ART/WORK: WHITE-COLLAR CREATIVITY, 1960-1970 Ben Rogerson A dissertation submitted to the faculty of 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 2013 Approved by: Robert Cantwell Florence Dore Gregory Flaxman John McGowan Thomas Reinert © 2013 Ben Rogerson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ! ii! ABSTRACT Ben Rogerson: Art/Work: White-Collar Creativity, 1960-1970 (Under the direction of Gregory Flaxman) My dissertation examines mid-twentieth century American art that poses artistic autonomy against the drudgery of white-collar work. Employed in increasing numbers in the cultural industries after World War II, artists feared that they were becoming conformist breadwinners rather than independent bohemians. Translating these concerns into crises of form, the artworks that I study present themselves as if they were produced under the conditions of managerial capitalism – film editing that follows corporate logics of efficiency, for instance, or novels that reduce dialogue to bureaucratic formulae. To resolve such crises, these artworks imagine new forms of creativity liberated from the workaday world. I argue, however, that these artists come to realize that their valorization of artistic independence is not opposed to the economic values reshaping midcentury American labor but is, in fact, derived from them; their celebrations of flexibility and self-direction, in other words, make them prototypes for modern “no collar” workers who are freed from the traditional nine-to-five office grind at the peril of becoming disposable workers. Over the course of four chapters, I cover artists working in four different media who recognize the costs of the new work arrangements: Billy Wilder celebrates Hollywood independent production in The Apartment, only to lament workers’ disempowerment in his later films; Richard Yates’s novels reassess the ethic of artistic suffering once entrepreneurial, “literary” publishing imprints appropriate the rhetoric of risk; John Berryman’s poetry volume ! iii! The Dream Songs comes to understand foundation fellowships as inducements to self- exploitation; Lee Friedlander embraces photography commissions at the expense of career stability. Ultimately, I contend that these artists—ostensibly free agents—anticipate the precarious laborers who inhabit a neoliberal world of contingent work arrangements, institutional distrust, and vast economic inequality. ! iv! To my parents, Andrew and Elizabeth Rogerson. ! v! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My experience in graduate school has benefited from friendships with my peers. I’d like to single out a few of them for special thanks: Erin Branch, for conversation on so many tedious bus rides to and from Duke, and between classes at UNC; Nick Gaskill, for laughs and critical discussions alike; and Will Nolan, for teaching me how to watch films. The Department of English and Comparative Literature has provided a robust intellectual environment, as well as generous financial support for conferences and seminars. In the fall of 2012, a Frankel Dissertation Fellowship allowed me to concentrate on writing and scholarship. This project benefited greatly from the assistance of an outstanding committee, as well as from other faculty members. Jay Garcia and Eric Downing aided in the initial development of the project. Eliza Richards’s instruction, as well as her helpful comments, reshaped the essay on poetry. My committee members were no less helpful. John McGowan’s reminder that the perfect is the enemy of the finished – at least as far as dissertations are concerned – has served as a mantra that curtails my more obsessive writing tendencies. In countless conversations, Tom Reinert has listened patiently to half-baked conjecture before providing incisive and useful responses; his willingness to read and comment on essays has been irreplaceable. Furthermore, his practical suggestions about sentimentalism and cliché altered the course of the project for the better. Robert Cantwell has been an unyielding source of encouragement, believing in the viability of both the project and the critic responsible for it. But this encouragement is always inflected with a healthy skepticism that pushes me to clarify my stakes vis-à-vis his deep historical understanding. Florence Dore has provided an invaluable introduction to the debates ! vi! shaping post-45 criticism. Her example, and her tireless efforts on behalf of her graduate students, has been instrumental to my professionalization. Gregg Flaxman’s impact on my academic development is inestimable. He has stewarded me throughout the graduate process – pressing and cajoling a quiet, unprepared first-year graduate student into a slightly less quiet and