A THOUSAND MILES OUT OF MY MIND Grant Sisk, M.A. Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS August 2000 APPROVED: Giles Mitchell, Major Professor James Baird, Committee Member John Robert Ross, Committee Member James T. F. Tanner, Chair of the Department of English C. Neal Tate, Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies Sisk, Grant, A Thousand Miles Out of My Mind. Doctor of Philosophy (English), August 2000, 365 pp., one novel, four short stories, three essays, works cited, 12 titles. The dissertation is a collection of creative and non-fiction work, including a novel with critical introduction, four short stories, and three essays. The novel is a modern day Grail quest that takes place primarily in the Southwestern United States. The short stories are mostly set in the southwest as well, and take for their topic what Paul Fussel refers to as “hope abridged.” The essays are non-fiction. TABLE OF CONTENTS Critical Introduction.......................................................................................1 A THOUSAND MILES OUT OF MY MIND ..............................................11 CIBOLA.........................................................................................................280 COCONINO ESCARPMENT.......................................................................314 FEATHERSTONE.........................................................................................322 A WOMAN HER AGE .................................................................................333 RITUAL.........................................................................................................340 SOME KIND OF PARADISE.......................................................................346 CHICKEN SLAYER .....................................................................................355 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................361 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION Ronald Wallace asserts that “comedy has become the major characteristic form of the twentieth-century novel, a comedy which incorporates the violence and chaos of modern life” (Wallace 1). However, for this important literary form, the comic novel has received a surprising lack of attention from the critics. Louis Rubin states that “the industry and prodigality of modern-day American literary scholarship being what they are, it may seem strange that so little writing has been done on so vast a subject” (Rubin ix). One of the reasons for this may be, as Lionel Trilling has pointed out, “Nowadays, even the literate reader is likely to be unschooled in the comic tradition and unaware of comic seriousness” (Trilling 8). If, as seems to be the case, this is so, it goes a long way towards explaining another common misconception about comedy, one which many critics have pointed out. Specifically, there seems to be a general opinion among the scholars and the public alike that anything that is humorous is also frivolous and therefore unworthy of serious examination. Another opinion on this comes from Fred Miller Robinson, who finds that as a general rule, the “study of comedy is so often a method of categorization rather than analysis” (Robinson 2). Dismissing the idea of the l’humour noir, as Andre Breton dubbed “black humor” in 1939, as humor at all, Bruce Janoff asserts that it is a tradition in which there is an “overwhelmingly tragic view of the world” and as such is aligned more closely with tragedy than humor (Janoff 18). 1 In Moby Dick, Ishmael states “There are certain queer times and occasions…when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke” (Melville 195). It is this sort of realization, of course, that spurs the attempts by writers to depict and therefore classify the predicament of modern man. So, then, the modern comic novel may be said to deal with the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” with a comic irony and ambivalence that sometimes borders on, sometimes falls headlong into, despair. Wallace observes that “the modern comic novel rejects the idea of reformation through ridicule. Instead, laughter reflects a necessary comic perspective on man’s position in an absurd universe” (Wallace 15). Safer continues this line of reasoning by asserting that “Contemporary American epics ridicule those who relentlessly look for meaning in an absurd world…they present an absurd portrayal of the times, absurd in Camus’s view, which focuses on the ‘confrontation between the human need for meaning and the unreasonable silence of the world’.” (Safer 20). Robert Coover states that, “I tend to think of tragedy as a kind of adolescent response to the universe—the higher truth is a comic response” (Hertzel 28). Shakespeare’s “Richard II,” dealing with, as Herschel Baker says, the “recording with indignation the course and outcome of a successful insurrection,” (Riverside 801) is a History play that concerns itself with the tragic results of Realpolitik. However, King Richard’s railing against circumstance strikes us as an example of exactly what Coover is trying to convey: 2 I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads, My gorgeous palace for a hermitage, My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown, My figu’rd goblets for a dish of wood, My scepter for a walking staff, My subjects for a pair of carved saints,” One can almost see Aumerele and Northumberland--two of his staunchest supporters--looking at their watches and wishing he’d hurry up, so they could try to go save his kingdom, but no, he’s just hit his stride and continues on: “And my large kingdom for a little grave, A little, little grave, an obscure grave…”(Riverside 825). In contrast to this is Yossarian’s frequent, simple assertion in Catch-22 that the reason he doesn’t want to fly any more bombing missions is because everyone’s trying to kill him. R.W.B. Lewis suggests that the humor to be found in postmodern novels such as Catch-22, is an aesthetic experience of a paradox stated. He goes on to say that “the really significant development in the comic mode, both at home and abroad, over the past century or so has been the development of comedy as a way of registering artistic and human defeat, and the use of the clown figure as a means of living with despair. And yet, a note of something more than sheer endurance…a note even of positive joy…” (Robinson 15). Of course, Shakespeare’s audience, steeped in the tradition of the Great Chain of Being, probably would not interpret Richard’s speech as self-absorbed and immature, even though it is by his actions and inactions, that Bollingbroke has managed 3 to steal his throne. It would take over four hundred years before the philosophical climate would change enough for the common person to accept the idea that life is chaotic, confusing, and unfair and about as much time for this idea to make its way into literature. When in Moby Dick Ishamel meets his bedmate Queequeg for the first time and decides that it is better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian, most readers cannot help but laugh. And though the novel is full of little comic gems like this, that doesn’t make it a comic work, any more than the numerous detailed and accurate discourses on cetology make it a book that is dedicated to a study of whales and whaling. Even while we laugh during the humourous passages of Catch-22 we know also that a war is being fought and that women will be raped and killed, Snowden will be eviscerated and bleed to death in front of Yossarian and that the men responsible for all this tragedy will not only go unpunished but will be honored and rewarded. My novel, A Thousand Miles Out of my Mind, is a modern day Grail Quest. Some of Safer’s observations on Catch-22 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest may also be made about A Thousand Miles. “Like traditional epics, all the postmodern comic epic novels discussed are notably allusive. However these epics use materials from the past in a half-farcical, half passionate spirit. Their allusiveness mocks the present and is often ambivalent about the past (Safer 21). A Thousand Miles intentionally blends elements from several different genres in an attempt to draw on traditional values from our literary Western heritage and recast them in a comic, postmodern light. As such then, the Grail motif in the novel is intended to be viewed in the “half-farcical, half passionate spirit” that Safer identifies as the “inverse allusive mode.” 4 The protagonist, Colin, performs the role of the untested youth. Finding himself alienated and alone, Colin steals a car and, unbeknowst to him, sets in motion a chain of events that will change his life. As is common with mythic literature such as The Faerie Queene and the Arthurian Grail Quests Colin finds himself lost, with no sense of direction, not even the direction from where he has come. He then has an encounter with a crone figure that is at once confusing and illuminatory. He will encounter the Old Woman several more times in the novel and each time Colin modifies his actions to fit what he thinks may be suggestions or clues from the Crone, even though her comments are almost always ambivalent. Thus, she operates as a type of guide for the quest, though her influence lies more in the fact her appearing spurs Colin to take some action, to be active in his choices rather than passive. The transvestite, Julie, or J. as Colin chooses to call her, performs dual roles; on the one hand she is a Trickster figure who creates as many problems as she solves; on the other she is a type of eiron figure that Northrop Frye identifies in his essay “The Mythos of Spring: Comedy” a character who appears to be less than he is, or who assumes more guilt than necessary (Rath 252). Colin also functions in this capacity in a limited sense, most of which occurs at the end of the novel, where armed with a nascent sense of responsibility, he chooses to return home and face his family, as well as to attempt to correct the wrongs that he has done.