Miltner is singled out for his encouragement and advice. Likewise, thanks to James Carver for answering my queries about his brother’s early life. My trip to Carver’s archives at Ohio State University was co-sponsored by the Manchester Doctoral College, the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures Travel Fund and the Harris Charity – my thanks, once again. This thesis would have been impossible without the encouragement and financial support of my family over the years. I owe a debt of gratitude too deep for words to my wife, whose steadfast love is another reason for its completion and to whom this thesis is dedicated. A version of chapter two has been published in The Raymond Carver Review, 5/6 (2017), 58-78. 8 Introduction A decade after his death, A.O. Scott wrote that Raymond Carver: has gone from being an influential – and controversial – member of a briefly fashionable school of experimental fiction to being an international icon of traditional American literary values.
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