Literary Artists and Ethics

Creative Writing and Ethics in Contemporary Canadian Novels: How Should an Author Be? by © Tom Halford A Thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Memorial University of Newfoundland March 2016 St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador Abstract “How Should an Author Be?” is a study of creative writers as characters in contemporary Canadian novels. The theoretical framework, developed from both the Anglo-American and the European approaches to ethical criticism, highlights the complexity of discourses on authors, and it works in three stages. In the first stage, consideration is given to how a text and a hypothetical reader might interact. Aesthetic strategies that foster open-mindedness are then highlighted and discussed. In the final stage of this process, the first two stages are re-evaluated and critiqued in order to consider alternative points of view. The first chapter considers four contemporary Canadian authors who wrestle with the motif of the artist as hero. David Adams Richards’ Hope in the Desperate Hour, Lynn Coady’s Mean Boy, Steven Heighton’s The Shadow Boxer, and Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? all represent or critique this motif in some way. I read this powerful and intoxicating characterization of writer-characters as a distraction preventing readers from fully engaging with these texts. I propose an alternative way that authors “should be”: not as heroes but as restless questioners. The phrase “restless questioner” is from Wayne C. Booth’s discussion of “restless questioning” in The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (478). These individuals are rarely certain of their role or their function in society, and they do not need to be. Their goal is to write as well as possible without ignoring the profound importance of the Other. For restless questioners, writing well tends to mean developing complicated fictional worlds that challenge simplistic forms of thought. ii The second chapter explores the various ways that one author can create a sense of openness. In this thesis, openness is discussed mainly in relation to the indeterminacy of the present, and it derives from Mikhail Bakhtin’s description of the novel as “zone of crude contact” (26). A sense of openness encourages resistance to dogmatism, and it invites complex interpretations of meaning. Michael Winter’s first four novels, This All Happened, The Big Why, The Architects Are Here, and The Death of Donna Whalen, represent the writer-character as capable of challenging certitude and conviction through the complexity of their aesthetic visions. Authors are not cultural heroes, but they can demonstrate how certain forms of observing and describing are preferable to others. A sense of openness, for example, invites one to consider the complexities of other people’s lives. In chapter three, Edward Riche’s Easy to Like, Russell Smith’s Muriella Pent, Lawrence Hill’s Any Known Blood, and Lynn Coady’s The Antagonist are discussed as parodic narratives. Here, “parody” is informed by Linda Hutcheon’s development of the term “as repetition with critical distance that allows ironic signaling of difference at the very heart of similarity” (185). These novels add new layers to the argument that is developed in the first two chapters by exploring the world of authors and writing from critical perspectives that challenge my arguments from the first two chapters. Ideally, this study invites readers to develop their own idiosyncratic responses to the titular question, “How should an author be?” iii Acknowledgements Thank you, Dr. Larry Mathews, for guiding me through this thesis. His skill as a reader, as a writer, and as a teacher are examples that I aspire to emulate. Thank you to Dr. Danine Farquharson for her insight, knowledge, and encouragement. Thank you to Dr. Chris Lockett and Dr. Valerie Legge. Thank you to Jon Parsons. Thank you to everyone who took the time to talk to me, to listen to my ideas, and to share their research interests. Thank you to the Memorial University of Newfoundland Department of English for scholarship funding and a teaching fellowship. Thank you to the State University of New York at Plattsburgh for hiring me to work in their Learning Center. A special, loving thank you to Melissa, Violet, and Douglas Halford. You are my favourite people. I will always pick you over writing, but I will also always like to write about you. iv Table of Contents Abstract ii-iii Acknowledgements iv Introduction: Writer-Characters in Novels: Ethos, Openness, and Parody 1 1.1 Choice of Texts 5 1.2 Key Terms 6 1.3 A Short, Selective History of the European and the Anglo-American Ethical Critics 18 1.4 An Ethics of Sousveillance 35 1.5 Literary Sousveillance 42 1.6 Stage One: Ethos and Restless Questioners 43 1.7 Stage Two: A Sense of Openness 51 1.8 Stage Three: Parody 55 1.9 The Restless Questioner as a Social Self 59 Chapter One: Ethos and Restless Questioners 71 2.1 David Adams Richards’s Hope in the Desperate Hour: The Artist as Hero 77 2.2 Critiquing the Artist as Hero: Lynn Coady’s Mean Boy 88 2.3 Steven Heighton's The Shadow Boxer: The Persistence of Artist Mythologies 98 2.4 Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be?: Just Keep Asking That Question 109 v 2.5 Attempting to Become an Ideal Versus Being In-Process 120 Chapter Two: Complicated Windows: Openness in Michael Winter’s First Four Novels 128 3.1 Surveillance Criticism and Michael Winter’s This All Happened 132 3.2 Sousveillance in This All Happened: What Actually Happened? 