Full Diss Reformatted II

“NEWS THAT STAYS NEWS”: TRANSFORMATIONS OF LITERATURE, GOSSIP, AND COMMUNITY IN MODERNITY Lindsay Rebecca Starck A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2016 Approved by: Gregory Flaxman Erin Carlston Eric Downing Andrew Perrin Pamela Cooper © 2016 Lindsay Rebecca Starck ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Lindsay Rebecca Starck: “News that stays news”: Transformations of Literature, Gossip, and Community in Modernity (Under the direction of Gregory Flaxman and Erin Carlston) Recent decades have demonstrated a renewed interest in gossip research from scholars in psychology, sociology, and anthropology who argue that gossip—despite its popular reputation as trivial, superficial “women’s talk”—actually serves crucial social and political functions such as establishing codes of conduct and managing reputations. My dissertation draws from and builds upon this contemporary interdisciplinary scholarship by demonstrating how the modernists incorporated and transformed the popular gossip of mass culture into literature, imbuing it with a new power and purpose. The foundational assumption of my dissertation is that as the nature of community changed at the turn of the twentieth century, so too did gossip. Although usually considered to be a socially conservative force that serves to keep social outliers in line, I argue that modernist writers transformed gossip into a potent, revolutionary tool with which modern individuals could advance and promote the progressive ideologies of social, political, and artistic movements. Ultimately, the gossip of key American expatriates (Henry James, Djuna Barnes, Janet Flanner, and Ezra Pound) became a mode of exchanging and redefining creative and critical values for the artists and critics who would follow them. From abroad, moreover, these writers examined various definitions of “Americanness,” and much of their work contributed to Americans’ increasing sense of self-awareness and self-confidence on the international stage. iii How is modernism the product of gossip? What does the relationship between literature and gossip illuminate for us about the experience of community and nationhood in modernity? Can literature itself be considered gossip? Just as importantly: can criticism? These are the questions that propel me through the project. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………..1 CHAPTER ONE: THE MAGNIFICENT GOSSIP OF HENRY JAMES’S THE AMBASSADORS…………………………………………………………………………...... 38 CHAPTER TWO: THE SUBVERSIVE GOSSIP OF DJUNA BARNES’S LADIES ALMANACK………………………………………………………………………………......96 CHAPTER THREE: JANET FLANNER’S “HIGH-CLASS GOSSIP” AND AMERICAN NATIONALISM BETWEEN THE WARS …………………………………………....... 148 CHAPTER FOUR: EZRA POUND, MODERNISM’S GREATEST GOSSIP…………..... 192 CONCLUSION……… …………………………………………………………………..... 244 v INTRODUCTION “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. North America, from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea!” - Walter Winchell Walter Winchell, America’s first and most infamous gossip columnist, spent most of the 1930s and 1940s at Table 50 in New York City’s Stork Club. There he ate and drank for free while everybody who was anybody waltzed in and paid him court. Hollywood stars, socialites, musicians, athletes, foreign dignitaries and the American political elite—he knew all their names and all their secrets. He started writing gossip for the Evening Graphic in 1924, and at its height his column reached over 50 million households. During the Great Depression, 20 million people tuned in to his radio broadcasts. The decades flew by, full of people and glitter and scandal; but when Winchell died in 1972 there was only one mourner at his funeral. On its surface, the story sounds like something out of a Fitzgerald novel: a tragic hero who crafts his existence out of rumors and dreams; an endless succession of parties and celebrities; the thousands of friends who drink one’s champagne or devour one’s column; and the lonely final scene. A character like Jay Gatsby or Dick Diver may seem to have little in common with Walter Winchell, but they all share one key element: a life built on air. Indeed, it is no coincidence that Winchell launched his career during the same year that Fitzgerald was exploring the myth-making qualities of gossip in The Great Gatsby; nor that as Winchell rose to power, Fitzgerald was analyzing the destruction of reputations and relationships in Tender is the Night. My contention in this project is that the technological, social, and political revolutions of modernity transformed communities and communication to such a degree that even gossip, ancient as it is, underwent a profound change in scope and status. Keenly cognizant of the power 1 of gossip, modernist writers drew upon its tools and techniques in order to examine the boundary between public and private life, navigate the highly fraught relationship between individuals and society, and negotiate the construction of national character. How are modernism and New Criticism, as artistic and critical movements, the product of gossip? What does the relationship between literature and gossip illuminate for us about the experience of community and nationhood in modernity? Can literature itself be considered gossip? Just as importantly: can criticism? These are the questions that will propel me through the chapters that follow. The purpose of this dissertation is threefold. First and foremost, I intend to show how gossip served to establish modernist communities, determining who was “in” and “out” of artistic and critical circles. Second, I will demonstrate how modernists in turn transformed gossip through their literature, illuminating its potential for progressive social reform while harnessing that power for their own causes. Both of these ideas require a turn to sociology: one of three disciplines that came into being simultaneously with modernism. While literary scholarship has been greatly enriched by work in linguistics and psychology—the other two disciplines that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century—fewer books have been written on the intersection of literature and sociology. The third goal of this study is to contribute to that underdeveloped field by revealing the shared roots of modernist literature and sociology, tracing groundbreaking work in both fields back to mutual concerns over the changes in individuals and communities that resulted from the technological, social, and political upheavals of modernity. My foundational assumption is that as society evolved, so too did gossip. Modernist gossip is charged by the political, technological, and social order, and it works in ways distinct from those of either later modernism (post-WWII) or the Victorian era. Although typically 2 considered to be a conservative force that serves to keep social outliers in line, I argue that modernist gossip instead became revolutionary: a powerful tool with which modern individuals could advance and promote the progressive ideologies of social, political, and artistic movements. Definitions & Connotations The definition of gossip, much like the definition of art, depends on whom you ask. “All literature is gossip,” Truman Capote famously opined. In Lady Windemere’s Fan, Oscar Wilde writes: “Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.” Walter Winchell himself explains gossip as “the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.” The Encyclopedia of Human Relationships broadly defines it, less playfully, as “the exchange, in a context of congeniality, of personal information (positive or negative) in an evaluative way (positive or negative) about absent third parties.” Although I take this as my initial working definition of gossip, over the course of this study I will increase its complexity and specificity by introducing such elements as context, tone, purpose, and judgment. First, to clarify my terms: By “gossip,” I do not mean contemporary tabloidism, celebrity scandals, or rumors true or false about threesomes, sham marriages, and other sexual escapades (although the modernists have plenty of these). When I use the word “gossip,” I’m drawing upon the sociological understanding of gossip as the exchange of perceptions and evaluations about an individual in order to judge that person’s fit for a specific community. The past few decades have witnessed a collective reclamation of gossip by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and literary theorists alike—all of whom argue that although this genre of speech has traditionally been dismissed as superficial “women’s talk,” it actually serves crucial social and political 3 functions such as establishing trust, forming alliances, managing reputations, and navigating social norms. The first two chapters of the dissertation address gossip as the content of speech: what people say about others when those others are not present in Henry James’s The Ambassadors and how private information about lesbian relationships is made public through Djuna Barnes’s Ladies Almanack. The third and fourth chapters address gossip as a genre: the newsy, breezy Paris Letters that Janet Flanner sent to The New Yorker and the reputations that Pound promoted, demoted, and negotiated through his personal correspondence. Although the distinction between content and genre

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