University of Cincinnati

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI May 10 , 2001 I, Scott Hermanson, hereby submit this as part of the requirements for the degree of: Doctorate of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in: The Department of English It is entitled: The Simulation of Nature: Contemporary American Fiction in an Environmental Context Approved by: Thomas LeClair, Ph.D. Stanley Corkin, Ph.D. James Wilson, Ph.D. i The Simulation of Nature: Contemporary American Fiction in an Environmental Context A dissertation submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in the Department of English and Comparative Literature of the College of Arts and Sciences 2001 by Scott Hermanson B.S., Northwestern University 1991 M.A. University of Cincinnati, 1996 Committee Chair: Thomas LeClair, Ph.D. ii Abstract The dissertation is an examination of how nature is socially constructed in particular texts of contemporary American Fiction. In discussing the novels of Thomas Pynchon, Richard Powers, and Jonathan Franzen, and the non-fiction of Mike Davis, I argue that their works accurately depict how nature is created because they recognize the idea of nature as a textual artifact. Fully aware of their textual limitations, these works acknowledge and foreground the ontological uncertainty present in their writing, embracing postmodern literary techniques to challenge the notion that "nature" is a tangible, stable, self-evident reality. They embrace the fictionality of language, admitting that any textual enterprise can only aspire to simulation. The dissertation begins by exploring the simulated nature of Walt Disney's Animal Kingdom. In the hyperreality of the theme park, we can see that Disney's simulation of exotic nature reflects a reality defined by media images, myriad details that signify nature but never seem to equate to nature. Pynchon's Mason & Dixon explores the eighteenth-century border conflict between the age of miracles and the age of reason, a critique of the Enlightenment as seen from its crumbling twenty-first century edges. Franzen's Strong Motion mines similar territory as the novel reveals the deeply buried foundation on which we've structured our lives, a foundation that confines us to categories and hierarchies based on domination. Powers's Gain uses the intertwined narratives of the growth of a corporation and the death of a middle-aged mother to dramatize the reduction of all reality to an equation designed to maximize profit. Finally, Mike Davis's two books about Los Angeles suggest the apocalyptic future of nature. His Los Angeles is a postmodern world of chaos, non-linearity and fractal borders, a work of natural history depicted through the aesthetic lens of postmodernist fiction. These eco-novelists are aware that reality becomes a matter of differing and competing worldviews. Underlying their concern with language and its ability to represent reality is an awareness that there is a nature that exists beyond language. Unlike most of their contemporaries, however, they refuse the illusion of defining a one, true nature. iii iv Acknowledgments The Simulation of Nature is itself a simulation, perpetuating the illusion that one author is entirely responsible for the output. Creating this simulation has been a specific social construction, the product of a great deal of help and instruction from friends, colleagues and institutions. The University of Cincinnati generously funded portions of this project. A University Research Council Fellowship enabled me to travel to Walt Disney World, and the Charles Phelps Taft Advanced Graduate Fellowship from the Taft Memorial Fund provided funding for completing the project. I was ably and eagerly assisted in my research at Walt Disney World by Tara and Bryan Denham. The brilliant and giving faculty of the Department of English guided and instructed me for the most intellectually exciting years of my life. I would like to specifically thank Professors Beth Ash and Byron Miller for their work in laying the foundation for this study; Professor Kathryn Rentz for courageously directing the graduate program during my education; and Professors Stanley Corkin and James Wilson for their steady guidance through the writing of this dissertation. I am indebted to my very good friends Ann McClellan and Jeff Miller for their intellectual support, even over long distances, and to my ASLE cohort Karl Zuelke for acting as a sounding board on all things environmental. I also owe a great deal to my parents, Richard and Sharron Hermanson, for their emotional and financial support for what at times must have seemed only a simulation of a career. Finally, I give special thanks to my advisor Tom LeClair and my wife Judy Karnia. In a world of simulation, these two people are my reality. The Simulation of Nature is my attempt to gain their respect, repay their patience and commitment, and to simulate, in some small fashion, all that I admire about them. 1 Table of Contents I. Introduction: Nature Knows Best: The Social Construction of Nature..........................2 II. Truer Than Life: Disney's Animal Kingdom..............................................................33 III. Ultimately Unmappable: the Bad History of Mason & Dixon ..................................76 IV. Life in Balance: Jonathan Franzen's Strong Motion...............................................113 V. Richard Powers, Ecocriticism and the Pursuit of Gain.............................................144 VI. Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles..........................................................................177 VII. Conclusion: The Green Nuclear Power Plant........................................................206 VIII. Bibliography........................................................................................................211 2 One Introduction Nature Knows Best: The Social Construction of Nature I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill Wallace Stevens from "Anecdote of the Jar" * * * * * The problem with nature is that it's all encompassing. If we consider nature all of creation, then we include not just rivers, rocks, animals and plants, but also humans and their creations. If everything is nature, however, this definition balloons to almost meaningless dimensions. We then look to circumscribe nature, a necessary attempt to invest the term with some usefulness. Yet finding those boundaries between what is nature and what is not is extraordinarily complicated. The border ebbs and shifts, a permeable membrane where what's natural and the un-natural are defined by the ever-transgressing border. In broad strokes we can argue that human-created civilization exists outside of nature, and beyond the constructions and systems of our species, there we will find nature. But knowing the exact moment when we've crossed that line is impossible. Take, for example, the highway running through an unpopulated countryside. The speeding Toyotas and Fords, the semis and busses are not nature. The gleaming metal and powerful engines are at the advanced edge of human technology. As we step away from the cars and trucks, nature begins where? Does civilization, the non-natural, cease at the edge of the shoulder, where the pavement ends and the grass begins? Perhaps nature begins outside the fenceline a few yards away, the 3 visible barrier erected to keep nature out and non-nature in. Or does nature begin after we are out of sight of the highway, a two-acre walk across the field and into the treeline? Or even further out, say two miles away when we can no longer hear the dull whine of the traffic in the distance? Or perhaps some many miles away, where the pollutants from cars and trucks have been reduced to negligible amounts. The definition of nature is essentially a problem of categorization. At its largest dimension, one definition of nature can encompass all of the physical planet. As definitions of nature are narrowed, we begin to lose any sense of an essential quality of nature. There is no concrete essence or trait that makes an object part of nature. Rather, the term nature becomes a net that, depending upon how we cast it, captures different objects. Like Wallace Stevens's jar in Tennessee, our human constructs, our categorizations, make the slovenly wilderness surround that hill. There can be no one definition of nature. It is a complicated amalgamation of cultural meanings determined by daily practices, governmental decrees and media images. The attempt to explain this nature is a slippery task. Yet it is in our human nature to ceaselessly strive to categorize the world, to define the intrinsic and the extrinsic. Despite the fluidity of the border, we nevertheless seemed programmed to affix it. To quote Stevens again: "Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,/ The maker's rage to order words of the sea…"1 In the perpetual dialogue over what constitutes nature, this one overarching structure debates whether "nature" exists in and of itself or whether it is a product of human construction. Dave Foreman, publisher of Wild Earth, and the poet Gary Snyder articulate a view that, at the outset, seems commonsensical: Human societies create a variety of dreams, notions, and images as to the nature of Nature. But it's not impossible to get a pretty accurate picture of Nature with a little first-hand application—no big deal. I'd say take these dubious professors out for a walk, show them a bit of the passing ecosystem show, and maybe get them to help clean up a creek. (Snyder, "Nature" 9) 1 Wallace Stevens, "The Idea of Order at Key West" 4 Nature? C'mon buddy, it's right here past the end of these houses. On the other hand, William Cronon, from the collection of essays entitled Uncommon Ground, complicates nature, approaching it as an idea instead of the rocks and trees, fur and feathers of Foreman and Snyder: These essays take as their starting point one key insight. It is that "nature" is a human idea, with a long and complicated cultural history which has led different human beings to conceive of the natural world in very different ways.

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