The United States As Seen Through French and Italian Eyes
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
FANTASY AMERICA: THE UNITED STATES AS SEEN THROUGH FRENCH AND ITALIAN EYES by MARK HARRIS M.A., The University of British Columbia, 1992 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Programme in Comparative Literature) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April 1998 © Mark Robert Harris, 1998 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada DE-6 (2/88) - i i - Abstract For the past two decades, scholars have been reassessing the ways in which Western writers and intellectuals have traditionally misrepresented the non-white world for their own ideological purposes. Orientalism, Edward Said's ground-breaking study of the ways in which Europeans projected their own social problems onto the nations of the Near East in an attempt to take their minds off the same phenomena as they occurred closer to home, was largely responsible for this shift in emphasis. Fantasy America: The United States as Seen Through French and Italian Eyes is an exploration of a parallel occurrence that could easily be dubbed "Occidentalism." More specifically, it is a study of the ways in which French and Italian writers and filmmakers have sought to situate the New World within an Old World context. "Among the (More Advanced) Barbarians" (a.k.a. Chapter One) examines the continuities and discontinuities of French travel writing in America from the days of the Jesuits to the heyday of the existentialists. Certain motifs and idees fixes—the uniqueness of American racism; the "magic" of New York—are first identified and then examined. "A Meeting of the Mafias" (Chapter Two) is more cosmopolitan in scope, tracing the ways in which French, American, and Italian crime fiction have historically influenced each other, as well as the relationship of the policier to differing notions of the nation-state. "The Ruins of Rome" (Chapter Three) demonstrates how Italian intellectuals have looked to the United States for new World Solutions to Old World problems. This chapter encompasses two major sub-themes: the positive possibilities for Italy of "Fordismo" (the American industrial model) and American literature (which was believed to promote political, as well as cultural, liberty). "Lurching Towards the Millennium" picks up the threads of the first three chapters and places them in the contemporary context of globalization, a process which threatens to replace the hegemony of the nation state with the omnipresence of corporate power. The cultural model of Quebec is introduced at this point as a New World/Old World paradigm that embodies the chimerical contradictions of a globe on the brink of a new millennium. -ii i- Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Introduction 1 CHAPTER I Among the (More Advanced) Barbarians 11 CHAPTER II Mid-Atlantic Melodrama; or, A Meeting of the Mafias 91 CHAPTER III The Ruins of Rome 194 CHAPTER IV Slouching Towards the Millennium 243 Conclusion 344 Bibliography 362 Appendix I Who's Afraid of Jerry Lewis? 384 Appendix II Pity for John Wayne 389 Appendix III Hypocrisy American Style 392 - i v - Acknowledgements As John Donne almost said, no graduate student is an island—which is to say, this Ph.D. dissertation could not have been completed without the aid of a great many people. First of all, I would like to thank the Killam Foundation, the federal government, and the UBC funding agencies for the generous financial help they provided during the writing of this thesis. Secondly, I would like to thank my doctoral committee for the unique and varied insights with which they broadened and enriched my work. Dr. Marguerite Chiarenza, the committee's chair, served as a cool and calming voice of reason when things seemed most hopeless, as well as an eagle-eyed proofreader. Dr. Steven Taubeneck proved equally knowledgeable about university procedure, and made sure that I didn't wander too far afield from my central point. Dr. Patricia Merivale's vast erudition, meanwhile, provided me with an endless supply of pertinent literary leads. I would also like to thank Professor George McWhirter and the students in his translation class for their helpful suggestions in regard to the English-language renderings of the dissertation's appendices. Dr. Eva-Marie Kroeller's contribution should likewise not be under-valued, since she initiated me into the mysteries of Comparative Literature and introduced me to two committee members. Dr. Thomas Salumets, her worthy successor as program head, proved to be no less helpful. I would also like to thank the library staffs of the Pacific Cinematheque and the Italian Cultural Institute for granting me access to out-of-print texts which would otherwise have been extremely difficult to obtain. Similarly, my appreciation extends to the helpful folks at Manhattan Books who kept me regularly supplied with the latest French and Italian tomes. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Carola Ackery, who stood by me during the months following my nearly fatal automotive accident in April, 1997. If not for her selfless care, it would have taken much longer than it did for this dissertation to get back on track. Consequently, it is to her that this project is gratefully dedicated. 1 TNTRODUCTION In the 73 volumes of The Jesuit Relations, there is one passage that stands out from all the others. Amid endless accounts of pagan souls lost and won, of the hardships and torments endured by Christian missionaries in the land of the heathen, of the endless perfidies committed by French drunks and English Protestants, there is a single description that owes more to the fantastic tradition of Herodotus and John Mandeville than it does to the dispassionate, hardheaded journals of itinerant monks, merchants, soldiers and sea captains. "[Les] deux monstres," spotted by Father Pierre Marquette, SJ, during the course of a seventeenth-century river journey in the American Southwest, "ont des Cornes en teste Comme des cheveils; un regard affreux, des yeux rouges, une Barbe comme d'un tygre, le corps couuert d'ecailles, et le queue si Longue qu'elle fait tout le tour du corps passant par dessus la teste et retournant entre les jambes elle se termine en queue de Poisson" (The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Vol. 59 140). As we shall see in Chapter One, many of the Jesuits' letters to their religious superiors were written in a style that seems to anticipate the anthropological tone of Claude Levi-Strauss's Tristes tropiques. Even so, while reading these texts it is important to bear in mind that even the clearest-eyed observations leave room for monsters. Proto-ethnology, zoology, and botany are never far removed from the realm of magic and wonder. Fantasy America: The United States as Seen Through French and Italian Eyes is predicated on this peculiar split in human consciousness. 2 It takes as its starting point the idea that there is an element of magical thinking in the national perception of other societies. If French and Italian artists and intellectuals did not impose upon the economic colossus of the New World the same humiliating prejudices and misrepresentations which—as Edward Said so eloquently complains in Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism—expansionist Europe projected onto its non-white colonies, the object of their observation was nonetheless characterized by otherness rather than by any "genetic" points of cultural similarity. In other words, America was always seen as something larger than Europe or as something smaller; it could be "inferior" or "superior". What it could not be was the same. National history, local customs, and frustrated wishes always impinge on collective distortions rooted in psychological projection. Probably the only peoples immune to this cultural debility are those whose extreme geographical isolation blinds them to the existence of other nations and other mores.The three countries covered by this study obviously do not fall into this exceedingly rare category, although they do enjoy differing degrees of otherness and affinity. French and Italian, for instance, are both Latin-based languages, while the structure of English owes most to the ancient Germanic tongues. On the other hand, both French and English are, in Gilles Deleuze's sense of the term, "imperialist" languages, while Italian is not. Even so, it should not be forgotten that Latin, the language of ancient Italy, was once the universal tongue of the Pax Romana, and must therefore be ranked as the Western World's first imperialist system of discourse (if—on the basis that it was spoken mainly in Asia Minor—one does not count Hellenic Greek). 3 As it is with language, so is it with most things. While Franco- American sociocultural affiliations can more often be perceived than their Italo-American counterparts, these comparisons are often contradictory and ambiguous. For every conclusion reached, one could have arrived at a counter-conclusion which was almost as sound. What's more, the ties of influence and observation do not always flow in a bilateral direction. In societies that every day grow more global and less tribal—a description which currently encompasses all but a few isolated communities in Africa and Asia—increasingly complex ideograms are needed to properly explain the flow of progression/regression.