142 3.3 Michael Winter’s The Big Why and The Architects Are Here: “Wyoming” through the Past 155 3.4 Michael Winter’s The Death of Donna Whalen: Sousveilling the State 165 3.5 Metaphorical Windows: Theorizing Parodic Surveillance 173 Chapter Three: Cultivating a Complex Ethos through Novels 177 4.1 Edward Riche’s Easy to Like and Russell Smith’s Muriella Pent: How Should Authors Be a Part of the Economy? 181 4.2 Lawrence Hill’s Any Known Blood: How Should a Black and White Author Be? 206 4.3 Interrupting Lynn Coady’s Mean Boy With The Antagonist: How Should a Reader Be? 220 4.4 Parodies of Parodies: Fostering a Multidirectional Gaze 234 Conclusion: How Should an Author Be? 241 Works Cited 249 vi Halford 1 Introduction: Writer-Characters in Novels Ethos, Openness, and Parody The central argument of this dissertation is that authors are adept at creating selves and moments of openness. By “creating selves,” I am referring to the development of characters and narrators who might help readers contemplate their lives and the lives of others. I write at a time when unsettling impositions on Canadian citizens appear to be commonplace: contemporary surveillance narrows the spectrum of potential human experiences, and it inhibits people from creating selves. My study does not situate authors and literary critics as a source of resistance to surveillance; it does, however, place them in what Linda Hutcheon would describe as a position of parody, which means that they encourage both “change and cultural continuity” (186). Surveillance strategies simplify and streamline perceptions of how a society functions. In “The Rock Observed: Art and Surveillance in Michael Winter’s This All Happened,” Chris Armstrong points out that by compiling vast amounts of data, states and corporations can sort individuals into types (38). In this way, individuals’ life experiences can be reduced to the clichés of their social status and their income (Armstrong 38). To parody surveillance, I posit the critical strategy of literary sousveillance, which is designed to complicate simplistic representations of human beings and communities. This study discusses authors, writer-characters, and creative writing in Halford 2 a way that challenges these types of simplification and highlights the power of literature as a path to encountering various complex selves and others.1 Some contemporary Canadian novels and works of ethical criticism suggest a self that authors should aspire to be: the “restless questioner.” My contribution to this discourse is developed from Wayne C. Booth’s The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction, where he writes about “restless questioning” (478), and I merge it with the concept of openness. In my study, openness functions as a superordinate for the outgrowth of various terms in ethical criticism to describe a sense of unknowingness: indeterminacy, uncertainty, ambiguity, alterity, messiness, fancy, and hesitation. By accepting unknowingness as a part of life, by thinking with an open mind, and by creating complex literary worlds, restless questioners seek out new selves for authors to inhabit or to encounter. The categories used in this study are not meant to be comprehensive or restrictive. Instead, the multiplicity of options works to complicate the potential ways that, to use the phrase from my title, an author should be. My study considers authors and writer-characters, but it also necessarily contemplates the position of readers who encounter these writerly selves. A variety of choices and desires might converge in one novel, depending on who reads it and on how he or she wants to be in relation to that book. Ideally, this study does not provide a singular answer to the question, “How should an author be?” Instead, it 1 When I use “authors,” I am mainly referring to the authors of the novels I am discussing. I also use the term “literary artist” to identify authors who aspire to create literature as opposed to other types of writing, such as newspaper editorials. I use “writer-character” to refer specifically to characters in novels.

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