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Queer Orientation in Twentieth-Century American Literature

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Queer Orientation in Twentieth-Century American Literature QUEER ORIENTATION IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE By MICHAEL G. PARKER Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY August 2016 ii CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the dissertation of Michael Parker candidate for the degree of Doctorate Committee Chair T. Kenny Fountain Committee Member Michael Clune Committee Member Mary Grimm Committee Member Laura Hengehold Date of Defense 12 May 2016 *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. iii Acknowledgements This dissertation is the culmination of seven years of idea generation and refinement regarding queer orientation. The project began during my first semester of graduate school when I wrote a seminar paper on the orientation of characters in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Jazz toward their Southern homes after The Great Migration. Additional threads of this project can be found in papers I wrote about Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Moby Dick, and Alain Locke’s “The New Negro.” I am deeply grateful for those teachers who fostered my approach to literature by looking to orientation, including Thrity Umrigar and Marilyn Mobley. I consider myself lucky to have worked with and under a series of mentors who shaped this dissertation project directly. I want to thank Mary Grimm for her spirited discussions of the works of literature I selected and for directing me to include one work in particular. I am grateful for the experience and teaching of Michael Clune whose perspective on literature inspired much of my critical approach, specifically his emphasis on literature as doing something and as being worthy of close inspection. Laura Hengehold deserves many thanks for assisting me with revising my work with philosophy and for meeting with me to discuss the entirety of this project over coffee. To T. Kenny Fountain, I have more thanks than I can possibly express in this section. I want to thank him for taking me on as a mentee seven years ago when I started at Case Western Reserve University, for fostering my interest in and dedication to queer studies and theory, and for the countless hours spent in meetings and over email, discussing this dissertation and many other projects. For his guidance, his dedication, and his warmth, I am truly thankful. iv I would like to thank the English Department at Case Western Reserve University and especially my graduate cohort. Special thanks to Kristin Kondrlik for many phone conversations about this project. Thanks to Cara Byrne with whom my project shares a special kinship. I am forever thankful for her support, her friendship, and her empathy as we both approached subjects left largely untouched by more established threads of scholarship. I would like to thank my family, especially Donna Didyoung Marks and Kenneth Marks for their support and enthusiasm about my education and my scholarship. I would like to thank George Didyoung, whose small donation over a decade ago kept my educational spirit intact. I wish I could thank him in person. And finally, I would never have succeeded with this project without the many hours spent by Troy Kaczorowski. He read every phase of this project. He listened to my ramblings and supported the development of my argument. I am thankful for his love. v Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 1. Beginning with Willa Cather’s “Paul’s Case” ..................................................................... 1 2. Queer Orientation, a Definition and My Intervention ....................................................... 5 3. A Brief Overview of “Queer” and Psychoanalytic Frameworks in Queer Theory and Literary Criticism ...................................................................................................................... 8 3.1 A Turn to Queer Phenomenology..................................................................................... 15 3.2 A Queer Orientation’s Relationship to Context and Experience ..................................... 18 4. Return to Paul ...................................................................................................................... 22 5. There’s No Place Like Home............................................................................................... 31 6. Orientation and 20th-century American Literature .......................................................... 36 Chapter Two: Queer Orientations to Art and Musical Sensation ........................................... 43 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 43 2. Hollywood’s Queer Aesthetics in West’s The Day of the Locust ...................................... 50 3. Tod’s Artistic Orientation ................................................................................................... 55 4. Orientations to Faye and Violence ..................................................................................... 60 5. A Turn Away from Community ......................................................................................... 69 6. Queer Orientation in McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter ...................................... 70 7. Orientational Oasis .............................................................................................................. 75 8. The Objects of Desire ........................................................................................................... 82 9. Reading Mick’s Orientation ................................................................................................ 85 10. An Orientation to Music and Sensation ........................................................................... 89 11. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 92 Chapter 3: Orientation to Suffering ........................................................................................... 95 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 95 2. Concerning the Outlier in Another Country: The Blues, Literary Criticism, Identity, and Rufus ................................................................................................................................ 103 3. Rufus and the Question of Race........................................................................................ 110 4. Rufus and Queer Desire .................................................................................................... 121 5. Vivaldo’s Queer Orientation to Suffering ....................................................................... 123 6. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 134 Chapter 4: An Orientation to History ...................................................................................... 136 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 136 2. A Queer Orientation to Time ............................................................................................ 139 vi 3. Queer Experience in the Past ............................................................................................ 143 4. Dana and History as Non-Linear ...................................................................................... 151 5. The Importance of Sensation for Dana ............................................................................ 156 6. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 165 Chapter 5: Queer Theory and Samuel Delaney’s Queer Orientation ................................... 167 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 167 2. Contact as Social Potential and Political Statement ....................................................... 175 3. An Orientation to Sex and Community; an Orientation Away from the Negative ...... 184 4. The Role of Experience and Looking Backward ............................................................. 190 Chapter 6: Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 196 1. A Review of Queer Orientation ........................................................................................ 196 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 205 vii Queer Orientation in Twentieth-Century American Literature Abstract by MICHAEL G PARKER My dissertation looks to works of literary fiction in order to assess how the narratives approach and describe the orientations of queer characters. I argue that queer characters possess an orientation that is askew, slanted, and/or non-normative. A queer orientation, therefore, describes the directionality of a person and this directionality to objects, spaces, times, and ideas draws upon a person’s experiences, desires, feelings,
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