Masculinity in Modern American Fiction (1969–1977) Focuses on Masculinity in Late Twentieth-Century American Fiction
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From the Delivered to the Dispatched From the Delivered to the Dispatched: Masculinity in Modern American Fiction (1969–1977) focuses on masculinity in late twentieth- century American fiction. In this rigorous study, Harriet Stilley shows the vari- ous ways post-war American authors engage with the tension between late capitalist consumer culture and traditional national conceptions of American manhood. Drawing on examples from the works of prolific contemporary American writers, including John Cheever, James Dickey, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison and Michael Herr, Stilley investi- gates hypermasculine male violence, the classical and grotesque body, as well as specific regional themes such as the Western frontier, the Ameri- can Adam, the Southern Gothic and the Suburban Gothic. Harriet Stilley teaches American Literature at the University of Edin- burgh. Her research interests focus on masculinity in late twentieth- century American fiction. Harriet’s work has been published in a number of American, British and European journals, including the Cor- mac McCarthy Journal, the Journal of American Studies, the European Journal of American Studies, and the European Journal of American Culture. Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature 20 Poetry Against the World Philip Larkin and Charles Tomlinson in Contemporary Britain Magdalena Kay 21 Tim O’Brien The Things He Carries and the Stories He Tells Tobey C. Herzog 22 The Wounded Hero in Contemporary Fiction A Paradoxical Quest Edited by Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau 23 Women on the Move Body, Memory and Femininity in Present-Day Transnational Diasporic Writing Edited by Silvia Pellicer-Ortín and Julia Tofantšuk 24 Gender and Short Fiction Women’s Tales in Contemporary Britain Edited by Jorge Sacido-Romero and Laura Mª Lojo-Rodríguez 25 Prequels, Coquels and Sequels in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction Edited by Armelle Parey 26 From the Delivered to the Dispatched Masculinity in Modern American Fiction (1969–1977) Harriet Stilley For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com From the Delivered to the Dispatched Masculinity in Modern American Fiction (1969–1977) Harriet Stilley First published 2019 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Harriet Stilley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data has been applied for. ISBN: 978-1-138-36697-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-42998-9 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra Contents Abstract vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 1 “The land that he saw looked like a paradise. It was not, he knew.”: Suburbia and the Maladjusted American Male in John Cheever’s Bullet Park 27 2 “This-here river don’t go nowhere.”: Fraudulent Frontiers and the Failure of the Adamic Archetype in James Dickey’s Deliverance 59 3 “A violence born of total helplessness.”: Jane, Dick, and the Deterministic Denial of the Black American Male in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye 89 4 “White pussy is nothin but trouble.”: Death, Desire, and the Displacement of the Feminine Body in Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God 126 5 “They were killers. Of course they were; what would anyone expect them to be?”: Martial Camouflage, Containment, and Castration in Michael Herr’s Dispatches 148 Conclusion: “THIS IS NOT AN EXIT” American Masculinity Since 1977 176 Works Cited 187 Index 199 Abstract There has long been a critical consensus that the presiding mood of America in the late sixties and early seventies was one of perva- sive social upheaval, with perpetual ‘crisis’ seeming in many ways the narrative rule. Contemporaneous critics such as Erich Fromm, David Riesman, and William Whyte, together with late twentieth- century writers, Michael Kimmel, Sally Robinson, and David Savran, congruently agree that the post-war American epoch connoted one of expeditious adjustment for white, middle-class men in particu- lar. The specific aim of this text is, thus, to elucidate the ways in which the literary fiction of this period by authors John Cheever, James Dickey, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, and new journal- ist, Michael Herr, reflects a significantly increased concern for such alterations in the values and attitudes of contemporary cultural life through representations of modern American masculinities. Multi- ple liberation struggles, including Civil Rights, Feminism, and sexual politics, converged with core economic shifts that transformed the US from an industrial based to a consumerist model. For hegemonic masculinity, this is a transferal from ‘masculine’ industrial labour and the physically expressive body to ‘feminine’ consumerism. This study will first of all underline the extent to which fiction in this period registers those changes through the lens of a fraying of what was once a fortified fabric from which white, patriarchal power was normatively fashioned. What is most disrupted by the paradigm shifts of the era will appear, then, to be a monolithic, coherently bounded American masculinity. However, by way of an interrelated interpretation of contemporaneous feminist and Marxist theory, my research will subsequently show that, rather than being negated, the fabric of that dominant masculinity regenerated and reasserted itself, primarily through the fraught revival of a violent and mythologized hypermasculinity in mainstream US culture. Whether it is through the suburban maladjustment of Eliot Nailles and Paul Hammer, the fraudulent frontier ethic of Ed Gentry and Lewis Medlock, or the more perverse pugnacity of Lester Ballard and internalised racism of Cholly Breedlove, this book argues that, by the mid-seventies, viii Abstract numerous American novelists had sought to artistically magnify the ways in which fundamental changes in the patterns of national life were occurring – changes which are represented more often than not as damaging to the normative model of masculinity and the experien- tial consciousness of men. Acknowledgements Special thanks first and foremost must go to Dr Kenneth Millard for his confidence in both myself as a research scholar and the research project that has culminated in this monograph. It has been the greatest priv- ilege to work with Ken and I am eternally thankful for his guidance and patience. He has made the completion of this project an incredibly rewarding and enjoyable experience, and his knowledge and passion for modern American fiction continues to inspire my research. I would like to thank the School of Literatures, Languages, and Cul- tures at the University of Edinburgh for all their support throughout both my undergraduate and postgraduate studies. I am especially in- debted to Dr Keith Hughes, who acted as internal examiner for this work in its original thesis form, together with my external examiner Dr Brian Jarvis of Loughborough University. I am not only extremely grateful for their positive responses to my work – which proved invalu- able to the final production of this monograph – but furthermore in- spired by their encouragement and belief that this project would offer a useful and important contribution to the study of twentieth-century American fiction and masculinity. I am similarly appreciative of Associate Professor Marek Paryż, edi- tor of the European Journal of American Studies, for his assistance in the publication of select sections from Chapter 1 of this book. I would also like to pay special thanks to Professor Stacey Peebles for her help in the publication of an earlier draft version of Chapter 4 of this text, which appeared as ‘Hypermasculine Hysteria and the Displacement of the Feminine Body in Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God’ in the Cormac McCarthy Journal Vol. 14, No.1 (Spring 2016), 96–116. I’d also like to thank everyone at Routledge. The comments provided by the reviewers were encouraging and supportive, and I am very grate- ful for their backing of this book. The series editors, editorial assistants and all other staff involved in the publishing of this book have been an honour to work with, and I hope to work with them all again. For all their continual encouragement and companionship, I am equally beholden to the following friends and family: Caroline Elias, Amy Glasgow-Jackson, Beth Hayworth, Lorna Hayworth, Aaron Kelly, x Acknowledgements Marika Koike, Tsuneko Koike, Becca Lawrie, Ali Lindsay, Kirsty Lyo ns, Linda Lyons, Iona Murphy, Eiko Nishiyama, Keiko Nishiyama, Iris Peng, Johanna Presly, and Ruaridh and Victoria Robertson. This work would and could not exist, of course, without the help of my parents, Hamish and Hisako, to whom I owe everything. I will never be able to repay you for all you have done for me, and this work, along with all future endeavours, is a meagre humble token of my love and gratitude. Finally, this study is dedicated with complete love and respect to the memory of my late grandmother, Dr Dores Stilley (1920–2013). Introduction The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum the most varied of morbid phenomena appear. —Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks (1971 33) “It was: it was not, the beginning of the end – some end” (28). This is the prefatory phrase with which Tommy Wilhelm, the indigent and impotent ‘fall guy’ of Saul Bellow’s 1956 novel, Seize the Day, discloses a contemporaneous psychological angst that would inevitably character- ise the predicament of postwar American masculinity.