Tragic America: Terror, Metaphor, and the Contemporary American Novel By Aaron Mauro A thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in English Language and Literature in conformity with the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada May 2012 Copyright © Aaron Mauro, 2012 Table of Contents Abstract iv Acknowledgements v Introduction The Proper Tragic Element 1 Chapter 1 American “Tragic Optimism 6 Tragic Consequences of Isolation — A Well-Told Story — The Mask Worn By Liberty — August and Damned — Live Dangerously — The Proper Name of Deconstruction Chapter 2 Ordinary Happiness: Marilynne Robinson’s Figurative 58 Economies of Debt and Forgiveness in the American Home A Dead Pledge — Resurrecting the Ordinary — Economy of Economy — And Forgive Us Our Debts, as We Forgive Our Debtors — Bright Radical Star — Gradual Catastrophe Chapter 3 A Human Mask: Philip Roth’s Contemporary American 96 Tragedies Embrace Your Hero in his Destruction — A Performance Over a Ruin — An Arena for Angry Minds — Every Word also a Mask — He’s Talking about You — The Pointless Meaningfulness of Living Chapter 4 The Monstrous Genre: Hellenism in the Fiction of Jeffrey 131 Eugenides Obviously, Doctor—Monstrous Birth— An Enigma of Genre — Problematic Body — Walled Up Alive — Common Tragedies of American Life Chapter 5 The Languishing of the Falling Man: Don DeLillo and 171 Jonathan Safran Foer’s Photographic History of 9/11 History in Danger — Falling from the Sky — Suicide and the American Dream — Bring Back the Past — All the Visual Stimuli — The Words of Children ii Chapter 6 Prophet of Terror: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and the 198 American Messianic Consciousness No Sign of Life — Carrying the Fire — There is No Book —The Prophet of Terror — Messianic without Messianism — I Am So Glad to See You Epilogue A Secret Melancholy 134 Bibliography 241 iii Abstract ! Since the attacks of September 11th, 2001, the literature of the United States has become increasingly concerned with telling tragic stories. While the literature written about the attacks is considerable and operates as the climax in this dissertation, the literature of the ensuing decade has been marked by a return to tragic terror more broadly. A distinct feeling of anxiety and fear continues to animate a strong tragic tradition in the contemporary novel. Through an analysis of motifs, figures, and metaphors derived from classical dramatic sources and the attendant philosophical tradition, this dissertation investigates the complex formal processes through which tragic American lives occur and their political contexts. This dissertation argues that American literary production in the first decade of the twenty-first century requires a critical return to the so-called Myth and Symbol School that inaugurated American Studies and established an American literary tradition with New England Transcendentalists. Emerson’s claim that America must be made great through and by its ability to perceive “the terror of life” resonates in today’s post-9/11 political and economic climate. This study illuminates the ways that the contemporary novelists have seen fit to incorporate classical tropes and narratives into traditional stereotypes of identity and nationhood. Linguistic life, it might be said, directly influences political life. Tragic America is an aggregation of tragic manifestations that finds political extensions and interpretive applications through provisional and figurative relationships. Relationships negotiated through this metaphoric sensibility are, I believe, the only honest means of comparison in our radically heterogeneous culture. iv Acknowledgements This project owes much to the insights and generosity of so many colleagues and mentors. The initial inspirations for Tragic America were fostered at the University of Manitoba and the vibrant academic and literary community in Winnipeg. Though I now count them as friends, I must begin by thanking two remarkable mentors who helped set the stage for this dissertation. I must thank David Williams for teaching me, through his actions as often as his words, the depth and seriousness of academic work. He showed me how his kindness and generosity animates his steadfast dedication to both research and teaching. I can only hope to carry on that legacy with my own students and thereby honour my debt to him in some small way. I must also thank Dawne McCance for asking simple questions that often require expansive answers. Her graduate seminar in 2007, entitled Jocasta’s Secret, was a direct inspiration for all the work to follow, but the grace and elegance with which she introduced tragedy and philosophy was equally instructive. I would like to thank many more at the University of Manitoba, but I must be content to thank Mark Lawall, Dana Medoro, Pamela Perkins, Diana Brydon, Alison Calder, and Warren Cariou. Though it mourned me to leave Manitoba and my family, I was greeted in Ontario by a rigorous and professional