PHILIP ROTH and the STRUGGLE of MODERN FICTION by JACK
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PHILIP ROTH AND THE STRUGGLE OF MODERN FICTION by JACK FRANCIS KNOWLES A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) July 2020 © Jack Francis Knowles, 2020 The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Philip Roth and The Struggle of Modern Fiction in partial fulfillment of the requirements submitted by Jack Francis Knowles for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Examining Committee: Ira Nadel, Professor, English, UBC Supervisor Jeffrey Severs, Associate Professor, English, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Michael Zeitlin, Associate Professor, English, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Lisa Coulthard, Associate Professor, Film Studies, UBC University Examiner Adam Frank, Professor, English, UBC University Examiner ii ABSTRACT “Philip Roth and The Struggle of Modern Fiction” examines the work of Philip Roth in the context of postwar modernism, tracing evolutions in Roth’s shifting approach to literary form across the broad arc of his career. Scholarship on Roth has expanded in both range and complexity over recent years, propelled in large part by the critical esteem surrounding his major fiction of the 1990s. But comprehensive studies of Roth’s development rarely stray beyond certain prominent subjects, homing in on the author’s complicated meditations on Jewish identity, a perceived predilection for postmodern experimentation, and, more recently, his meditations on the powerful claims of the American nation. This study argues that a preoccupation with the efficacies of fiction—probing its epistemological purchase, questioning its autonomy, and examining the shaping force of its contexts of production and circulation— roots each of Roth’s major phases and drives various innovations in his approach. This imaginative scrutiny is continually registered in the restless intertextual antagonisms that suspend Roth’s work—engagements and conversations that stretch beyond the injunctions of identity and the tugging inner gravity of the national culture. Tracing Roth’s sustained dialogue with the labile legacies of literary modernism, the following readings explore the range of ways in which the novels actively contest other literary texts, historicizing these encounters in the process. This dissertation complicates the established picture of Roth’s early work and emergence, recovering a writer heavily invested in weighing prominent interpretive claims circulating in the intellectual culture—debates powerfully incubated by the institutional history of the postwar university. It also explores Roth’s continual imbrication in the shifting cultural dynamics of the Cold War, focusing on the crucial importance of the novelist’s work surrounding the Penguin series “Writers from the Other Europe” to the evolving historical and iii political complexity of his own writing. The following analysis shows how Roth’s major novels of the 1990s not only emerge out of these formative contexts and transnational tensions but also reflect the renewed significance of the author’s negotiations with various modernist textual precedents to his ongoing struggle with fictional form. iv LAY SUMMARY This dissertation explores the work of the novelist Philip Roth, analysing a literary career of both considerable controversy and high esteem. Roth has received a significant amount of critical attention. However, efforts to interpret Roth’s fiction have rarely strayed beyond certain key contexts, unpicking the author’s complicated meditations on Jewish identity, a perceived predilection for postmodern experimentation, and, more recently, his imaginative inquiries into the American national claim. Focusing on the inventive ways in which the texts interact with the works of a wide range of authors, “Philip Roth and The Struggle of Modern Fiction” situates Roth more completely in the context of postwar modernism. This study focuses on Roth’s intellectual engagement with other modern writers. But it also places these encounters more fully in their historical contexts, from the institutional history of the postwar university to the shifting cultural tensions of the late Cold War. v PREFACE This dissertation is the original, independent work of the author, Jack Francis Knowles. Material included in the section “Man Can Embody Truth but He Cannot Know It” was first published as “Yeatsian Agony in Late Roth”, Philip Roth Studies, Vol.13, No.2. Fall 2017: 87- 94. Included with permission. Material included in Chapter 3. “Holes in the Fabric” was first published as “‘How the Other Half Lives’: American Pastoral and Roth’s Other Europe”, Philip Roth Studies, Vol. 16, No.1. Spring 2020: 14-32. Included with permission. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary .............................................................................................................................. v Preface........................................................................................................................................ vi Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... ix Dedication ................................................................................................................................... x Introduction: Reconsidering Philip Roth ............................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. The Ruthless Art of Fiction ................................................................................. 28 I. “Arid Terrain” ......................................................................................................... 28 II. Truth, Boundaries, and Boxes ................................................................................. 40 III. Taking Hold ............................................................................................................ 48 IV. “A Weird Textual Consciousness”: The Uneasy Feel of Literary Experience ....... 57 V. The Burdens of Autonomy...................................................................................... 70 VI. An Indecisive Man .................................................................................................. 85 VII. “At Each Other’s Expense” .................................................................................... 92 Chapter 2. The Examined Life ............................................................................................ 109 I. Jocoserious Meditations ........................................................................................ 109 II. As Will: Reading the Body ................................................................................... 116 III. Where Representation Fails .................................................................................. 127 IV. “Nothing More or Less than the Lived Reality That It Was” ............................... 137 V. “Søren Kierkegaard, of All People”: An Unlikely Mentor in Contradiction ........ 147 VI. “The Burden Isn’t Either/Or”: Arguing with Kierkegaard in The Counterlife ..... 162 Chapter 3. Holes in the Fabric ............................................................................................. 190 I. Finding the “Other Europe” .................................................................................. 190 II. “It Was My Own Little Hogarth Press” ................................................................ 201 III. “How the Other Half Lives” ................................................................................. 216 IV. “There Are No Uncontaminated Angels” ............................................................. 227 V. “A Book of Voices” .............................................................................................. 239 VI. “A Writer Always Envies a Boxer” ...................................................................... 257 Chapter 4. Contaminating Modernism ............................................................................... 279 I. “Life Is Unspeakable and to Be Exposed” ............................................................ 279 II. “But Life Is the Great Teacher” ............................................................................ 288 III. The Muse in Dirty Tatters ..................................................................................... 300 IV. “Love’s Bitter Mystery” ....................................................................................... 314 vii V. “Man Can Embody Truth but He Cannot Know It” ............................................. 321 VI. “What Can We Know Even of the People One Lives with Every Day?” ............. 345 Coda: Out of Time ................................................................................................................ 358 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 382 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is the result of many acts of kindness and generosity,