Geophysical Fictions Traversing the Works of Tim Winton and Cormac Mccarthy
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University of Southampton Faculty of Humanities English Geophysical Fictions Traversing the works of Tim Winton and Cormac McCarthy By Joel Found Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2016 i Abstract This thesis responds to Ocean Studies’ dissatisfaction with how literary geography is read metaphorically. Positioned in relation to geocritical, geopoetic and ecocritical endeavours, the present study brings this concern back to land, and builds a method of reading literary geographies that treads a patient and geophysically informed path to comprehending their metaphorical value. To achieve this, the thesis proposes reading literary geographies as forms of heterotopia: fictional and inaccessible, yet tethered to real-world geography and its geophysical dynamics. To realise the potential of this proposal, the core of the thesis is a comparative reading of Tim Winton and Cormac McCarthy, two writers praised for their attention to place. Prompted by geophysical, environmental, anthropological, historical and philosophical ways of understanding geography, the thesis traverses the rivers, paths, deserts, and cities that emerge in Winton and McCarthy’s fiction. Reading these spaces geophysically reveals connections between the two writers that have not yet been enabled by transpacific or transnational frames, appreciating the host of materialities beyond the Pacific that connect them and their thinking. Studying the presence of the fluvial cycle, lines, dust, and concrete in these locations prompts a diversity of metaphorical, symbolic, and literal ways of reading that develop ideas of national identity, gender, community, and crisis within their fiction. Comparing both writers geographically enables a communication that expands our understanding of their individual literary works, oeuvres, and networks. It also shows the potential of geophysical reading to develop understanding about the concerns of literary inheritance, influence and epochs, helping to place both writers in a broader literary context: as inheritors of a nineteenth-century tradition, as key figures in late-twentieth and twenty-first century fiction, and as writers contesting ‘modernity.’ i ii Table of Contents List of Illustrations iv Declaration of Authorship v Acknowledgements vi Introduction: Writing the World 1 Ch. 1 – Rivers: Confluence and Influence 25 Ch. 2 – Lines: From Sea to Shining Sea 53 Ch. 3 – Sand: From Dust to Dust 92 Ch. 4 – Concrete: Neighbours, Home and Away 129 Conclusion: Reading the World 167 Bibliography 174 iii List of Illustrations 1.1 – Components of the catchment hydrological cycle 29 2.1 – The Pinnacles 61 2.2 – Graffiti on Native American pictographs 86 2.3 – Pictograph protected by inaccessibility 86 3.1 – Ralph Bagnold 100 3.2 – Extracting a car from soft sand 109 3.3 – Bagnold’s log-log diagram 110 4.1 – The Dust Lady 139 4.2 – The Falling Man 139 iv Academic Thesis: Declaration of Authorship I, Joel Found, declare that this thesis and the work presented in it are my own and has been generated by me as the result of my own original research. Geophysical Fictions: Traversing the works of Tim Winton and Cormac McCarthy I confirm that: 1.! This work was done wholly or mainly while in candidature for a research degree at this University; 2.! Where any part of this thesis has previously been submitted for a degree or any other qualification at this University or any other institution, this has been clearly stated; 3.! Where I have consulted the published work of others, this is always clearly attributed; 4.! Where I have quoted from the work of others, the source is always given. With the exception of such quotations, this thesis is entirely my own work; 5.! I have acknowledged all main sources of help; 6.! Where the thesis is based on work done by myself jointly with others, I have made clear exactly what was done by others and what I have contributed myself; 1.! Either none of this work has been published before submission, or parts of this work have been published as: ‘Cormac McCarthy and Tim Winton: Working “from the Ecosystem Up”’, Cormac McCarthy’s Borders and Landscapes, ed. Lou Jillett (London: Bloomsbury, 2016) Signed: ………………………………………………………………………… Date: ………………………………………………………………………… v vi Acknowledgements There have been many people who have had a part to play in getting my thesis to completion. Stephanie Jones has suffered countless hours reading my raw work and trying to extract the best from me. This thesis is a culmination of seven years working under her guidance, and it is evidence of how much she has developed my thinking, writing, and reading. Philip Hoare, whose advice and comments have always provided encouragement, and whose own work has provided me with constant inspiration since a chance encounter with Leviathan as an undergraduate. Stephen Bygrave, whose attentive reading has helped the project along from its first to last draft. Tim Winton, who kindly agreed to speak with a clueless 