group of humanities researchers at Queen’s University. First, I would like to thank our Graduate Secretary Kathy Goodfriend for answering so many harried questions and for reminding me of so many departmental deadlines. I also want to thank Tracy Ware for reminding me that I am not a statistic of the academic system, Gabrielle McIntire for her optimism, encouragement, and always having time for a conversation, and Laura Murray for her unflagging support of my teaching throughout my five years at Queen’s. v This dissertation was supported directly by several exceptional people at Queen’s. My heartfelt thanks goes to Molly Wallace for her faith in the project and her willingness to supervise what must have seemed at times a nebulous and indefinite project. Her confidence in the work allowed me to progress efficiently and view the project as more than the sum of its parts. Her dedication during the final editing process left a lasting impression on the focus and direction of the final product. I quite simply could not have written this without her help and guidance. I also want to thank my entire committee: I want to thank Asha Varadharajan for submitting the final draft to a thorough reading. Her attention to detail is second to none. I want thank Craig Walker of the Queen’s Department of Drama for his wonderful questions during the defense and his uncanny intuition about my own literary influences. I want to thank Petra Fachinger of the Queen’s Department of English for asking the questions that needed to be asked and reminding me that identity is performed in many ways. Finally, I want to thank Joseph Conte for making the trip from SUNY Buffalo to attend the defense. His enthusiasm for the project helped bolster my confidence as a Canadian doing American Studies, but he also encouraged me to think broadly about nationalism, identity, and what it means to study American literature. I would like to thank several institutions for their contribution to this project. I must express my thanks to the entire editorial team at Modern Fiction Studies at Purdue University for the attention to detail they showed publishing “The Languishing of the Falling Man.” Particularly among them, I want to thank John Duvall, Robert Marzec, Aaron DeRosa, and Paul Rutz for the many quality suggestions made during the editing process. I would like to express my gratitude for the financial assistance received from Queen’s University and the Social vi Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, without which this project would not have been possible. Finally, I want thank my loving wife Catherine Toews. She believed in me and my work even when I could not muster such feelings, and our life together has been the only thing that makes this work meaningful. Every word I write, I dedicate to her. vii Introduction—The Proper Tragic Element There have long been peculiar and intimate connections between the experienced and imagined tragedies of everyday American life. While tragedy in the first decade of the twenty-first century has been used to describe historical events and literature with an assumed coherence, literary criticism and theory have yet to assess the prevalence of tragedy in popular culture. Leaving life bereft and terrified by an uncertain future, tragedy always approaches unexpectedly. The tragic genre tells, quite simply, the story of a life that ends badly. Tragic America seeks to reconcile how a country that finds life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be both self-evident and unalienable can also produce a distinctly tragic tradition. It is in the preamble that the authors of this sovereign declaration offered these truths to buttress a future America free from a terrible end to life —free from tragedy. In the beginning, America’s early colonial founders described the country around them with a great myth-making imagination, which sought to fill the empty wilderness with coherent symbols. The Eurocentric basis of this new literature sought to codify and systematize the wilderness for a people not at home in a strange land. America’s tragic past—the new world’s tragic mythology—is a myth with impossible origins. This long legacy is informed by Aristotle’s first definitions of tragedy in his Poetics because all discourse on tragedy is necessarily touched by this inceptive and legislative act of delineating genre. As a result, any experience of the tragic opens an immediate conflation and division of literature, philosophy, and history. However, this study is written from the point where these discursive paths intersect, touch, and withdraw. While my interest is in contemporary literature and contemporary manifestations of this legacy, I will necessarily 1 return to 18th and 19th century philosophical precedents and gesture towards classical models. Insofar as it is necessary to honour and incorporate this complex past, the contemporary study of tragedy I undertake here is born of a single observation: America is beset by tragedy.