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Proquest Dissertations Superfluous absence: The secret life of the author in twentieth-century literature and film Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Cottle, Brent Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 23/09/2021 23:18:18 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/279822 INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has t)een reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly firom the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. 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Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 SUPERFLUOUS ABSENCE: THE SECRET LIFE OF THE AUTHOR IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERATURE AND FILM by BRENT COTTLE Copyright Brent Cottle 2001 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfilbnent of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WITH A MAJOR IN ENGLISH In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2001 UMI Number; 3023533 Copyright 2001 by Cottle, Brent All rights reserved. UMI® UMI Microform 3023533 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Leaming Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 2 THE UKIVERSIT7 OF ARIZONA « GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Final Exaaination Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Brent Cottle entitled Superfluous Absence: The Secret Life of the Author in Twentieth-Centurv Literature and Film and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (TUHJL Z9, ?f)&l ^uaan^nfEe Date~* i Tenney Roger Bow4n Date Date Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate's submission of the final copy of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. on Director Tenney Nathanson Date 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fiilfilUnent of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or m part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: APPROVAL BY DISSERTATION DIRECTOR This dissertation has been approved on the date shown below: aHOJN L/OI /TenneyNathanson ( Date Professor of English 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT 5 A SECRET 7 LANGUAGE DESIRES ITSELF: AN INTRODUCTION 8 A SECRET 31 FUN AGAIN'S WORK AND THE PRO'S TUTU: LITERARY PROFESSIONALISM IN JAMES JOYCE'S FINNEGANS WAKE 36 A SECRET 81 THE STORY OF OUR SCARS: READING AND WRITING AS CRUELTY AND TORTURE IN SAMUEL BECKETT AND STEPHEN KING 89 A SECRET 141 PLANET FILM 149 A SHORT STORY ABOUT RELIGION, WRITING, FILM, MEDIA, AND THE PROBLEMS OF REPRESENTING THE SELF AND THE OTHER 201 A MONOLOGUE BY BRENT COTTLE'S FICTION ALTER-EGO, EDDY FONTEVRAULT 224 THE DEAD 272 WORKS CITED 285 5 ABSTRACT Superfluous Absence examines how writers of fictional narratives imagine readers that might read their texts and use these imagined readers—and the voices they represent—as leavening agents for the fictions they produce. In this theory, writers do not appeal to these readers except as they function as language and its desire to be decoded—as they function as language's desire for itself. Ultimately, the texts of fiction reach real-life readers and Superfluous Absence traces how authors struggle with the leavening agent of the reader's voice when the reader's voice becomes an actual social presence in an actual historical moment. This struggle consists of writers trying to preserve a non-space, and readers try to tum this non-space into praxis and presence. In Superfluous Absence I trace this struggle in James Joyce's Finnegan s Wake, Samuel Beckett's trilogy otMolloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable and Stephen BCing's Misery. I also explore what happens to this reading desire when it is translated into a visual format, as is so often the case in the twentieth-century when literature is adapted into film. The test case is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, an appropriate choice as it is a movie that tries to eradicate the linguistic in favor of the purely visual. Finally, this project is not just an objective charting of the various locations and non-locations of the writer's voice in twentieth century fiction and film, but is also a very subjective attempt on the part of this writer to understand the presence or non-presence of his authorial voice in acts of fiction. Therefore, the author of this dissertation fi-equently 6 writes autobiographically and frequently turas his critical voice into the voice of fictional narration. 7 A SECRET This is all forgery. This is all untrue. 8 LANGUAGE DESIRES ITSELF: AN INTRODUCTION 1 I assert that fiction writers include the voice and the expected particulars of their potential readership as a reproductive desire for the otherwise superfluous text of fiction, and as a kind of midwife to usher their rhetorically unnecessary texts into existence. The use of this voice is not to be taken as appeal to an audience in question; rather, the audience is absorbed as leavening agent for the author's imagination, which is, insofar as the context and concerns of the audience is concerned, an extracurricular imagination. 2 My theory depends on writers having a sense of the reader. However, it is my contention that fiction writers do not write with a perceived audience in mind but rather write for themselves. In fact, this is the firequently stated cliche among fiction writers: "I write the kind of novel I want to read"; "I write for myself." On the other hand, these intentions do not exclude the reader firom the equation. While a fiction writer may not have a physical reader in mind, an audience constituted of homo sapiens with 9 biographical histories, the writer of fiction still has a reader in mind—^him or her self. But it is curious to be writing to one's self. How does one compose thoughts that one will later receive as messages from outside those thoughts? How does one create rhetorical appeals that bridge the way back to the appealer? Appealer and appealee start to trip over each other's feet, which are in fact run by the same rhetorical nervous system. As solution to this problem, I contend that writer's are not really appealing to themselves, are not really making rhetorical maps showing the way back to the mapmaker's house, but are appealing to the language itself, and the language as reader. Without citing statistics, it is probably a given that the last thing the world needs is another book. There are more books than people or institutions can conceivably buy, let alone read. This is especially true of works of fiction. Works of fiction are supposedly without utility in the everyday world and are therefore completely superfluous. The writing composed in the traditional rhetorical model has, at the least, a certain kind of utility as it is composed with the consumer's needs in mind, and is composed with an eye towards creating a tool handy for the reading mind. Fiction, on the other hand, is excessive language that, if we are to believe the writer him or herself, is written solely for that writer's needs and no one else's. This writing is without justification in the world outside the writer's head. Nevertheless, it appears—is pubUshed. When a writer produces in this way the writer appeals not to the future usefulness of this writing for some reader they have not yet met, but appeal alone to the fact that this writing appears— appeal to the fact that it can and is put into language. Let me return to the cliche in order to put a different emphasis on things. When the writer says he or she wants to write the 10 novel he or she wants to read, or writes for her or himself, the writer is making a statement about the appeal language is making to him or her rather than his or her appeals in language.
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