Serial Historiography: Literature, Narrative History, and the Anxiety of Truth
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SERIAL HISTORIOGRAPHY: LITERATURE, NARRATIVE HISTORY, AND THE ANXIETY OF TRUTH James Benjamin Bolling A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2016 Approved by: Minrose Gwin Jennifer Ho Megan Matchinske John McGowan Timothy Marr ©2016 James Benjamin Bolling ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Ben Bolling: Serial Historiography: Literature, Narrative History, and the Anxiety of Truth (Under the direction of Megan Matchinske) Dismissing history’s truths, Hayden White provocatively asserts that there is an “inexpugnable relativity” in every representation of the past. In the current dialogue between literary scholars and historical empiricists, postmodern theorists assert that narrative is enclosed, moribund, and impermeable to the fluid demands of history. My critical intervention frames history as a recursive, performative process through historical and critical analysis of the narrative function of seriality. Seriality, through the material distribution of texts in discrete components, gives rise to a constellation of entimed narrative strategies that provide a template for human experience. I argue that serial form is both fundamental to the project of history and intrinsically subjective. Rather than foreclosing the historiographic relevance of storytelling, my reading of serials from comic books to the fiction of William Faulkner foregrounds the possibilities of narrative to remain open, contingent, and responsive to the potential fortuities of historiography. In the post-9/11 literary and historical landscape, conceiving historiography as a serialized, performative enterprise controverts prevailing models of hermeneutic suspicion that dominate both literary and historiographic skepticism of narrative truth claims and revives an ethics responsive to the raucous demands of the past. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Foremost I would like to thank my dissertation director Megan Matchinske for her unwavering support, friendship, and serial challenges to advance this project. I am profoundly indebted to the members of my dissertation committee, Minrose Gwin, Jennifer Ho, John McGowan, and Timothy Marr; the guidance and encouragement of this group of scholars have made me a better academic and hopefully a better person. My sincerest thanks to all of the faculty in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Department of English and Comparative Literature and Department American Studies for your ongoing feedback on this project. I am particularly grateful for the counsel I received from Reid Barbour, Tyler Curtain, Florence Dore, Connie C. Eble, Randall Kenan, Michelle Robinson, Beverly Taylor, Matthew Taylor, Todd Taylor, and Jane F. Thrailkill. This project was completed with the generous support of a Frankel Dissertation Fellowship from UNC-CH’s Department of English and Comparative Literature, the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education, and a Graduate Research Fellowship from UNC-CH’s Program in Sexuality Studies. During the composition of this work, I have been part of writing groups comprised of inspiring scholars whose feedback and ongoing support proved integral to my project. Many thanks to Kelly Bezio, Sarah Boyd, Angie Calcaterra, Jameela Dallis, Ashley Reed, Robin Smith, and Jenn Williamson for your thoughtful iv responses to drafts of this material. Without the perpetual engagement of some of my best good Judys this project may not exist, so sincerest thanks go to Meagan Blair and Harry Thomas for your friendship. Heath Sledge was a loyal writing companion and a phenomenal editor. Much of my comics studies research is indebted to friends and coworkers at Ultimate Comics in Durham, North Carolina. For those of us working in the popular arts, comics specialty shop employees often serve as research librarians. As such, this project is indebted to Patrick Gill, Thomas Haire, Marta Mickelson, Chuck Mikitin, Jack Pileggi, Jeremy Tarney, Christopher Winfield, and Jenny Valle. