UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Beyond Completion: Towards a Genealogy of Unfinishable Novels Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7v27f68g Author Wallen, James Ramsey Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ BEYOND COMPLETION: TOWARDS A GENEALOGY OF UNFINISHABLE NOVELS A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in LITERATURE by James Ramsey Wallen March 2014 The Dissertation of James Ramsey Wallen is approved: ________________________________ Professor Wlad Godzich, chair _________________________________ Professor Carla Freccero _________________________________ Professor Jody Greene _____________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by James Ramsey Wallen 2014 Beyond Completion: Towards a Genealogy of Unfinishable Novels By James Ramsey Wallen Introduction: “On Unfinished Works and Unfinishable Novels” (2-32) I. From a Poetics of the Unfinished Work… II. Towards a Prosaics of Unfinishable Novels III. The Plan of the Book Part I: The Modern Novel (33-36) Chapter One: “Pantagruelism and the Perils of Prose” (37-129) 1.1 The Perils of Prose 1.2 “Out of all compass” 1.3 The Pantagruelist Text 1.4 A Brief Digression on Tristram Shandy 1.5 Hermes Trismegistus, God of Prose 1.6 The Tonneau Diogénic 1.7 The Ship and the Bottle 1.8 Continuation (The Quest for Closure) Chapter Two: “The Birth of the Novel from the Death of Don Quixote” (130-210) 2.1 El Quijote’s Roles in the History of the Novel 2.2 The Unity of El Quijote? 2.3 Roman and Novel 2.4 The Chivalric Mode of Incompletion 2.5 The Picaresque Mode of Incompletion 2.6 The Battle for El Quijote: Segundo Tomo vs. Segunda Parte 2.7 Cervantes and the Invention of Proprietary Originality 2.8 The End of Don Quixote Part II: The Modernist Novel (211-213) Chapter Three: “Everything In Its Right Place” (214-250) 3.1 The Encyclopedic Mode(s) of Incompletion 3.2 The Self-De(con)struction of an Encyclopedic Ethos 3.3 Imagining the Sottisier: Bouvard et Pécuchet as Unfinishable Novel iii Chapter Four: “The Immoralist’s Dilemma” (251-310) 4.1 Kafka as Novelist… Is This Modern? 4.2 Der Prozeß of the Decadent Mode 4.3 The True Way of Das Schloß 4.4 Kafka & Co.: A Case Study in the Traffic (Verkehr) of Unfinishedness 4.5 Concluding Fragment: The Immoralist’s Dilemma Chapter Five: “Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften In The Golden Age of Unfinishable Novels” (311-360) 5.1 The Golden Age of Unfinishable Novels 5.2 Progress, Realism, and the Novel 5.3 The Ongoing History of a Peculiarly Modern Text 5.4 MoE’s Critical Reception: A Case Study in Anticipatory Plagiarism 5.5 The Encyclopedic Mode(s) of Incompletion (Redux) Part III: The Postmodern Novel (361-364) Chapter Six: “Unworking Totality” (365-431) 6.1 What Is Meant By Postmodernism? 6.2 Unworking Totality 6.3 The Buch Breaks: Reading MoE’s Changing Relationship To Its Own End 6.4 The Essayistic Mode of Incompletion 6.5 Essaying the Possibilities of Thought: Ethics, Aesthetics, the Novel, Sex 6.6 Writing Fiction in the Margins of Philosophy Chapter Seven: “Beyond Completion” (432-474) 7.1 Beyond Completion: From Unfinishability to Unfinalizability 7.2 History in the Information Age (The Paranoid Mode of Incompletion) 7.3 The Parabola and the Pendulum 7.4 Postscript: Beyond Completion Complete Bibliography (475-504) iv ABSTRACT James Ramsey Wallen “Beyond Completion: Towards a Genealogy of Unfinishable Novels” This dissertation examines strange literary phenomena I call “unfinishable novels,” or novels whose very structure and/or worldview would seem to prohibit the possibility of their own “successful” conclusion. Famous examples include Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, and Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities. Focusing on a canonical and historically diverse selection of Euro- American texts and authors ranging from François Rabelais to Thomas Pynchon, my project not only contributes to the critical literature on my primary texts by examining and contextualizing their “unfinishability” but also suggests a new historiography of the novel by focusing less on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—the zenith of the novel’s cultural and political importance, but also a period dominated by linear plotlines—and more on periods (early modern and twentieth century) in which the status of endings was far more uncertain, thus tracing something like a “backstage history” of the genre. To develop a theoretical-historical framework in which to read these texts— both on their own terms and in the context of the history of the