Unfaithful Reading in Modernist Undecidability Lucas H
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University of Miami Scholarly Repository Open Access Dissertations Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010-05-01 Betrayals, Secrets, and Lies: Unfaithful Reading in Modernist Undecidability Lucas H. Harriman University of Miami, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/oa_dissertations Recommended Citation Harriman, Lucas H., "Betrayals, Secrets, and Lies: Unfaithful Reading in Modernist Undecidability" (2010). Open Access Dissertations. 384. https://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/oa_dissertations/384 This Open access is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at Scholarly Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI BETRAYALS, SECRETS, AND LIES: UNFAITHFUL READINGS IN MODERNIST UNDECIDABILITY By Lucas H. Harriman A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the University of Miami in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Coral Gables, Florida May 2010 ©2010 Lucas H. Harriman All Rights Reserved UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy BETRAYALS, SECRETS, AND LIES: UNFAITHFUL READINGS IN MODERNIST UNDECIDABILITY Lucas H. Harriman Approved: _____________________ _____________________ Ranen Omer-Sherman, Ph.D. Terri A. Scandura, Ph.D. Professor of English Dean of the Graduate School _____________________ _____________________ Frank Palmeri, Ph.D. Joel Nickels, Ph.D. Professor of English Professor of English _____________________ Derek Attridge, Ph.D. Professor of English University of York HARRIMAN, LUCAS H. (Ph.D., English) Betrayals, Secrets, and Lies: (May 2010) Unfaithful Readings in Modernist Undecidability. Abstract of a dissertation at the University of Miami. Dissertation supervised by Professor Ranen Omer-Sherman. No. of pages in text. (261) This dissertation presents an argument for the ethical value of a reader’s inability to fully comprehend works by Jorge Luis Borges, G.K. Chesterton, William Faulkner, and Brian O’Nolan (aka Flann O’Brien). Such texts demand creative engagement by the reader which could be described as a necessary betrayal of the text. Viewed in the context of the so-called “ethical turn” in literary theory, the revaluation of infidelity accomplished by such unfaithful reading can foster a greater openness toward the unknown, and ultimately unknowable, other. Similarly, by juxtaposing the work of Faulkner, a canonical modernist writer, with more nontraditional writers such as Chesterton and O’Nolan, I mean to betray the sort of limitations created by employing such categorical terms as “modernism” itself. In an introductory chapter, I use the work of ethical theorist Emmanuel Levinas, as well as the socio-political theory of Zygmunt Bauman and Ernesto Laclau, to develop a theoretical framework for the project, taking some examples from the writings of Borges. My chapter on Chesterton presents The Man Who Was Thursday as a site of multiple betrayals which can awaken the reader to the instability of any fixed notion of identity. I conclude the chapter with a specific show of infidelity in the 1924 Russian adaptation of Chesterton’s novel for the Kamerny theater in Moscow, an intentional “misreading” that reveals aspects of the work glossed over by years of more ostensibly faithful interpretations. My third chapter features a sustained reflection on the ethics of reading Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, a work which stubbornly “keeps its secret,” to use Derrida’s phrasing. Since any reading of this story must be, on a certain level, a betrayal, I discuss the possibilities opened up by resisting the tendency to fix the meaning of such an undecidable work. In my final chapter, I consider the work of O’Nolan as a testimony to the constitutive power of betrayal. In his deconstruction of authorial presence, his Judas-like betrayal of James Joyce, and his provocative 1943 “translation” onto the Dublin stage of the Čapek brothers’ Insect Play, O’Nolan is always unfaithful to his object; however, the revaluation of infidelity posited by this dissertation suggests that his traitorous stance could paradoxically do more justice to the objects of his focus than would a more ostensibly faithful approach. DEDICATION I would like to dedicate this dissertation, firstly, to my wife Diane … iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1) REREADING BETRAYAL IN THE CONTEXT OF POSTMODERN ETHICS ................... 17 Against Commitment in Liquid Times ............................................................ 32 Traitorous Reading........................................................................................... 42 Borges as Exemplar ......................................................................................... 51 2) BETRAYING THE TRUTH IN G.K. CHESTERTON’S THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY .. 64 Nightmarish Undecidability ............................................................................. 68 Gabriel Syme and the Politics of F(r)iendship ................................................. 88 Bolshevist Silliness? ........................................................................................ 109 3) FAULKNER’S TASTE FOR THE SECRET .................................................................... 119 The Company the Bundrens Keep ................................................................... 124 Father Anse on Mount Moriah ......................................................................... 140 Anti-Fascist Permeability................................................................................. 158 The Betrayal of Darl; The Secret of Democracy ............................................. 170 4) BRIAN O’NOLAN AND THE LONG-OVERDUE REHABILITATION OF JUDAS .............. 178 The Slip of the Mask ........................................................................................ 184 Dalkey Archive Fever ...................................................................................... 199 Traditore Traduttore—To Betray is to Translate ............................................ 223 EPILOGUE ...................................................................................................................... 235 WORKS CITED ................................................................................................................ 243 iv INTRODUCTION The most lucid writer finds himself in the world bewitched by its images. He speaks in enigmas, by allusions, by suggestion, in equivocations, as though he moved in a world of shadows, as though he lacked the force to arouse realities, as though he could not go to them without wavering, as though, bloodless and awkward, he always committed himself further than he had decided to do, as though he spills half the water he is bringing us. The most forewarned, the most lucid writer nonetheless plays the fool…. Modern literature … certainly manifests a more and more clear awareness of this fundamental insufficiency of artistic idolatry. – Emmanuel Levinas “Reality and Its Shadow” (13) I don’t think you should try to be loyal to your century or your opinions, because you are being loyal to them all the time. You have a certain voice, a certain kind of face, a certain way of writing, and you can’t run away from them, even if you want to. So why bother to be modern or contemporary, since you can’t be anything else? – Jorge Luis Borges Borges on Writing (51) This project argues for the ethical value of a reader’s encounter with undecidability in fictional narrative. Specifically, I consider literary narrative from the early twentieth- century by G.K. Chesterton, William Faulkner, and Brian O’Nolan (aka Flann O’Brien)—works which emphasize the impossibility of total comprehension—and I claim that such texts demand a crucial level of creativity on the part of the reader.1 Chesterton’s use of the fantastic literary mode, Faulkner’s polyphonic modernist texts, and O’Nolan’s pseudonymity and metafiction all work to reveal the ultimate failure of the literary work to accurately portray lived reality. In other words, they require a reading practice that does something more than simply remain faithful to the text. Viewed in light of the so-called “ethical turn” in literary theory, the revaluation of infidelity 1 “Creativity” in this dissertation should be interpreted in the sense Derek Attridge gives it in The Singularity of Literature, where he emphasizes the extent to which a creative reading always entails an element of betrayal: “A creative reading is … one that, in its striving to do full justice to the work, is obliged to go beyond existing conventions. It is a reading that is not entirely programmed by the work and the context in which it is read, including the psychological character of the reader, even though it is a response to (not simply a result of or reaction to) text and context—and in this sense it might be called a necessarily unfaithful reading” (80). 1 2 accomplished by such unfaithful readings can foster a greater openness toward the unknown, and ultimately unknowable, other than parallel notions of commitment that are often put forward in ethical discourse. To accomplish this revaluation of infidelity, I will