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Impersonating the Witness: What Testimonial Fiction Can Teach Us About Testimony

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Impersonating the Witness: What Testimonial Fiction Can Teach Us About Testimony IMPERSONATING THE WITNESS: WHAT TESTIMONIAL FICTION CAN TEACH US ABOUT TESTIMONY By ERIC J. DOISE A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2010 1 © 2010 Eric J. Doise 2 To Saara: You can read me anything In memory of Spot 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For her sacrifice and patience, both of which were indispensable to the completion of this project, I would like to thank Saara Raappana. I would also like to thank the director of this dissertation, John Leavey, for his intellectual rigor and graciousness, traces of which can be found throughout this work. The same can be said of my readers, Kenneth Kidd, Dragan Kujundzic, and Maureen Turim, each of whose contributions made this dissertation possible. My parents, Pat and Charlotte Doise, with their life-long dedication to all areas of my education, deserve at least as much credit as I do. I have been and am fortunate to have two older brothers, Corey and Jason Doise, who have always set high standards that I have felt compelled to reach. The additional support of their wives and children has been a great source of strength as has the encouragement provided by the Raappana, Dau, and Beeler families. For their friendship, much needed throughout this process, I would like to thank Nathan Norsworthy, Josh Lesage, Reynolds LeBlanc, DH Thaggard, DW Thomas, and Matt and Jamie Miles. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 1 FILM AS TESTMONY: ADAPTATION AND THE CONDITIONS OF TESTIMONY ............................................................................................................. 9 Adaptation as Testimony ........................................................................................ 19 From Two, One ....................................................................................................... 23 Adaptation as Translation ....................................................................................... 33 Film as Simulation and Deception .......................................................................... 43 Testimony as Prophecy .......................................................................................... 52 2 UNEQUIVOCALLY UNEQUIVOCAL: SEXTON‘S POEMS AS TESTIMONY ......... 57 Distinguishing Between Autobiographical Genres .................................................. 60 Traditional Confessional Criticism ........................................................................... 67 Wordsworth and Autobiographical Poetry ............................................................... 71 Anne as Witness ..................................................................................................... 76 Incestuous Sex(ton) ......................................................................................... 76 Little orphan Anne ............................................................................................ 89 Image and self .................................................................................................. 93 3 A BIT OF TESTIMONIAL MISCHIEF: WITNESS AS DOPPELGÄNGER IN OPERATION SHYLOCK ....................................................................................... 103 Pipik as Reader .................................................................................................... 115 Philip‘s Echo ......................................................................................................... 122 No There There .................................................................................................... 130 4 THE SADNESS OF (NOT) SEEING: TRANSLATION AND TESTIMONY IN EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED ......................................................................... 134 Two Readings of Benjamin ................................................................................... 143 Illuminating the Origin‘s Absence .......................................................................... 147 Reason for Hope ................................................................................................... 159 5 ―ALL FICTION‖: TESTIMONY AND SIMULATION IN RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH 166 The Precession as Procession ............................................................................. 169 The Plague as Prototype ...................................................................................... 173 Novel as Testimony .............................................................................................. 177 5 Novel as Fiction .................................................................................................... 184 Novel as Simulation .............................................................................................. 186 Testimony as Simulation ....................................................................................... 198 6 HONEST LIES AND THE HONEST LIARS WHO TELL THEM: DECEPTION IN TIM O‘BRIEN‘S THE THINGS THEY CARRIED AND PHILIP ROTH‘S DECEPTION ......................................................................................................... 202 The Truth as Lie .................................................................................................... 210 Negation as Lie as Truth ....................................................................................... 214 Testimony and Deceit ........................................................................................... 217 They Carried ......................................................................................................... 221 Caught in a Lie ...................................................................................................... 232 7 BEFORE ―AFTER AUSCHWITZ‖: CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD‘S TESTIMONIAL FICTION AS PROPHECY ............................................................ 242 The Muselmann as the True Witness ................................................................... 249 Testimony as Archive............................................................................................ 254 Archive/Testimony as Prophecy ........................................................................... 261 Spectrality of the Archive/Testimony ..................................................................... 268 Spectral as Necessity ........................................................................................... 274 8 A CONCLUSION TO COME ................................................................................. 278 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................... 292 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 299 6 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy IMPERSONATING THE WITNESS: WHAT TESTIMONIAL FICTION CAN TEACH US ABOUT TESTIMONY By Eric J. Doise May 2010 Chair: John Leavey, Professor of English Major: English This project examines American literary texts produced primarily after World War II and an American film that I define as testimonial fiction because they feature characters who share the writer‘s name, narratives based on the authors‘ lives, and texts presented as a testimony. These texts are read through the lens of deconstruction and psychoanalysis, leading to a two-fold conclusion: (1) a fictional text is free from the rigid and ―unrealistic‖ demands of historical accuracy that often accompany testimony; and (2) because of their very fictionality, these texts reveal the testimony‘s conditions in a manner the latter cannot. The work opens with an examination of Adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman, exploring how our understanding of film can be particularly useful in setting out testimony‘s collective production, performance, and futurity. The following chapters develop concepts introduced in this section, beginning with an investigation of Anne Sexton‘s poems that utilize a speaker named Anne or some variation thereof, showing the necessity and complexity of understanding the witness in testimony as connected to yet different from the ―real‖ person he or she represents. Next, Philip Roth‘s use of a doppelgänger in Operation Shylock highlights the multiplicity 7 of the speakers and therefore the distance between them and the author. The fourth chapter, an analysis of Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Everything Is Illuminated, finds testimony and translation to be rootless because they precede the original event or text, respectively, they build on. In the fifth chapter, the technological simulation found in Philip K. Dick‘s Radio Free Albemuth expands this rootlessness to reality by establishing the simulated reality that texts produce. The penultimate chapter identifies the deception and fictionality of testimony as revealed by Roth‘s Deception and Tim O‘Brien‘s The Things They Carried forming the reality that their respective texts are based on despite their speakers‘ claims that they report it. Finally, the prophecies in Christopher Isherwood‘s Goodbye to Berlin and Prater Violet show that testimony‘s primary concern is
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