'Dwelling' in Contemporary British and American Fiction: Zadie Smith, Tom

1 ‘Dwelling’ in Contemporary British and American Fiction: Zadie Smith, Tom McCarthy, Don DeLillo Oliver Paynel Royal Holloway, University of London PhD October 2018 2 3 Declaration of Authorship I, Oliver Paynel, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: ______________________ Date: ________________________ 4 5 Abstract This thesis argues that the pursuit of dwelling has become a key imperative for life in the spaces of contemporary literary fiction. Heidegger characterised dwelling as a form of life-building stemming from attachment to, and immersion in, a particular environment. This project explores dwelling in what Lauren Berlant has called the continually ‘overwhelming’ present of late modernity, in contexts where subjects navigate the persistent threat of existential dereliction or homelessness posed by historical trauma, loss or cultural alienation in an ongoing process once described by Heidegger as the ‘plight of dwelling’. Extending what Tim Ingold has subsequently called the ‘dwelling perspective’ into the field of novel theory, the thesis develops current research into the ‘persistence of dwelling’ in the novel form (Farred and López) through comparative study of novels by Zadie Smith, Tom McCarthy and Don DeLillo. It examines dwelling as an embodied mode of navigating and living within a world of diverse afflictions, attachments and involvements in these writers’ works, to show how the relations between human, non-human and narrative elements build the lifeworlds of contemporary fiction. The thesis examines Zadie Smith’s London fiction to show how modes of dwelling are cultivated through encounters between subjects and the narrative elements that shape their social environments, with a particular focus on mood, ethical attunement, empathy, worldliness and cosmopolitanism. Tom McCarthy’s Remainder is explored to demonstrate that the novel orients around the possibility that technological destruction will engender new modes of dwelling and retrieve a ‘proper’ relation to the technology of writing. Don DeLillo’s later fiction, especially The Body Artist, is discussed to show that, in this work, dwelling is always a negotiation between the meaningful gathering of memory, the non-human and the 6 human in the focal points of narrative, and the loss, trauma and dispersion that make meaning possible. By conceptualising new uses for Heidegger’s work in literary criticism, the thesis offers a framework for thinking the condition of being in the contemporary that parts ways with humanist and poststructuralist ethical criticism. It also extends criticism on trauma and the contemporary novel, and demonstrates the renewed relevance of Heidegger’s work to contemporary novel theory and criticism. 7 Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Bob Eaglestone, for his tireless encouragement and positivity, and for his continued willingness to read, consider and discuss my work and ideas over the past years. Thank you to Poppy Eaglestone, too, for contributing so generously to my viva preparations. Thanks go to my advisor, Adam Roberts, and Director of Graduate Studies, Will Montgomery, for their thoughtful support and input, and to Royal Holloway for the studentship that funded this PhD project. I would like to thank all those who offered questions and comments at conferences, amongst whom Thomas Docherty was particularly helpful; colleagues and past teachers, in particular James Smith, Jane Elliott, Seb Franklin, Peter Boxall and Matthew Dimmock; friends and fellow doctoral students Josh Burraway, James Cutler, Ahmed Honeini, Miriam Burke, Btissam Aboubichr and Peter Hambrecht for their for their support and companionship; and the staff at 11 Bedford Square, especially Mohamed Traore. My heartfelt thanks to my mum, dad and my brother Tom for all their support, and for their unwavering confidence in me. Above all I owe my thanks and gratitude to Nina, whose love and support made it possible for me to complete this project. 8 Table of Contents Declaration of Authorship ...................................................................................... 3 Abstract ................................................................................................................... 5 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................. 7 Table of Contents .................................................................................................... 8 List of Abbreviations for works by Martin Heidegger ........................................ 11 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 12 Theories of ethical binding and dwelling as binding ............................................ 16 Aesthetics and form: beyond the ‘new ethics’ ...................................................... 23 Dwelling: a literary inheritance ........................................................................... 27 Zadie Smith, Tom McCarthy, Don DeLillo ......................................................... 33 Thesis structure ................................................................................................... 36 Chapter 1: Theorising Dwelling in the Novel.................................................... 38 ‘Worlding’ and the novel .................................................................................... 39 Writing belongs to dwelling ................................................................................ 45 The text: between technology and thing............................................................... 49 Poetry, reading, writing and attunement .............................................................. 54 Novels as ‘environing worlds’ ............................................................................. 61 Narrativity and narratives: reading and logos ....................................................... 63 Conclusions ................................................................................................. 71 Chapter 2: Mood, World and Ethics in Zadie Smith’s London Fiction........... 74 Attunement and being-in, being-with and empathy .............................................. 80 9 White Teeth ......................................................................................................... 87 Hysterical realism ................................................................................................ 87 Human, all too human .......................................................................................... 94 The problem of ethics in White Teeth .................................................................. 99 NW ................................................................................................................... 102 Conclusions ............................................................................................... 115 Chapter 3: Finessing Finitude, and Remains: Unconcealing ‘Earth’ in the ‘Age of the World Picture’ ........................................................................................... 117 Handiness and representation ............................................................................. 123 The proper and the improper .............................................................................. 128 Earth and world in the work of art ...................................................................... 136 Proper writing and equipmentality in ‘The Age of the World Picture’ ................ 143 Trauma in ‘The Age of the World Picture’ ......................................................... 146 Intensification of objectification: from representation to positionality ................ 150 The struggle between earth and world ................................................................ 155 Conclusions ............................................................................................... 162 Chapter 4: Dwelling and The Literary Thing: ‘Narrative Gathering’ in Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist ..................................................................................... 164 The Body Artist and environmental consciousness in DeLillo’s late fiction ........ 167 ‘This final morning that they were here’ ............................................................ 174 Mr Tuttle, alterity and things in the environment................................................ 184 Remembrance and the problem of loss ............................................................... 193 Art and dwelling ................................................................................................ 200 ‘Being here’ and narrative recovery ................................................................... 208 10 Conclusions ............................................................................................... 215 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 217 Bibliography ........................................................................................................ 225 11 List of Abbreviations for works by Martin Heidegger BDT ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ OWA ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ PMD ‘…Poetically Man Dwells…’ T ‘The Thing’ WPF ‘What Are Poets For?’ all in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. by Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper

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