slightly better prepared ninth-year student. More seriously, he has guided this project since its inception. In the project’s early stages, he dispensed harsh medicine, shredding the drafts and re-drafts that needed shredding. But in the process, he created the intellectual tension that prodded me to rethink and rewrite this project. Much to my surprise, his unflagging assurance that writing and thinking do get easier – in a good way – has come true. But we’ll probably never see eye-to-eye about NBA player movements. I would like to thank my mother, Elizabeth, for her unwavering support. I would not have attended graduate school, much less finished a dissertation, without the lifelong encouragement and love provided by her and my father, Andrew. Finally, Elissa Zellinger deserves thanks for suffering my incessant prattling, “all-star freakouts,” and grating pessimism. She’s read my writing more than anyone, so I’ll keep this mercifully short. Although I entered graduate school to get a degree, I’m much happier (and better off) leaving with a partner and best friend. ! vii! TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: THE ARTISTIC CRITIQUE…………………………….……………...…...1 CHAPTER 1: WILDER’S “MENSCH”: UNITED ARTISTS AND THE CRITIQUE OF FORDISM……………………………………………………...…….................22 CHAPTER 2: WRITING AS SACRIFICIAL LABOR: LITERARY IMPRINTS AND THE FICTION OF RICHARD YATES...………………….………...............50 CHAPTER 3: GOING “WICKED & AWAY”: WRITING DREAM SONGS IN THE AGE OF FELLOWSHIPS……………………………….…………96 CHAPTER 4: LEE FRIEDLANDER AND PHOTOGRAPHY’S BELATED RETURN TO THE OFFICE……………………………………………................124 CONCLUSION: TOWARDS A CONSTRUCTIVE CRITIQUE……………….……………..172 ! WORKS CITED……………………………………………………………………………......181 ! ! ! viii! INTRODUCTION: THE ARTISTIC CRITIQUE This dissertation investigates 1960s American film, poetry, fiction, and photography that define artistic autonomy in opposition to the routines of bureaucratic white-collar work. After World War II, midcentury artists increasingly found “white-collar” employment in workplaces such as universities, Hollywood studios, publishing houses, public relations firms, and mass- circulation magazines. Paid to perform mental labor that they derided as routine, midcentury artists often depicted the stable careers, hierarchical management, and staid institutional culture of the corporate workplace as stultifying, if not as antithetical, to art. However, emphasizing the “work” in these midcentury artworks demonstrates that they are not only exercises in asserting artistic autonomy, but that they also develop hypotheses about working autonomy as well. Indeed, the image of the artist as an ideal worker has become ubiquitous; the same characteristics that conferred integrity on the artist—say, resistance to routines and commitments to creativity— have become standard operating procedure for today’s worker in the advertising agencies, internet startups, and graphic design firms that typify the contemporary “no-collar” creative 1 industries. Thus, this project ultimately argues that these artistic critiques of midcentury white- collar work produce a genealogy of the post-Fordist work arrangements that underscore contemporary notions of creative and professional work. But in an increasingly market-oriented society, the “new romance” with creative work obscures new antagonisms that are perhaps more intense, if not more insidious, than those associated with the white-collar routines and vertical corporations at midcentury (Fraser, “Feminism” 109). By deriding the midcentury workplace, midcentury artists advanced the seemingly humane values of the contemporary workplace— ! 1! values such as flexibility, creativity, and self-direction—that have been used to legitimate precarious and contingent work arrangements, to collapse social welfare, and to usher in radical uncertainty about the future. Yet this dissertation argues that these same artists, and these same artworks, provide a flashpoint at which to re-imagine forms of creativity that recognize the importance of robust institutions, as well as respond to calls for economic justice. This project engages these complex issues by examining artworks that exaggerate white- collar work into the basis for what the contemporary social geographer David Harvey calls a “total way of life” (“Fordism” 135).2 As we will see, the idea of a total way of life abstracts from the complex and concrete institutions, habits, and norms that sustained Fordism, a mode of capital accumulation and social regulation regnant in the United States between 1945 and 1973. In the total way of life, bureaucratic organizations—if not a single monolithic Organization— threaten to subjugate social existence in its entirety.