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CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by University of East Anglia digital repository Randall, or The Painted Grape and Beyond Ekphrasis: The Role and Function of Artworks in the Novels of Don DeLillo Jonathan Gibbs Thesis submitted for the qualification of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of East Anglia, Department of Literature, Drama, and Creative Writing, July 2013. © This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognize that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. 1 Abstract This thesis is presented in two sections: firstly, a novel, Randall, or The Painted Grape; and secondly, an essay, ‘Beyond Ekphrasis: The Role and Function of Artworks in the Novels of Don DeLillo’. Randall, or The Painted Grape is a novel about the Young British Artists. It takes the form of a fictitious biographical memoir of an artist, Randall, written by his friend Vincent, after Randall’s death. This memoir is interpolated with sections treating Vincent and Justine, Randall’s widow, following their discovery of a series of previously unknown paintings by Randall. ‘Beyond Ekphrasis: The Role and Function of Artworks in the Novels of Don DeLillo’ discusses critical approaches to the treatment of artworks in fiction. It considers existing theories of ekphrasis (the literary description of a work of art) and explores how far these theories, which most often treat poems addressing paintings and sculptures, can be applied to prose fiction, and to post-representational and conceptual art forms. Taking examples from three recent novels by Don DeLillo: Falling Man, Point Omega and The Body Artist, the essay looks at ways in which novelistic ekphrasis can engage with non- literary art forms that differ and go beyond those put forward by canonical theories of ekphrasis. These include: the treatment of the art encounter in an extended narrative; the ethics and etiquette of representation; the use of structural rather than descriptive mimesis; and the possibility of a non-paragonal, or non-confrontational, relationship between the treating and treated art forms. Finally, with reference to The Body Artist, the essay suggests the possibility of a ‘reverse ekphrasis’, by which the novel as a whole can be read as a representation of an artwork that is nowhere fully described in the text. 2 List of Contents Abstract……………..………………...……………………… 2 List of Contents……………………………............................. 3 Acknowledgements…………..………………………………. 4 Section One: Randall, or The Painted Grape........................... 5 Section Two: Beyond Ekphrasis: The Role and Function of Artworks in the Novels of Don DeLillo .................... 268 Chapter One: Introduction.......................................... 269 Chapter Two: Falling Man......................................... 284 Chapter Three: Point Omega...................................... 299 Chapter Four: The Body Artist.................................... 314 References………………………….…………………....… 334 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my primary and secondary supervisors, Professor Giles Foden and Dr Jake Huntley, for their help and encouragement. Note Randall, or The Painted Grape has been edited for length for the purposes of this thesis. 4 SECTION ONE: Randall, or The Painted Grape 5 Untitled (Vincent) 6 Vincent was looking out of the window. He had been looking out of the window, he realised, for he knew not how long, lost in the endless, and endlessly spectacular view, or the lack of it. Somebody had spoken to him. He turned towards the sound of the voice. ‘So sorry to disturb you, Mr Cartwright. I wondered if you would like something to drink before your meal.’ He blinked up at her, at her lips and cravat, her smile, infinitely understanding. Her cheek, as she canted towards him, was held aslant, as if for a kiss. ‘Thank you. Some water would be lovely.’ ‘Of course. Would that be still or sparkling?’ ‘Oh, it really doesn’t matter. Just as it comes.’ He enjoyed matching her airy delivery, as if nothing that occurred up here could ever be made to matter. He stretched the line of his smile, and she seemed to take this, correctly, as his final word on the matter. 7 To have a thousand people hanging on your every desire, and to want nothing, he thought. A Randallism. He watched her move off down the aisle, then let his gaze drift over the rest of the cabin, an informal audit of the seats occupied and seats empty. This in itself was a sign of the times: to fly to New York, at six hours’ notice, and come on board to find seats to spare. Though he’d have flown cattle, if truth be told. He paused at the thought, imagined himself saying it to Justine: the manner in which he’d say it. I’d have flown cattle, if truth be told. He gave a brusque shake of the head, that was almost a shudder, as if to try and shift the excitement he had allowed to build inside himself. He rubbed his face, put on his glasses, and went back to his reading. He read slowly and carefully, taking a sheaf of a dozen or so pages onto his lap at a time. It gave him a little lift of nostalgia, just to have the stuff in his hands, to run the pad of his thumb over its surface, or down the sharp line of its edge. So far as he could tell he was the only person working from paper: from here to the bulkhead, not so much as a book, just the usual permutations of palm, tablet and scroll. The feel of it seemed appropriate to the matter in hand, to Randall. To the historical past, and the artefacts that attested to it. To the physical fact of the work of art, stuck there in the world. And it was something real to give to Justine. This stack of sheets, a good inch- and-a-half thick, hummingly fresh from the printer. She had something to show him, she had said to him. Well, he had something for her, too. As he read, he made occasional unvoiced exclamations at the words on the page, different ways of expelling a breath that charged it with a particular, private meaning. This one might have stood for exasperation, or annoyance; that one for amusement. At one point he took out a silver-plated propelling pencil from its case and went to mark the manuscript, but hesitated, and did not. 8 When his food came he put the papers back into their wallet. He was barely reading the words in any case. They evaporated too easily from the page, reconstituting themselves in the air before him as a sort of reverie or memory play, where what was truly remembered merged with what was imagined, and, for him, no more than for anyone else, there was no telling the two apart. Likewise, the film he watched after eating offered nothing but a shadow commentary on the thoughts awoken by the manuscript: of lives shared and divided, friends dead, friends divested and friends removed. Movements together, movements apart, and, very occasionally, glorious, heart-quickening movements in parallel, towards some still unknown destination. There’s something I want you to see, was what she had said, when she called. She wouldn’t say what it was, but she was insistent he come over as soon as possible. Drop whatever it is you’re doing, she said. Well, he said, he had nothing to drop, which was truer than he would have liked to admit. It was something to do with Randall, that much was obvious, but he didn’t press further, lest she relent and tell him what it was after all, dissolving at a stroke the need for him to make the trip at all. It must be something big, though. A previously unknown work – a great lost sculpture? It was possible. An illegitimate child? Or a laptop, with his autobiography on it? The Confessions of Randall. Christ, that would be just like him, wouldn’t it, after all the months and years that Vincent had spent wrestling his own thoughts into some kind of order, stopping and starting, starting over, going on bespoke writing retreats with teaching by published authors, and eventually abandoning it altogether. His hand moved to the wallet on his table with the manuscript in it, and he rested his fingers on its cover. Whatever it was that she wanted him to see, her insistence on him flying to New York to see it involved – or so it seemed to him – the need for him to 9 see it in person, in the flesh, but also the need for him to be there, with her, when he did. The exact relation between these two things was not his to know, but it was something he could enjoy adjusting in his mind, first this way and then that, as he sipped at his water and gazed out of the cabin window into the deep, companionable void. Once through customs he gave the cabbie the address in Tribeca and sat back, tense and exhilarated, for the drive in. He’d never liked air travel particularly, but the journey on from the airport, that was different. The way it dropped you slap-bang into the kick and swell of life, after the enforced quiescence of the flight, and brought your heart rate up to the correct speed for wherever it was you’d arrived. Berlin, Jo’burg, Tokyo, or New York. He found himself sitting forward in his seat, picking out sights as they went. He saw the empty shell and spindly concrete mushrooms of the State Pavilion.

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