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The Gospel of Something Or Other Critical Mass Abbott, Paul Joseph (2015) The Gospel of Something or Other / Critical mass. PhD thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/7328/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] THE GOSPEL OF SOMETHING OR OTHER / CRITICAL MASS Paul Joseph Abbott Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Literature) School of Critical Studies College of Arts September 2015 © 2015 Paul Joseph Abbott Abstract This thesis is comprised of two components: a creative work of fiction and a critical analysis of the fiction through a discussion of craft and creative influence. The creative section, the novel The Gospel of Something or Other, is a formally experimental work that explores authenticity – of both narrative and voice – authorial identity, the performativity of grief and sincerity, and the aesthetic function of narratological failure. The critical section of the thesis, Critical Mass, analyses the work of David Foster Wallace and James Wood in relation to the aforementioned fiction, discussing aspects of craft most relevant to the novel: the function of comedy and the function of manipulation. The critical piece investigates the extent to which influence can be identified in the creative process and the unstable relationship between critical interpretation and authorial intent. Table of Contents 8 THE GOSPEL OF SOMETHING OR OTHER CRITICAL MASS 2 INTRODUCTION: POINTS OF VIEW 11 THE FUNCTION OF COMEDY 18 The Fidelity to Unreliability 20 Leaving Out the Important Stuff 22 What Isn’t Water 27 SINCERITY AND MANIPULATION 30 The Allure of the Schmuck 39 Necessary Deceptions 40 Necessary Failures 44 Works Cited Acknowledgements Special thanks to Dr John Coyle and Professor Michael Schmidt for their invaluable support and advice over the last few years, and to the staff and students at the University of Glasgow. Thank you to the Arts & Humanities Research Council and College Scholarship Committee for the award of a postgraduate studentship that made this work possible. And to Tracie Bell The Gospel of Something or Other 8 Part One Chapter One If I’m reading Freud correctly, there’s a problem with having too many television channels. Maybe you disagree, but I think the period of four terrestrial choices was a high point in recent history. We were mostly on the same page in those days. Or at least we knew what page everyone else was on. An example: when I was an adolescent there was an event of real horror and sadness in school, my neighbourhood, even at home (albeit briefly). Two boys close to my age – actually a little younger – kidnapped and murdered a toddler only a couple of miles from where I grew up. They took him from a shopping centre – he was waiting outside a butcher’s for his mother, playing on a small mechanical racing car ride – and led him for several miles along a canal to a remote stretch of train track, where they beat him and stoned him to death. For a while, it felt like the news of the crime was the only thing there was, that the concentration of energies was dedicated solely to this young boy’s suffering, his family’s suffering, and the psychology of the perpetrators. The benefit of perspective, the cult of understanding everything over time, eventually concluded it was not a premeditated act but a moment of waywardness that reflected back onto society. They haven’t been forgiven, exactly, but only really exist these days as grave images: two static, half- formed faces, smiling, ignorant, angels about to fall. Theories, if not reasons: the violence of cinema, nurture over nature, education gone to the dogs. Still, for a little while there was a kind of communal mourning and disbelief that you just don’t get anymore. Everyone watched the same news report at the same time, you just knew. People still get sad but, let’s be honest, it’s not like it used to be IRL. I just had to look up the word ‘aftermath’: turns out it’s originally a kind of agricultural term for the regrowth of grass after harvesting. It’s not the perfect word for my experience but, if I think on it for a while, none ever are. I’ll persevere. In the aftermath of the murder many immature imaginations found focus: in the playground the two boys were devils, cartoon villains to be slain. We shouted over each other the elaborate ways we might’ve stopped the terrible thing, sometimes by persuasion but most often by force, described the imprecise, implausible things we would do to the killers, the tortures we’d inflict. It was our first experience with one-upmanship. I had a particular talent for it, I think, because of the foresight to incorporate local items into 9 the story: the rusty pencil sharpener mounted to Miss Marsh’s desk in 3A; the vice and coping saw in the CDT room. I was specific where others were general. It was a difficult time for me personally, so the attention and praise I received was appreciated. I’ve been advised to begin less frenetically than I’m normally inclined. In one way or another, at one time or another, everyone you’ll meet ahead has told me to calm down, take a moment, compose myself. Everyone but Emily. My failures, both as a comedian and a man, can be traced back to my tendency to assume people are with me, on my side, etc. And I think one my tragedies, despite how hard I resist, is that I’m fated to misjudge a room, whether it’s filled with an audience and I’m up on stage, or if I’m sitting opposite you with nobody else around. And, in case you’re wondering, the reason people get into comedy isn’t because they want to make a human connection or relate to another consciousness. This is a common misconception. It’s not so much the whole ‘tears of a clown’ thing, either, although there’s definitely something in that idiom. Sorry to be a downer, but the real and compelling reason we stand on a stage and whore ourselves for laughs from strangers is another kind of addiction: to pretending there’s no such thing as death. The drug is delusion and the high is an immortality buzz. As these things often go, you end up chasing diminishing returns. So this is all to acknowledge I’ve never been the best opener. Beginnings are infuriatingly open to possibility, which, if I’m still reading Freud correctly, is a problem I don’t face alone. For a long time this story began with the following sentence: “In my mania I wrote a novel.” You never really pick up on your own bombast straight away, but what made me uncomfortable was its disingenuousness: it’s both a tease and a tyrant, a context and tone that isn’t really true. I couldn’t find myself in it. My second opening was “Night has an odd companion, a cool-air silence that belies the truth there is never nothing happening.” This one’s a boy, an exhibitionist: all he wants to do is pull down his trousers and flash his thing at you. But he’s the craven sort: there’s nothing to see but the smooth skin-tone patch of a plastic toy soldier. And the third: “Broken by dew’s weight, the strands of a spider web flirt with the sun while the coffee heats, steaming under the window, storming at the pane.” I think I stole this, in desperation, looking for something catchy and grave, which seems the appropriate register for anything these days. The reason for my difficulty, my failure, is that I know it shouldn’t be me but Emily that opens, for she is both the crux and the conclusion of what follows. I’ve come to understand that some people have a gift that’s less about telling a story than 10 understanding the texture of a word, what it does during the fractions of seconds before your interior dictionary classifies it, when it’s just a sound searching for a memory. It almost doesn’t matter what they say. But you have to be careful with the words and stories of others: interpretation and all. Before I give you Emily I’ll give you everything else. 11 Chapter Two Something that’s rarely noted about the rolling dung beetle is that the dung for which they dedicate the majority of their waking life is almost exclusively the product of animals other than themselves. Maybe this goes without saying, I don’t know, but it struck me as curious when I read about it online—someone in the AOB section of wrestlenow.net, a forum I frequent, posted a link to a short documentary and article about how the beetles live now and their relevance in ancient Egyptian history. There’s all sorts of interesting stuff to be learned from a cursory reading of the lives of the dung beetle – that not all are rollers, that they navigate the world based on the alignment of stars and planets, that there’s such a thing as a ‘burrowing owl’ – but rarely, if ever, does the coleopterist or the enthusiastic amateur pause to ruminate on the essential fact of those little dung balls: it’s the shit of others.
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