Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2007 Soliciting desire: the ad-man as narrative negotiation between art, desire, and consumer capitalism in twentieth-century novels Jessica McKelvie Kemp Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Kemp, Jessica McKelvie, "Soliciting desire: the ad-man as narrative negotiation between art, desire, and consumer capitalism in twentieth-century novels" (2007). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 1486. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/1486 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. SOLICITING DESIRE: THE AD-MAN AS NARRATIVE NEGOTIATION BETWEEN ART, DESIRE, AND CONSUMER CAPITALISM IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY NOVELS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Jessica McKelvie Kemp B.A., Drury University, 1998 M.A., University of Rochester, 2000 May 2007 Acknowledgements I would never have thought to embark upon a Ph.D. without the encouragement and support I received from Dr. Peter Meidlinger and Dr. Thomas Austenfeld at Drury College; I give great thanks to both of them for getting me started. Additional thanks are due to Dr. David Bleich who, at the University of Rochester, introduced me to literary theory, demonstrated its importance, and convinced me it was worth learning and practicing. At Louisiana State University, I have had the pleasure of working with a number of professors and fellow graduate students who have helped me to build upon these beginnings. Dr. Rick Moreland and Dr. Ed White have both been excellent teachers of the novel, and I am especially indebted to the insights afforded by Dr. White’s perspicacious use of drawings and diagrams. Dr. Elsie Michie has been extraordinarily giving of her time and talents; her readings have been both generous and rigorous, and have been a tremendous help to me as I sought to identify the broadest strokes of the dissertation. And especially because his passion for ideas is at least as compelling as his formidable knowledge of critical theory, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work with Dr. Patrick McGee. To my fellow graduate students who have become dear friends, I extend the warmest regards; they have done much to create an academic community that is supportive, engaging, and fun. My parents, sister, grandparents and husband have demonstrated unlimited patience and unconditional love which no words of thanks can properly acknowledge. ii Many people have made contributions along the way, but I would not have been able to complete this dissertation without Dr. Michelle Massé’s scholarly rigor, mentorship and persistent care. To her I give countless thanks and deeply-felt appreciation. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………………….ii Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………………...v Introduction: From Advertising the Novel to the Novel of Advertising………………………….1 Chapter 1: The Ad-Man’s Tonic Youth: The (Brief) Commensurability of Desire and Subjectivity in H.G. Wells’s Tono-Bungay ……………………………………………………………….31 Chapter 2: The Ad-Man’s Art, Lost in Advertising: Dreiser’s Tortured “Genius” ………………………………………………………………...113 Chapter 3: Buying In to Selling Out: Frederick Wakeman’s Artless Ad-Man in TheHucksters …………………………………………………………...180 Chapter 4: The Ad-Man as Dystopian Agent: The Failed Marriage of Art and Advertising in Jonathan Dee’s Palladio ………………………………223 Chapter 5: The Ad-Man in Drag: The Future of Art as Female Desire in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition …………………..………………293 Epilogue ………………………………………………………………………………………..344 Vita ……………………………………………………………………………………………..348 iv Abstract My dissertation identifies ways in which novelists have used an ad-man protagonist as means to investigate the social and psychological implications of advertising in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Soliciting Desire takes as its primary subjects H.G. Wells’s Tono-Bungay, Theodore Dresier’s The “Genius,” Frederick Wakeman’s The Hucksters, Jonathan Dee’s Palladio, and William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition and demonstrates that the ad-man character’s particular constellation of traits provides a rich vehicle for fictional explorations of desire and subjectivity as they are formed in relation to ideologies of consumer capitalism and art. Guided by Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin’s theories of cultural/ capitalist relations, building upon Jennifer Wicke’s work on advertising in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fiction, and drawing upon studies of intersections between economics and literature such as those conducted by Martha Woodmansee and Mark Osteen, my dissertation goes on to define the integral role of desire in navigating subjectivity amidst the symbolic orders of modern and postmodern consumer capitalism as they are depicted in these “ad-man” novels. Lacanian concepts of subjectivity and desire are central to my study, as are the ways in which these concepts are refined by Mark Bracher, Slavoj Žižek, and Kaja Silverman, all of whom insist that psychoanalysis has valuable applications extending beyond the individual, into the social and cultural realms. My dissertation finds that the ad-man character in its many manifestations actively represents dilemmas of desire and subjectivity common to each of us living in a late capitalist consumer culture in which advertising has grown from a cottage industry into a basic existential paradigm. Furthermore, my study concludes that the novel is an ideal form for exploring individual and collective engagement with consumer capitalism: within the dialectics of narrative, text, reader and context resides the possibility of analytic discourse. In the ad-man v novels specifically, the potential is for discovery of the ways human desire may be constructed, channeled, or compromised by the dominant fictions of the advertising industry and for allowing such knowledge to inform one’s own re-construction of desire. vi Introduction: From Advertising the Novel to the Novel of Advertising The past century has celebrated, denigrated, and perhaps most consistently, harbored an intense ambivalence towards advertising, its practitioners, its practices, and its ubiquity. Regardless of its debatable qualities, the simple fact of advertising’s tremendous cultural presence – an inescapable presence, according to theorists such as Jean Baudrillard – calls for our attention as literary scholars. Jennifer Wicke contends that, “the centrality of advertisement to modern culture, and its radical reshaping of both literature and ideological production in general, demands complete critical investment: advertising has to be seriously accepted as a formative cultural discourse” (2). The study undertaken and put forth in the following chapters heeds Wicke’s mandate. Soliciting Desire will demonstrate that twentieth-century writers have taken a special interest in the figure of the ad-man as a character whose particular constellation of traits provides a rich vehicle for explorations of desire and subjectivity as they are formed in relation to ideologies of consumer capitalism – ideologies largely structured and supported by practices of advertising. With one foot in the realm of art and the other firmly planted in commerce, the prototypical ad- man is well-versed in the symbolic order of consumer capitalism, yet his character is a creative type, as well; as such, he longs for opportunities to express his visions – but without sacrificing his “rights” as a consumer. The prototypical ad-man is also very “manly”; whether manifest as a male or female character, the fictional ad-man is beholden to powerful patriarchal structures that underwrite the symbolic order of capitalism and define relevant forms of desire and subjectivity. The figure of the ad-man is an ideal character through which to explore, critique, and challenge the industry he represents and the inescapable influence it exerts on each of us. To read the 1 fictional ad-man as an expression of capitalism in the twentieth century is to engage with the ways in which we ourselves are written by advertising. Addressing discourses of advertising is particularly important for studies of the novel. The histories of advertising and the novel touch one another at many points and their respective genres have been deeply influenced by one another. Wicke goes so far as to insist that the genre of the novel cannot be read without an understanding of its relationship to the history and practices of advertising. As she points out in Advertising Fictions: Literature, Advertisement, and Social Reading, “the intertwining of literature and advertising” is the result of the meshing of “two interdependent discourses”; “neither … can be fully read without reference to the other” (2). One compelling reason to insist on reading the novel in its relationship to advertising is that the two genres emerged onto the scene of popular textual discourse literally bound to one another.