Dark Lonerism: Self-Sabotage, Apathy, And
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DARK LONERISM: SELF-SABOTAGE, APATHY, AND UNCANNY WHITENESS by CHRIS BOLLINI (Under the Direction of John Wharton Lowe) ABSTRACT Commenting on the literary trope of loneliness that can spark action or epiphany, Robert A. Ferguson accounts for the many “fables” in America about the “solitary adventurer and its social variant, the self-made man,” by suggesting individualism can be the “answer as well as the problem to feeling alone.” This dissertation explores a similar paradox: how can an intense self- interest, aloof to the struggles of others, become the answer as well as the problem to feeling disempowered? In a certain strain of American literature from the Great Depression through the early post-war period, depictions of the aloof and brooding male protagonist ironicize as much as they romanticize the angst of ensuring one’s integrity within a chaotic world. The irony exposed in such texts inevitably becomes layered and multivalent because the presence of a loner- protagonist creates a schism between external reality and his troubled, obsessive mindset. As this study argues, the loner-protagonist may stubbornly fantasize about opting out of society and seeking confirmation of his exceptional status, yet he can only test this sense of the world by deconstructing his preferred state of apartness, surveillance, and hypervigilance. Despite being tormented by his concessions to normativity as he enters the crucible of social life, the loner- protagonist capitalizes on the promise of control inherent in white privilege, or what this project conceptualizes as the masked persona of uncanny whiteness. By exposing the performative undercurrents to an otherwise austere and seemingly unknowable archetype, Dark Lonerism encompasses both a healthy skepticism of the loner-protagonist’s self-isolating pose and a sympathetic interrogation of the pathological psychology underlying his many acts of self- sabotage. INDEX WORDS: The Loner, The Loner-protagonist, Loneliness, Isolation, Asceticism, Solipsism, Paranoia, Self-destruction DARK LONERISM: SELF-SABOTAGE, APATHY, AND UNCANNY WHITENESS by CHRIS BOLLINI B.A., Flagler College, 2008 M.A., Villanova University, 2011 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2018 © 2018 Chris Bollini All Rights Reserved DARK LONERISM: SELF-SABOTAGE, APATHY, AND UNCANNY WHITENESS by CHRIS BOLLINI Major Professor: John Wharton Lowe Committee: Valerie Babb Cody Marrs Electronic Version Approved: Suzanne Barbour Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2018 iv DEDICATION I dedicate this work to my loving parents, Cynthia and Rich, whose support during my years of writing and research tethered me to reality. Their example gives me perspective on the difference between solitude as a necessity—the isolation endured in pursuit of knowledge—and the type of loneliness that feels more significant the more it harms and separates. Far from the delusion propagated by the latter, I embrace the inconvenience of the former with full knowledge that there are bonds worth returning to and reinforcing. Thank you, mom and dad. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the members of my committee for the years of support and advice as I have developed my voice and my confidence. Your advice has always carried weight with me, but it is the model of intellectual malleability and personal grace I recognize in you all that inspires me. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................1 2 Martyrdom and Self-Creation in Miss Lonelyhearts ...................................................29 3 Iconoclasm and Austerity in The Fountainhead ..........................................................87 4 Status and Sublimation in Savage Holiday ................................................................151 5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................204 WORKS CITED ..........................................................................................................................208 vii False values and delusive words: these are the worst monsters for mortals— long does catastrophe sleep and wait within them. — From “On the Priests,” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1891), by Friedrich Nietzsche Know when you see him, nothing can free him. Step aside, open wide: it’s the loner. — Chorus to “The Loner,” debut single from Neil Young (1969), by Neil Young Introduction For a country so easily caricatured as fixated on the indulgences afforded by wealth and the excesses withstood by youth, America has surprisingly also made room within the cultural landscape for lionizing the austerity performed by a certain class of men: the aloof and brooding, the astute and withdrawn, the capable and mistrustful. These lone operators define a particular strain of labor within our capitalist system, relying on native intellect and occupying themselves through solitary pursuits. Such pretenses toward self-reliance make for awkward or tense situations when these avatars of lone-wolf masculinity intersect with society. While they may appear conceited in their indifference to the trivialities of socialization, their antisocial behavior can just as easily be understood to be something akin to ascetic disavowal. To pursue a full expression of pure being, one must be unencumbered by obligations arising outside of the self, or so the thinking would go. Lone operators tend to run cool while applying reason, plying their trade, yet turn hot- headed when responding to a power vacuum. From rugged cowboys to hardboiled detectives, oily hucksters to hard-luck drifters, prickly vigilantes to fringe-dwelling outcasts, all know how to rely on a mix of distancing behavior and general duplicity for their gain. Whether or not they are truly immoral, they act unscrupulously: shielding intentions as they withhold emotional honesty or mislead with false information; suppressing desires as they renounce social attachments or ignore attempts at intimacy; swallowing doubts as they scapegoat others or run amok in self-destructive ways. Though seemingly aloof to the world, these figures actually invest 2 great care in their personas, as they draw power from the ritualistic calculations by which they determine when, why, and how to let their guards down. Deigning to engage with the world can have consequences, though, and this project explores the nature of this fallout through the lens of those false values and delusive words that inevitably usher the lone operator to defeat. Once we distribute the above qualities across a range of ascetic archetypes, we can see how such men determine a cosmology of reactionary isolation. Some examples aspire to pure detachment, as occurs with the invisible man or man without qualities, but can also rely on tangible (rather than metaphysical) barriers, as occurs with the hermit or the recluse. Some value privacy as the means of ennobling their peccadillos and deflecting suspicion, as occurs with the underground man or the voyeur. Some can even expose the chasm between self and other, mediating this difference through an exaggerated persona, as occurs with the holy fool or the hunger artist. No matter the status inherent in their social positioning, these figures trade on unknowability, as if their volatile mystery—of not just who they are, but why they insist on remaining abject—grants them a form of privilege beyond the freedoms they vigilantly defend. Isolated men who find themselves in conflict with the wider world have often been upheld, for better or worse, as avatars of American masculinity. Within the mythos of the self- reliant man, the effort to sustain emotional distance has been deemed necessary to uphold individualism and to exert agency. At once ascetic in his reluctance to conform and decadent in his willful abjection, the archetype arising from these conditions might rightfully be termed the loner. This category, by virtue of its slippery usage and array of connotations, could encompass all iterations of those isolated male figures in American literature who broadcast their apartness, feeling themselves disempowered yet still yearning to order some portion of their existences. Given the loner’s self-isolating pose, he is not so much convinced of his convictions as 3 determined to shore up confidence in those abilities and instincts that set him apart. He betrays his entitled position, then, in testing whether his individualism passes muster as exceptionalism. As we flesh out this concept, we should refrain from imposing connotations about the loner as necessarily a lonely figure who, as a matter of course, avoids social interaction. Unwilling to live as just one subjectivity among many, the loner skews closer to an archetypal configuration, a totem of masculine longing concealed beneath stoic resolve. Many heroes are made of this same tension, of course, but the loner willfully stands alone, redoubling his taciturn self-containment when others might seek connections and yield to help. His isolation fails to provide the comfort, renewal, or perspective of solitude, then, because introversion and its attendant self-knowledge would threaten to usher the loner toward