SMOAK, SHELBY, Ph.D. Framing the Automobile in Twentieth Century American Literature: A Spatial Approach. (2007) Co-Directed by Dr. Nancy Myers and Dr. Scott Romine, 241 pp. This study examines fictional representations of the automobile in American literature and argues that the American novel subverts a favorable perception of the car. While other approaches have engaged the automobile in critical discussion, I apply Joseph Frank’s spatial theory to propose the automobile as a framed site that recurs throughout texts; this approach allows for a stricter focus on the material automobile in the text and encourages an investigation of the relationship between cars and American culture. The automobile in literature, however, is not a static site, but is dynamic, much in the same manner Roland Barthes theorizes when he argues for opening a text. To highlight the dynamic quality of the textual automobile site, this study focuses on how characters and cars interact in works of American fiction. Specifically, I argue for cars as experiences of violence, sacredness, and consumption. Cars represented as sites of violence involve instances of car fatalities, of premeditated murder, and of a general antagonism toward car technology; cars represented as sites of sacredness involve instances when cars are places of escape and freedom, and where cars are sites of religious idolatry; cars represented as sites of consumption involve instances of when cars are traded, or where cars are places for consuming other goods such as food and beverages. Moreover, particular paradigms predominate in specific periods of American literature, so that in the early decades of the twentieth century, fiction predominantly represents cars as sites of violence; in the middle decades, fiction predominantly represents cars as sites of sacredness; and at the century’s end, fiction predominantly represents cars as sites of sacredness. The American novel employs the paradigms of violence, sacredness, and consumption to subvert a perception that cars are good for American culture. Ultimately, I hope my work will yield new ways of examining literary representations of cultural objects. Additionally, I wish for my work to express the indelible mark the car has left, and is still leaving, upon American culture, especially the American novel. FRAMING THE AUTOMOBILE IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE: A SPATIAL APPROACH by Shelby Smoak A Dissertation Submitted to The Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirement for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2007 Approved by _Nancy Myers_____ Committee Co-Chair _Scott Romine_____ Committee Co-Chair © 2007. Shelby Smoak. To my wife, Kathleen, for all her love and support. ii APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following Committee of the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Co-Chair ______Nancy Myers__________ Committee Co-Chair ______Scott Romine__________ Member ______Keith Cushman_________ _____10 May 2007_____________ Date of Acceptance by Committee _____10 May 2007_____________ Date of Final Oral Exam iii AKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to acknowledge the help and support of the following persons in writing the following work: Nancy Myers, Scott Romine, and Keith Cushman. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER I. FRAMING THE AUTOMOBILE ……................................................................31 II. THE AUTOMOBILE AS A SITE OF VIOLENCE...…………………....……....54 2.1: Introduction……………………………………………………….....54 2.2: The Automobile as a Symbol of Change in Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons ………………………57 2.3: A Novel of Careless Drivers: The Automobile in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby ……………………….....68 2.4: Their Only Possession: The Automobile in Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road …………….………….…......78 2.5: Conclusion…………………………………………………………...91 III. THE AUTOMOBILE AS A SITE OF SACREDNESS……………………….….94 3.1: Introduction……………………………………………………….....94 3.2: The Junker Hudson as the New Family Center in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath ………………....….…..100 3.3: The Essex as Hazel Motes’ Church on Wheels in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood ……………………………....118 3.4: Death by a Model T: Miracle and Divine Intervention in James Agee’s A Death in the Family ……………………….......130 3.5: Conclusion………………………………………….……………....144 IV. THE AUTOMOBILE AS A SITE OF CONSUMPTION.....................................150 4.1: Introduction………………………………………………………..150 4.2: You Are What You Eat—Consumption as a Wasted Event in Harry Crews’ Car ……………………………….…....154 4.3: The Car is Your Life: Consuming Automobiles in John Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich ……………………………….....168 4.4: The World is Your Car: Eric Packer’s Consumption of the White Limousine in Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis……….…..180 4.5: Conclusion…………………………………………………….…...190 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………...……….....196 v Page BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………...…223 vi INTRODUCTION In American life, the car is everywhere, and everywhere Americans value cars. When Charles E. and J. Frank Dumyer introduced their gasoline-powered automobile in 1893, it was already a valuable commodity. They gave the world a motorized chariot which could individually transport humans endless distances with no burden to themselves, a feat usually only relegated to angels and other characters of fantasy. When Henry Ford conceived and introduced the Model T in 1908, the automobile’s value increased as the American lower and especially middle-class population now had affordable access to this vehicle, making manifest man’s technological prowess. Still today, roadways flash in an endless flow of motorized metal, and American homeowners enlarge garages and widen driveways to accommodate this mufflerized deity, the car. The automobile stands as an icon of American genius and ingenuity, an image of freedom and individuality, and an object evidencing man’s Promethean conquest of fire and metal. It is myth made tangible and is an image manifestly valuable. Perhaps no other invention has had a greater social, economic, and cultural effect on Americans than the automobile. Focusing on its economic impact alone, James J. Flink writes in “Automobile,” “The American economy in the twentieth century has been shaped to an amazing degree by the automobile and the automobile industry” (1168). By the 1930s, Antonio Gramsci recognized the automobile’s role in the evolving world, and he questioned the mark that American society and its “mechanical attitudes” would impress upon European culture and economy (“Americanism and Fordism” 302). 1 Gramsci’s choice of “Americanism and Fordism” as his title speaks to Ford’s celebrity status and his influence in the business world. Gramsci’s title also recognizes the primacy of the automobile (and its main mass distributor) in the changing world economy of the early 1930s. In the first half of the twentieth century, the automobile was America’s prized product. In 1926 alone, automobile manufacturers calculated their product’s value at over $3 billion with consumers spending an estimated additional $10 billion on travel (Flink Car Culture 148). Effectively, the car “drove” America to the forefront as a national economic power, and, informed by its unparalleled economic success, this object in literature became representative of something beyond “a self- propelled vehicle” (Oxford English Dictionary). Today, Americans still love their automobiles, and while not as sure a market bet as in the early decades of the twentieth century, the car’s economic power has not abated. According to the 2005 findings of Plunkett Research, Ltd.—a think tank specializing in industry statistics, trends, and in-depth analysis of top companies—consumers bought over eight million automobiles in the United States, earning companies estimated revenue of $714 billion and increasing the number of cars in operation to 238 million. Another source adds that within a year Americans drive approximately 2.5 trillion miles between work and travel (Historical Statistics 5:836), a fact that helps explain the placement of three oil and gas companies in the top ten of Forbes’ list of “The World’s 2000 Largest Publicly Owned Companies” (Plunkett). Based on Forbes data, combined sales revenues 2 of Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and BP tabulate to over $885 billion.1 Moreover, two car-affiliated companies are among the top twenty of Forbes’ “America’s Largest Private Companies”: Enterprise Rent-A-Car and JM Family Enterprises (a company that principally distributes Toyota and Lexus models throughout the Southeast). Across the twentieth century, the automobile has been a potent consumer object. It is an infectious icon both culturally and textually. From its beginnings, the car has been a staple in the American literary text. From Claire’s Gomez-Don in Sinclair Lewis’s Free Air (1919) to Eric Packer’s stretched limousine in Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis (2003), authors have appropriated the automobile for their fiction and have played on readers’ cultural and personal relationships with cars. This study proposes a material-culture approach to the automobile in literature so that a better understanding of the automobile’s role in culture may be revealed. Specifically, this study positions literary representations of the automobile against cultural perceptions and argues that the main effect of literary representations of the automobile is