The New Yorker and Canadian Short Story Writers
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 6-30-2014 12:00 AM Transnational Conversations: The New Yorker and Canadian Short Story Writers Nadine Fladd The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. Manina Jones The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Nadine Fladd 2014 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the American Literature Commons, American Material Culture Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Visual Studies Commons Recommended Citation Fladd, Nadine, "Transnational Conversations: The New Yorker and Canadian Short Story Writers" (2014). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 2425. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2425 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TRANSNATIONAL CONVERSATIONS: THE NEW YORKER AND CANADIAN SHORT STORY WRITERS (Thesis format: Monograph) by Nadine Louise Fladd Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Nadine Fladd 2014 ii Abstract This dissertation explores The New Yorker magazine's role in shaping the Canadian short story, the contributions of Canadian authors to the magazine, and the aesthetic and ideological implications of transnational literary production. Using archival evidence, it explicates the publication histories of stories by Morley Callaghan, Mavis Gallant, and Alice Munro, as well as these authors' relationships with their editors at The New Yorker, in order to demonstrate some of the ways that Canadian literature emerged out of, as well as contributed to, North American transnational contexts. This project uses the work of textual studies scholars, and applies theories of literary collaboration to conceptualize the power dynamic between each author and his or her editors and its relationship to the material history of The New Yorker as a for profit endeavor. In the process, it attempts to negotiate the competing discourses of North American studies and Canadian literary nationalism, positing a correlation between the ways that these authors negotiate their relationships to place and nationalism in their work and the ways in which they react to the idea of giving up authorial control in their dealings with The New Yorker. Despite scholars' recognition that Canadian writing has long been in conversation with the literatures of other nations, until now no studies have attempted to delineate the nature and significance of transnational exchange in the development of the contemporary short story—a form often considered the premier genre of Canadian fiction. The study of these three authors together, whose publications represent discrete moments in the history of The New Yorker, offers a preliminary history of the impact of the intersection of transnationalism and collaboration on the Canadian short story, and the ways that these individual authors' conceptions of place and national identity inflect, or are reflected in, their approaches to collaborative writing practices. Keywords The New Yorker; New York; Canadian literature; American literature; transnationalism; nationalism; North American studies; cosmopolitanism; collaboration; multiple authorship; cultural production; editing; revision; Alice Munro; Morley Callaghan; Mavis Gallant; William Maxwell; Harold Ross; Charles McGrath; Katharine White; short story iii Acknowledgments Patricia Sullivan argues that "the intellectual qualities necessary for discovery, invention, and insight have long been perceived as properties of an individual knower rather than those of a collective subject" ("Revising the Myth of the Independent Scholar"12). In contrast, this dissertation, like the texts it studies, is covered in the fingerprints of the many hands that helped it to develop and evolve. I would like to thank, first and foremost, my supervisor, Manina Jones, for her unwavering support and encouragement. This project is a more subtle, nuanced thing than it would have been without her attention to detail, her intellectual rigor, and her obsession with the "track changes" function. Whenever I handed her a draft that was rough and full of half-formed ideas, Manina always managed to pick a kernel of substantive scholarship out of the mess and set me on the right track again. Perhaps more importantly, she is a skilled practitioner of the psychology of positive reinforcement. Manina has a reassuring way of making finding a clearer focus and tackling yet another round of revisions sound like a task that is not just possible, but pleasurable. Her enthusiasm, and ability to see the "finish line" in the distance before I could, were invaluable. My heartfelt thanks go also to David Bentley. It was Professor Bentley who first pointed out that both Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant had been publishing their stories in The New Yorker for some time, and that there might be something to a project that attempted to define what makes a New Yorker story. The important questions he posed in his responses to my drafts forced me to think through my assumptions in productive ways. I have also appreciated, and benefitted from, his keen editorial eye. Thanks also to Allison Conway and Russell Poole for their individual contributions to earlier versions of my work on Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant, and to my examiners – Donna Pennee, Ian Rae, Kate Stanley, and Lorraine York – for helping me to think through what this project might look like in the future. Thank you to Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, and Barry Callaghan for allowing me to quote from the archival material that is the foundation of this dissertation, and to Aquascutum for allowing me to reprint their advertisement. iv This project could not have been completed without the institutional and financial support of The UWO Department of English, the UWO School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program. I am grateful for the funding that made the trips to New York City, Calgary, Ottawa, and Toronto necessary for this project possible. I am especially thankful to Leanne Trask for shepherding me through many administrative hurdles, and cheerfully answering the million-and-one annoying questions I have asked her over the years. I have been lucky to find a vibrant, supportive intellectual community among my colleagues at Western. Thanks to Tina Northrup, Mandy Penney, Kara Kennedy, David Hickey, Rebecca Campbell, Stephanie Oliver, Jenna Hunnef, Alicia Robinet and many others for your friendship and conversation from the very beginning. Thanks to Elan Paulson, Sarah Pesce, Erica Kelly and Brooke Pratt for being friends and mentors. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Sarah Picton, Stephanie Cryer, Melissa Miller, and Heather Walton, my cheerleaders and second family. Thanks to my brothers, Matthew and Adam, and my parents, Dawn and Ken, for helping me to move so many times over the years, visiting me, feeding me, housing me, and loving me. Thanks also to Aunt Liz and Uncle Rick for your generous hospitality in Calgary. My final (but not insignificant) thanks go to James Dunne: for finding Morley Callaghan's New Yorker Stories, for keeping me accountable, for putting up with the dissertation-induced freak-outs, and for believing (perhaps more than I did) that I would, one day, finally, finish this thing. v Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... vi List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................. 1 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 A Brief History of The New Yorker ........................................................................ 6 1.2 The Short Story in North America .......................................................................... 9 1.3 An Intervention in North American Studies ......................................................... 16 1.4 Collaborative Writing and Shifting Conceptions of Authorship .......................... 27 1.5 Morley Callaghan, Mavis Gallant, and Alice Munro in The New Yorker ............ 36 Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................... 51 2 Morley Callaghan as Literary "Heavyweight": Modernism and Contingencies of Cultural Value .............................................................................................................. 51 2.1 Revis(it)ing Modernism: