Don DeLillo’s Promiscuous Fictions: The Adulterous Triangle of Sex, Space, and Language Diana Marie Jenkins A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of English University of NSW, December 2005 This thesis is dedicated to the loving memory of a wonderful grandfather, and a beautiful niece. I wish they were here to see me finish what both saw me start. Contents Acknowledgements 1 Introduction 2 Chapter One 26 The Space of the Hotel/Motel Room Chapter Two 81 Described Space and Sexual Transgression Chapter Three 124 The Reciprocal Space of the Journey and the Image Chapter Four 171 The Space of the Secret Conclusion 232 Reference List 238 Abstract This thesis takes up J. G. Ballard’s contention, that ‘the act of intercourse is now always a model for something else,’ to show that Don DeLillo uses a particular sexual, cultural economy of adultery, understood in its many loaded cultural and literary contexts, as a model for semantic reproduction. I contend that DeLillo’s fiction evinces a promiscuous model of language that structurally reflects the myth of the adulterous triangle. The thesis makes a significant intervention into DeLillo scholarship by challenging Paul Maltby’s suggestion that DeLillo’s linguistic model is Romantic and pure. My analysis of the narrative operations of adultery in his work reveals the alternative promiscuous model. I discuss ten DeLillo novels and one play – Americana, Players, The Names, White Noise, Libra, Mao II, Underworld, the play Valparaiso, The Body Artist, Cosmopolis, and the pseudonymous Amazons – that feature adultery narratives. I demonstrate that these narratives resist conservative models of language, space, and sex by using promiscuity as a method of narrative control. I argue that DeLillo’s adultery narratives respond subversively to attempts to categorise his work, and that he extends the mythologised rhetoric of the adulterous triangle by adopting sexual transgression as a three-sided semantic structure that connects language, sex, and space. I refer to theories of narrative, postmodernity, space, desire, and parody to show that DeLillo’s adultery narratives structurally influence his experiments with linguistic meaning. My analysis reveals that contradiction performs at several spatial, sexual, and dialogical levels to undermine readings that suggest DeLillo’s language models pure meaning. I identify the sexualised fissure within DeLillo’s semantic style that is exposed by the operation of contradiction. I believe this gap distinguishes DeLillo from postmodern fiction’s emphasis on the placeless, because it is a meaningful space that emphasises the reproductive adulteration of signification. I expose several sites of dialectic rupture, including the hotel/motel room, oppositional and metaphorical description, the journey, the image, and the secret. I contend that sex in these transgressive narratives is a model for something else: promiscuous meaning. This thesis demonstrates that DeLillo’s fiction charts the typography of the mythical third side of the adulterous triangle in order to respond to language’s own promiscuity. Acknowledgements I’d like to thank my friends and mentors within the School of English at the University of New South Wales, where I have been fortunate to enjoy the innumerable benefits of both. I am so very grateful to my supervisor, Dr Elizabeth McMahon, without whose timely commitment, editorial rigor, and tireless instruction, this thesis would have floundered. I also thank Professor Bruce Johnson for his early supervision; Dr Suzanne Eggins, for her kind encouragement throughout my candidature; the Head of School, Professor Bill Ashcroft, for his accessible leadership and efficient assessment of my draft; and members of faculty who have been cheer squads and occasional lunchroom/coffee cart companions: Anne, Brigitta, Sue, Clare, Roslyn, Bill W., and Peter K. I’d also like to thank the staff at the Library for their ready assistance throughout my project, in particular the invaluable team at Interlibrary Loans. To the uni crew – I hope you know the difference you’ve made – thank you: Susan P., Marita, Drew, Chris, Sandy, Motoko, Kate, Katherine, Will, Josh, Bronwyn, and most of all Warwick Shapcott and Tim Roberts, who have both made me think harder, work harder, and laugh harder over these years than would have been conceivable without them. Thanks, guys. Friends and the families of friends here and abroad have been unbelievably supportive and patient, and I thank them with love. I shout out a huge THANK YOU to you all, and you do know who you are, for every time you asked (and didn’t ask, especially towards the end!), and took such a sincere and active interest in my advancement and well-being. I am floored