22-year-old PhD student and be generous with his time and thoughts. Tim and Denise Winton, who opened their home and showed me their stunning part of the world. Jenny Darling, who has taken deliveries of wine, books, and chased me around Australia with a credit card in displays of patience that, I’m certain, went beyond her requirements as a literary agent. Peter Straus, for regaling me with fond memories of working with both Tim Winton and Cormac McCarthy. Chloe McKenzie, for her keen eye, critical thoughts, and vital encouragement in low moments. Finally, my mum, dad, brother and sister, who probably won’t read all of this thesis, but who, in many ways, might understand it best. vii For June, Eve, and Cyril viii Introduction: Writing the World This is the sea, then, this great abeyance. Sylvia Plath, ‘Berck-Plage’1 Literary criticism has long tended to promote a metaphorical focus on literary landscapes. The moors of Wuthering Heights, Thoreau’s Walden Pond, and Wordsworth’s Lake District are seen as literary images: objects apparently too abstracted through intellectual and emotional reflection to require sustained geographical attention. The attraction to this approach is evident in W. H. Auden’s rousing The Enchafèd Flood (1950), in which the poet and critic aims to ‘understand the nature of Romanticism through an examination of its treatment of a single theme, the sea.’ 2 Auden treats the sea as a trope, painting its metaphorical moods and perceiving it primarily as ‘that state of barbaric vagueness and disorder out of which civilisation has emerged and into which, unless saved by the effort of gods and men, it is always liable to relapse.’3 Hester Blum criticises such approaches, claiming: ‘The sea is not a metaphor, figurative language has its place in analyses of the maritime world, certainly, but oceanic studies could be more invested in the uses, and problems, of what is literal in the face of the sea’s abyss of representation.’4 Perhaps Blum would think Auden more accurate had he considered the theme of Romanticism through the nature of the ocean. It is how a reader and critic might use this approach to literary geography that this thesis will explore, looking beyond its ability to convey ‘theme’ and towards its potential to provide ‘method.’ 1 Sylvia Plath, ‘Berck-Plage’, Sylvia Plath: Collected Poems, ed. by Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 1981), p. 196. 2 W. H. Auden, The Enchafèd Flood (London: Faber & Faber, 1950), p. 15. 3 Ibid., pp. 18-19. 4 Hester Blum, ‘The Prospect of Oceanic Studies’, PMLA, 125:3 (2010), 670–677 (p. 670). 1 Literary criticism’s stubborn treatment of geography as trope has outlived Auden and been carried into the current century, but its prevalence has, since at least the 1980s, been questioned by a variety of critical fields aiming to more deeply understand the relationship between geography and literature. One of the most prominent causes for such reassessment was the growing dissatisfaction with nationally exceptionalist modes of thinking that attempted to herd literary influence within national borders. Much of the work that responded to this problem emerged from the field of transatlanticism. Studies like Robert Weisbuch’s Atlantic Double- Cross (1986) shift our attention away from the clear national boundaries of the land towards the sea in an attempt to discover how American literature had been influenced by its European ancestors and counterparts. This transatlantic turn was developed by critics like Paul Giles, whose study Transatlantic Insurrections (2001) acknowledges a more mutual trade of influence between the two continents, and more recently by critics such as Wai Chee Dimock, whose Shades of the Planet (2007) explores literature in a broader ‘transnational’ and global frame. The transnational turn has not yet supplanted a transoceanic method, with some scholars cautious of moving from an overly rigid national view of cultural influence to one which risks embracing reductive clichés about global culture in a move Graham Huggan pointedly calls ‘globaloney.’5 This scepticism has strengthened the diversity of transoceanic studies, with a transpacific frame becoming increasingly popular. In his 2011 survey of the field, Steven G. Yao notes that this geographical frame has been under construction for nearly as long as the transatlantic, but has focused mainly on East Asian and American interactions. 6 Recently, there has been a surge of interest in mutual Australian and American cultural influences. In their 2010 edited collection Reading Across the Pacific, Robert Dixon and Nicholas Birns complained that ‘The United States–Australian cultural relationship has often simply been assumed rather than theorised or empirically grounded’, responding by examining ‘the concrete interaction between the two nations.’7 Paul Giles’ extensive Antipodean America (2014) 5 Graham Huggan, Australian Literature: Postcolonialism, Racism, Transnationalism (Oxford: OUP, 2007), p. 10. 6 Steven G. Yao, ‘The Rising Tide of the Transpacific’, Literature Compass, 8:3 (2011), 130–141.