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Tommy Lee Edwards, Bo Fader, Brockton McKinney, Tyler Wehrwein, and everyone involved with NC Comicon for providing a dynamic experience that has shaped my research of the popular arts. I would especially like to thank Alan Gill for his infectious love of comics and for including me in numerous popular media events (and providing me a job during the dark-night-of- the-soul period of my graduate education). As I mention in the body of this work, my ethnographic research is dedicated to Matthew J. Smith, whose field study at San Diego Comic-Con International inspired my inquiry into fan communities and the interactions among consumers and producers of media. I would be remiss not to thank Patsy Arnold, Grace Bradshaw, Darinda Hood, Preston Mitchell, and Joan Short for setting me on this path many years ago. I would also like to thank Rita Felski whose scholarship perpetually galvanizes my own work. I am forever indebted to Richard Warner for our serialized discussion of drama and performance. v Lauren Du Graf has been a stalwart supporter, friend, and colleague throughout this project; this work is shaped by our dialectic conversations. My deepest gratitude also goes to Sarah Allen whose feedback, encouragement, and humor kept me focused throughout this project and the last fifteen years of our friendship. I would like to dedicate this project to my parents James E. and Nancy Bolling, without whose resolute support this work would certainly not exist. And finally to my husband Jon Cochran who has read countless drafts, suffered through years of recursive accounts of my research, and grounded me in material reality on a daily basis, this work is also for you. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………vi INTRODUCTION: THE LAW OF SERIALITY……………………………………..1 CHAPTER 1: SERIAL HISTORIOGRAPHY: NARRATIVE, TRUTH, AND THE IRREDUCIBLE ELEMENTS OF THE PAST……………………………7 CHAPTER 2: NARRATIVE RE-VISION: THE ENGINE OF SERIAL HISTORIOGRAPHY…………………………………………...……………...……..52 The Gutter………………………………………………………………...…...54 On the Deadness of the Past………………………………...…………......…83 We Need to Talk About Matt…………………………………….………….101 CHAPTER 3: ON THE MAKE: TRUMAN CAPOTE, SERIALITY, AND THE PERFORMANCE OF CELEBRITY……………......………………….118 CHAPTER 4: “WHERE THE STORY LIVES”: BIG STONE GAP AND THE SERIALITY OF PLACE……………………….…………………….…149 REFERENCES…………………………………………………...….………………191 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1- The polylogic text…..……………………………………………………35 Figure 1.2- Martha Wayne’s pearls in Batman #1 (1940), The Dark Knight Returns (1986), Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), the animated adaptation of Batman: Year One (2011), the television series Gotham (2014-), and the animated film Batman: The Dark Returns Part 1 (2012)..……………………………..……41 Figure 2.1- The universality of cartoon imagery by Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics……………………………………55 Figure 2.2- McCloud discusses the reader’s agency in Understanding Comics ………………………………..…..………………56 Figure 2.3- The negotiation of time, space, and narrative in McCloud’s Understanding Comics.……………………….………………57 Figure 2.4- Images of Spider-Man’s unmasking from the cover of Civil War Front Line #2, the interior of Civil War Front Line #2, the interior of Civil War, and the cover of Civil War The Amazing Spider-Man…………….…………69 Figure 4.1- Roadside sign welcoming visitors to Big Stone Gap…….……………151 Figure 4.2- Photo collage of Big Stone Gap businesses.………..…………………153 Figure 4.3- Photo of Lonesome Pine painting in window of a Big Stone Gap business. ………………………………..…………………171 Figure 4.4- Photo of sign welcoming visitors to John Fox, Jr. Museum and photo of exterior of John Fox, Jr. Museum……………….…173 Figure 4.5- Promotional brochures for 1964 and contemporary productions of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine Outdoor Drama. ……………………………………………….……………175 Figure 4.6- Advertisement for June Tolliver House and Craft Shop and photo of the June Tolliver House in 2010.……….…………….………176 Figure 4.7- Photos of Ben Bolling with Jack McClanahan in costume as Worley Olinger on the set of Big Stone Gap and Jack McClanahan, John Benjamin Hickey, and viii Patrick Wilson on the set of Big Stone Gap.……………………….…….…185 Figure 4.8- Photo of banner above L. J. Horton Florist in downtown Big Stone Gap ………………………………..…………………186 Figure 4.9- Cover of “The Big Stone Gap Map” and inside listing of area locations mentioned in Trigiani’s novel Big Stone Gap……………………………………………..…………………187 Figure 4.10- Photos of the “real” Carmine’s, empty Big Stone Gap gas station, and conversion of the gas station to Big Stone Gap set piece Carmine’s.……………………………………...…189 Figure 4.11- Screencap of Adriana Trigiani’s Facebook post telling the design story of the set piece Carmine’s and photo of R.W. Lindholm Service Station in Cloquet, Minnesota…………………..………………………………..………………190 ix INTRODUCTION: THE LAW OF SERIALITY As I finished drafting this project, Walt Disney Studios released Star Wars: Episode VII- The Force Awakens. At the time of this writing, the movie has generated global box office revenue approaching two billion U.S. dollars, becoming the third highest-grossing film of all time (McClintock). The Force Awakens has permeated the marketplace with apps, action figures, clothing, video games, comics, fan-generated content, and more things than I can begin to account for here. In the contemporary moment, I can think of few texts that are more