and humbled by my support network. To Brett House, across the seas, the Becks are on ice, buddy. To the two sides of my family, and honorary members Sarah, Janet, and John, your friendship, encouragement, and humour have been the tools of my progress. Thank you Kate, Daniel, Alek, Mal, and Nana, for managing to support me whilst enduring so much personal heartache. Many thanks to my welcoming and loving new family: Katie, Peter, Simon, Marisa, Felicity, and the birthday girl, celebrating one hundred years, Molly Newsam (A.K.A. Grandma), who have been so firmly on my side during this process. To Llewellyn, my husband and best friend, I owe everything, including over four years of my undivided attention…! Your unwavering belief in me is the reason this project was commenced as well as the reason for its completion. Happy Anniversary, Llewie. Finally, I extend a grateful ciao to “the other man”: Mr Don DeLillo, whose fiction altered the course of my life. Diana Jenkins 1 December 2005 Introduction James: What is the sacrament of matrimony? Diana: Matrimony is the sacrament by which a baptized man and a baptized woman bind themselves for life in a lawful marriage and receive the grace to discharge their duties. James: What are their duties? Diana: That part is hazy (DeLillo 1979, pp. 41-2). Discussing the three years of writing The Names (1982) in Greece, DeLillo describes the experience as one of “confronting new landscapes and fresh languages” (Harris 2005, p. 18). This comment encapsulates three of his principal and related concerns: space, language, and reproduction. The newness and freshness of his spatial and linguistic experience creates a renewable vision of both. Where DeLillo reminds us elsewhere that ‘Rilke said we had to rename the world,’ and that ‘[r]enaming suggests an innocence and a rebirth’ (LeClair 2005, p. 9), this thesis demonstrates that DeLillo’s project of renaming productively complicates the conventional trope of artistic reproduction so that it is not only sexualised but promiscuous. Taking up J. G. Ballard’s contention in The Atrocity Exhibition, that ‘the act of intercourse is now always a model for something else’ (Ballard 1990, p. 77), I show that DeLillo uses a particular sexual and cultural economy of adultery, understood in its many cultural and literary connotations, as a model for 1 semantic reproductionTPF FPT. This model is based on the mythologised trope of the adulterous triangle, and characterises linguistic meaning as impure, erotic, contradictory, secretive, deceitful, and reproductive. This reading is an important addition to academic assessments of DeLillo’s view of language, because it argues that the structure of his linguistic model is transgressive and fecund, rather than ‘pure,’ ‘Romantic,’ and ‘pristine’ (Caton 1997; Dewey 1990; Maltby 1998). 1 TP PT For a detailed discussion of Ballard and DeLillo, see Hardin (2000). Diana Jenkins 2 December 2005 Adultery is the sexual model that best represents DeLillo’s semantic vision, which is, I argue, that linguistic meaning is intrinsically promiscuous. There are many sexual incidents in DeLillo’s oeuvre. Sexual intercourse is literally a model for something else in the case of adulterous relations, which are defined by their negative relation to the rites of marriage. Narratologically, the trope of adultery also relates to the novel form, which has been theorised as a transgressive mode. DeLillo’s representations of adultery contribute to his constant remodelling of meaning by exposing linguistic practice as a sexualised and transgressive form. This thesis repositions DeLillo’s fiction by demonstrating that labels, including realism, modernism, and postmodernism, overlook the promiscuous nature of his constructions of meaning, which traverse these and other categories. Building on readings of DeLillo that concern the America of realist fiction and the America of postmodernity, I suggest an alternative interpretation of his narratological strategies that dissolves the mutual exclusivity of categorisation. As part of DeLillo’s endeavour “to confront realities” (Harris 2005, p. 18), his fiction develops a conflict of narrative styles that reflects the contradictory operation of semantics in narrative space. DeLillo’s texts negotiate perceived fissures between different fictional models, resisting their accepted meanings and redefining their narrative function. Laura Barrett, Tom LeClair, and Paul Maltby all identify DeLillo’s problematic and contradictory emphasis on place in the midst of ‘accounts of the postmodern experience of living in a hyperreality’ (Maltby 1998, p. 500) that is ‘located precisely nowhere’ (LeClair 2005, p. 15). This spatial paradox productively affects linguistic meaning. Indeed,