In Formal Contexts: the Paratextual Features of Historiographic Metafiction
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In Formal Contexts: The Paratextual Features of Historiographic Metafiction By Keith Kirouac, B.A. A Thesis submitted to the Department of English California State University Bakersfield In Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Masters of English Fall 2015 Copyright By Keith Laurien Kirouac 2015 In Formal Contexts: The Paratextual Features of Historiographic Metafiction By Keith Kirouac This thesis or project has been accepted on behalf of the Department of English by their supervisory committee: D~:*~~Commt ee Chair 16(~~ Dr. Carol Dell'Amico Acknowledgements Upon the completion of this thesis project (my death as an author if for no cause other than exhaustion) I would like to thank my readers, Dr. Monica Ayuso and Dr. Carol Dell'Amico, for taking time out of their busy schedules to examine this relatively insignificant work. I am also grateful to Dr. Kim Flachmann, Dr. Charles MacQuarrie, Dr. Susan Stafinbil, Dr. Andrew Troup, and Christy Gavin for helping to guide me through the research which led to this paper. Abstract The Introduction to this thesis defines a number of key terms and concepts related to the study of paratexts in historiographic metafiction. The chapters that follow describe how paratextual forms operate within specific historiographic metafictional novels. The first of these chapters covers the footnotes in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, painting the novel's narrator as a fairly typical historiographer. The second chapter delves into the metafictional elements tied to the appendices which conclude The Lord of the Rings and argues that J.R.R. Tolkien's reputation as an author and scholar may have influenced the development of that novel. The third major chapter explains how paratexts are employed to assert authorial identity in Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography. Finally, the thesis concludes that the aesthetic uses for paratexts are virtually infinite and predicts that the genre of historiographic metafiction will continue to be a favorite among postmodernists. Table of Contents Introduction: A Few Facts about Fiction 7 Footnotes in a Postmodern Historiography 14 A Text Appended and Another Up-ended 22 A (Very) Intentional Fallacy 36 Conclusion: A Metafactual Review 49 Glossary 52 Works Cited 54 Vita 58 "Historiographic metafiction explicitly contests the presumptive power of history to abolish formalism. Its metafictional impulse prevents any suppression of its formal or fictive identity . But it is not as if 'it really happened' [is] an unproblematic statement . ." (Poetics 94). Kirouac 7 Introduction: A Few Facts about Fiction Facts are not necessarily true. As a matter of fact, the very concept of truth is a matter subject to interpretation. In "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" Jacques Derrida identifies "two interpretations of interpretation" (925). One is that of the historical empiricist who "dreams of deciphering a truth or an origin," which is objective and absolute, and the opposing view is one which recognizes no origin and affirms no absolute truth (Derrida 925). The genres of non-fiction take the former tact, as do many categories of fiction. The mystery, the bildungsroman, the thriller, and the horror genres all rely heavily upon the discovery of concrete or near-universal truths. Yet some narratives lend no credence to the concept of absolutes. The contemporary strain of literature which resists truth as an absolute is known as postmodernism. As Linda Hutcheon explains in The Politics of Postmodernism, this literary approach "reveals a desire to understand present culture as the product of previous representations" (Politics 58). In other words, it accepts past narratives as individual interpretations of the facts while encouraging alternative contemporary views. In "Defining the Postmodern," Jean-François Lyotard characterizes postmodernism by its sense of skepticism toward the promise of humanism, which draws upon an understanding of the past to empower the ideas of the present (1934-35). Meanwhile, in "Modernity versus Postmodernity" Jrgen Habermas recognizes that one of the tenets of postmodernism is to oppose the appropriation of history for moralistic purposes (1955). According to Hutcheon, the difference between Habermas and Lyotard's analyses marks a significant split in scholarly views of the postmodern (Politics 24-25). However, both Habermas and Lyotard agree that postmodernism aims to relieve its narratives from reliance upon recorded history. Kirouac 8 Postmodernism's apparent detachment from historical context makes it unpopular in some circles. The postmodern is sometimes unfavorably criticized for its lack of direct connection to the