novel—my dissertation puts into practice a “prosaics of unfinishability,” a critical methodology that privileges prose and the novel and attempts to be less weighed down by what I call “the poetic prejudice,” i.e. the assumption that all literary texts worthy of the name should form organically unified totalities. This prejudice has historically dominated the discourse v surrounding unfinished works, which, when they are acknowledged at all, are traditionally described in term’s of an author’s “failure” to achieve perfection. The dissertation is divided into three sections, preceded by an Introduction (“On Unfinished Works and Unfinishable Novels”) that uses Fernando Pessoa’s unfinishable Book of Disquiet to articulate a theory of unfinishable novels, which I define as “novels that can only be finished as unfinished works.” The introduction clarifies the distinction between unfinished works and unfinishable novels, offering a critique of the traditional poetics of the unfinished work and its corollary rhetoric of failure before describing my own “prosaic” methodology and outlining my project. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to begin by thanking my wonderful committee: Jody Greene, paragon of pedagogical excellence and purveyor of straight talk and tough questions; Carla Freccero, who initiated me into graduate studies and who embodies everything I love about UC Santa Cruz; and (above all) Wlad Godzich, the most intelligent human being I have ever met, without whose advice, wisdom, and phenomenal learning this project would never have been possible. Thank you all for your patience. Thanks also to my sisters Kate Wallen and Pam Condor, and to Julian Field, for conversation, competition and support. Amongst my friends and colleagues as a graduate student, thanks to Octavio Carrasco, Laura Cocas, Prema Prabhakar, Terry Solomon-Tilly, and Sophie Rollins, for stimulating conversation and occasional editorial help. Special thanks go to Tim Willcutts, for editorial help and for enduring without complaint the squalor that this project has generated; to Eireene Nealand, whose writings and conversation have been a staple of my intellectual diet for the last nine years, and without whom I never would have made it; to Shawna Vesco, whose presence has immeasurably enriched my final years at UCSC, and whose input and editorial assistance have been invaluable in bringing this project to completion; and finally to Daniel Pratt, my fellow BakhtiNietzschean, who has been with me every step of the way, and on whose couch I was sleeping when (after over a year of wandering the wilderness) I finally managed to transform a vague, impossible idea into a plausible prospectus. vii This dissertation is dedicated to my Mother, in whose lap I learned to love to read, and to my Father, in whose passenger seat I learned to love to argue. viii Ineptitude consists in wanting to conclude. We tell each other: but our base is not fixed; which of the two will be right? I see a past in ruins and a future in embryo; the one is too old, the other too young. Everything is in a state of confusion. But this means wanting only noon or midnight; it means not understanding twilight… Yes, stupidity consists in wanting to conclude. We are a thread and we want to know the pattern. That goes back to those eternal discussions about the decadence of art. Now one spends one’s time telling oneself: we are completely finished, we are at the very end, etc., etc. What mind of any strength—beginning with Homer—has ever come to a conclusion? L’ineptie consiste à vouloir conclure. Nous nous disons: mais notre base n’est pas fixe; qui aura raison de deux? Je vois un passé en ruines et un avenir en germe, l’un trop vieux, l’autre trop jeune, tout est brouillé. Mais c’est ne pas comprendre le crépuscule, c’est ne vouloir que midi ou minuit… Oui, la bêtise consiste à vouloir conclure. Nous sommes un fil et nous voulons savoir la trame. Cela revient à ces éternelles discussions sur la décadence de l’art. Maintenant on passe son temps à se dire: nous sommes complètement finis, nous voilà arrivés au dernier terme, etc., etc. Quel est l’espirit un peu fort qui ait conclu, à commencer par Homère? —Gustave Flaubert, Letter to Louis Bouilhet (September 4, 1850) I leave Sisyphus at the base of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches us the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Je laisse Sisyphe au bas de, la montagne! On retrouve toujours son fardeau. Mais Sisyphe enseigne la fidélité supérieure qui nie les dieux et soulève les rochers. Lui aussi juge que tout est bien.