The Written and the Unwritten World of Philip Roth
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The Written and the Unwritten World of Philip Roth For Sheila Örebro Studies in Literary History and Criticism 12 ROGER EDHOLM The Written and the Unwritten World of Philip Roth Fiction, Nonfiction, and Borderline Aesthetics in the Roth Books © Roger Edholm, 2012 Title: The Written and the Unwritten World of Philip Roth: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Borderline Aesthetics in the Roth Books. Publisher: Örebro University 2012 www.publications.oru.se [email protected] Print: Örebro University, Repro 09/2012 ISSN 1650-5840 ISBN 978-91-7668-889-2 Abstract Roger Edholm (2012): The Written and the Unwritten World of Philip Roth: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Borderline Aesthetics in the Roth Books. Örebro Studies in Literary History and Criticism 12, p. 214. This thesis examines five books by the American author Philip Roth commonly referred to as the “Roth Books,” which are The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography (1988), Deception (1990), Patrimony: A True Story (1991), Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993), and The Plot Against America (2004). These books, held to- gether by the author’s proper name, are often viewed as texts that conflate fiction and nonfiction or demonstrate the “fictionality” of all factual narrative accounts in compliance with well-known postmodernist and poststructuralist theories. Contrary to this view, I argue that a valid understanding of the Roth Books demands that we acknowledge that these works represent a series of quite different ways for the author to transform his own life into written form, a creative act which is manifest- ed in both fictional and nonfictional writing. In the attempt to argue this view, I turn to a field of study where the question about criteria for distinguishing fictional from nonfictional narrative literature has occupied a prominent place: narrative theory. However, my theoretical and meth- odological point of departure does not align itself with the “standard” paradigm in narrative theory with its origin in classical, structuralist narratology. Rather, the thesis promotes a pragmatic and rhetorical perspective which is argued to better account for how we read and make sense of different narrative texts. In opposition to standard narrative theory, where all narratives are considered to adhere to the same model of communication, I argue in favour of a view where narrative fiction and narrative nonfiction are conceived as distinct communicative practices. I open the thesis by showing that Roth’s books contribute to the discussion on how to distinguish fictional from nonfictional narrative texts (Chapter 1). I then continue by approaching the distinction between fiction and nonfiction in general theoretical terms (Chapter 2). And in what follows (Chapters 3-5), I present a read- ing where the Roth Books are juxtaposed against each other. This reading demon- strates how these texts, although in some sense related, because of their divergent qualities and differing intentions still communicate differently with their readers, inviting a readerly attention that is dissimilar from one work to the other. Keywords: Philip Roth, Fiction, Nonfiction, Borderline Aesthetics, Narrative Theory, Autobiography, Authorship, Referentiality, Literature, Identity, Counterfacts, Ethics. Roger Edholm, HumUS Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................... 9 1. The Written and the Unwritten World of Philip Roth ......................... 11 Introduction ......................................................................................... 11 The Roth Books: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Literary Hybrids ........... 12 Critical Reception ................................................................................ 16 Philip Roth Criticism and the Roth Books ....................................... 16 Postmodernism, Panfictionality, and Embodied Theory .................. 19 Theory, Method, and the Field of Study .............................................. 21 Against Postmodernism: Fictional versus Factual Narratives ........... 21 Reading in Practice: Pragmatics, Rhetoric, and Narrative Theory ... 24 Fiction and the Standard Model of Narrative Communication ........ 29 Approaching Fictional and Nonfictional Communication ............... 31 Concepts, Contexts, and the Content of the Form ........................... 35 Concluding Remarks ............................................................................ 37 2. Fiction, Nonfiction, and Borderline Aesthetics ..................................... 40 Introduction ......................................................................................... 40 I. Beyond the Text: Referentiality and Truth-Claiming ........................ 40 Telling the Truth, or How to Determine the Authorial Intention .... 40 Reading the Signposts: Forms and Interpretative Frames ................. 46 Creating Context: A Question of Relevance .................................... 51 II. Narrative Fiction, Nonfictional Narrative ....................................... 58 Narrative Theory and the Narrative Fallacy .................................... 58 Narrative Fiction and the (Un)necessary Narrator ........................... 59 Mimesis and the Logic of Fiction ..................................................... 65 Changing Frames and Borderline Aesthetics .................................... 68 Concluding Remarks ............................................................................ 72 3. The “I” and the Other Philip Roth ...................................................... 73 Introduction ......................................................................................... 73 Context and Concepts .......................................................................... 74 What’s in a Name?: The Question of Onomastic Identity ............... 74 Analysis and Argumentation ................................................................ 78 The Roth Books and the Problem of Paratexts ................................ 78 Paratextual Contradictions and the Tale of Two Philips ................. 79 Fictional Autobiography or Autobiographical Fiction? .................... 84 Determining Relevance: Fiction versus Autobiography .................... 87 The Sense of Direction: Relevance in Operation Shylock ................. 90 Forming the Act: Narrative Technique in Operation Shylock .......... 95 “Philip Roth”: A Narrating Character? ........................................... 99 Autobiography, Formal Mimesis, and The Plot Against America .. 102 Impersonal Perspectives, Paralepsis, and Narrative Fiction ........... 106 Naturalizing Deception: Reading a Novel as a Notebook .............. 111 Concluding Remarks .......................................................................... 117 4. Countertexts, Counterfacts, and Competing Versions ........................ 120 Introduction ....................................................................................... 120 Context and Concepts I ..................................................................... 122 Story and Discourse: Fictional Variants, Nonfictional Versions ..... 122 Analysis and Argumentation I ............................................................ 126 Reading The Facts as Fiction, or the Function of the Countertext . 126 Narrative Doppelgängers and Interpretative Frameworks ............. 132 Events and Motifs as Functional Distinctions ................................ 135 Operation Shylock and the “Missing” Chapter .............................. 139 Context and Concepts II .................................................................... 144 Counterfactuality in Fictional and Nonfictional Practices .............. 144 Analysis and Argumentation II ........................................................... 151 History and Counterfactuality in The Plot Against America .......... 151 A Historical Postscript: Plotting the Counterfacts ......................... 155 Concluding Remarks .......................................................................... 160 5. Nonfiction and the Unseemliness of the Profession ............................ 162 Introduction ....................................................................................... 162 Context and Concepts ........................................................................ 165 Approaching the “Literary” in Literary Nonfiction ....................... 165 Analysis and Argumentation .............................................................. 167 A True Story Told With the Strategies of Fiction ........................... 167 Making Life Narratively Right ....................................................... 170 Recreating the Father: Ethics, Aesthetics, Literary Nonfiction ....... 176 Writing About Others or Writing About Writing About Others? .. 180 Fictionalizing Lives: Reality, History, and Fictionality ................... 186 Writing Lives in Fiction: Ethics and (Non)Fiction ......................... 189 Concluding Remarks .......................................................................... 195 Summary ................................................................................................ 197 Bibliography .......................................................................................... 200 Index ...................................................................................................... 212 Acknowledgements Although an academic work requires an independent mind, a thesis such as this