historical conventions of form and genre (Politics 17). With its emphases on invention and aesthetics, postmodernism often does disregard matters of record. As a result, it is sometimes considered politically or socially irrelevant (Politics 3). Yet what postmodernism may lack in historical relevance, it more than makes up for in cultural significance. As Hutcheon notes, postmodernist literature "manages to legitimize culture (high and mass) even as it subverts it" (Politics 15). But the effect does not end with stratifications of art; postmodernism also weaken the barriers between the economic classes, sexes and genders, national distinctions, and racial categories. As Hutcheon makes clear in her groundbreaking work A Poetics of Postmodernism, though postmodern works of literature are sometimes perceived as being frivolous or pointless, each one presents not only one point but multiple conflicting points simultaneously (Poetics 119). Even the choice of the article used in Hutcheon's title (A rather than The) reflects the all-inclusive nature of postmodernism since it acknowledges the validity of other possible analyses. In the postmodernist view, all voices are worth listening to. The narrative of any culture, subculture, or individual is framed by history. A historiography represents "an attempt to comprehend and master [the past]" (Politics 64). That is what historians do when assembling a master narrative. "All past 'events' are potential historical 'facts,'" Hutcheon writes, "but the ones that become facts are those that are chosen to be narrated" (Politics 75). That is precisely why dominant countries, cultures, and administrations are empowered to write history while others are relegated to an existence as subalterns. "The problem" with this situation "is that historians deal with representations, with texts, which they then process" (Politics 86). Even assuming the information is objectively true to begin with, few Kirouac 9 individuals and, perhaps, none of the world's social groupings are capable of setting aside their own interests in order to report the absolute truth. Instead, all histories consist of information selected for the purpose of telling a specific version of a tale. Though a great deal of the story is excluded from any given history, the record is typically presented as a totalized narrative. Hutcheon defines totalizing as "the process . by which writers of history, fiction, or even theory render their materials coherent, continuous, [and] unified" with a strong emphasis on the concept of control (Politics 62). Authors of such narratives purport to tell stories in their entirety (Politics 62-63). Yet a postmodern perspective demands that more (if not all) points are added to the plot. The movement of the center, meaning the central cultural events which command historicity, represents a paradigmatic shift in the way historical events are understood (Derrida 916). In a world whose historical record is informed by a diverse number of voices, understandings of history have become largely subjective. All paradigms exist simultaneously as competing discourses (Derrida 916). No one version—nor all of them together—tells the whole story, but postmodern sensibilities do not demand this. The postmodern alternative to totalization is bricolage. The bricoleur pieces together mismatched items to artfully create a discernible image (Derrida 920). This process differs from that of a historiographer in that the final product is explicitly incomplete. According to Derrida, "the mythopoetical virtue (power) of bricolage . is the stated abandonment of all reference to a center" (920). Another key difference between the totalizing historian and the bricoleur is that the latter's work is easily recognizable as art. "Both discovery and invention . involve some recourse to artifice and imagination," Hutcheon argues, "but there is a significant difference in the epistemological value traditionally attached to the two acts" (Politics 64). "It is this distinction that postmodernism problematizes," she continues (Politics 64). The question is how Kirouac 10 different—if at all—are fictional narratives from those which are factual and thus purportedly true. One text worth examining in reference to this question is Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes. As a prolific author and the subject of much analysis, Barthes, when writing this autobiography, "had no other solution than to rewrite [himself] . to add to the books, to the themes, to the memories, to the texts, another utterance" (142). A man cannot even be an absolute authority over himself. According to Adam Philips, author of the autobiography's Preface, "As a critic Barthes always read for whatever was supposedly beyond question in a text" and criticized it for its power to reduce individuals or even whole societies to a simple image