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Filmed as received. university Microfiims International 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 USA St. John's Road, Tyler's Green High Wycombe, Bucks, England HP10 8HR 7824*10 PRESS, DAVID PAUL NEW FORMS OF SHORT FICTION IN AMERICA, THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA, Ph.D., 1978 UniversiW Micrcxilms International 300 n . z e e b r o a d , a n n a r b o r , m i 48106 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE NEW FORMS OF SHORT FICTION IN AMERICA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY DAVID PAUL PRESS Norman, Oklahoma 1978 NEW FORMS OF SHORT FICTION IN AMERICA APPROVED BY DISSERTATION COMMITTEE "=-<L ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book cheers innovation. But sometimes convention must serve, even though it doesn't say enough, because convention is all there is. I would like to thank Professor Robert Murray Davis who quality-checked this dissertation impeccably, and who gave me the approval and independence my neurotic ego needed to keep on keeping on. I don't know if this damages his reputation or enhances mine. I also want to thank Professor Victor Elconin who, throughout my seven years in the Graduate Program at The University of Oklahoma, has always been human, sympathetic, a friend. His leadership will be missed. Thanks, too, go to my friends; Jerry and Norma, Jin and John, Larry and Melissa. They showed me it could be done, listened to me ramble, and questioned me about this study. Many a long, stoned conversation resulted in my best ideas. Of course, I want to thank Irene. She supported me during this project, pampered me, and put up with too many abuses. Without her sacrifice and sharing, without her love, I could not have written this book; not this way, not now. Finally, I want to dedicate this study to Emily, whose earliest visions of her father pose him at the kitchen table, hunched over the typewriter, smoking cigarettes. -iii- TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. BREAKTHROUGHS, DISRUPTIONS AND NEW SHORT FICTIONAL FORMS................. 1 II. TRIPPING THE MOEBIUS BOARDWALK: BARTH'S LOST IN THE F U N H O U S E............... 47 III. THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF CONSTRUCTIVE ANARCHY; COOVER'S PRICKSONGS AND DESCANTS..................... 87 IV. "IN CONTRADISTINCTION TO THE GRID OF PRECISE, RECTANGULAR PATHWAYS UNDER OUR FEET": THE EVOLUTION OF FORM IN BARTHELME'S FICTIONS.................... 137 V. CONCLUSIONS AND ONGOING EX­ PLORATIONS ................................. 183 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................... 195 -iv- CHAPTER I Breakthroughs, Disruptions and New Short Fictional Forms In a sense I feel like the bearer of yesterday's news, but iii case you haven't heard, there's been a revolution in American fiction. The novel — the old novel — put up some resistance on the strength of its tradition, but chained as it was to an over-developed sense of theory, restrained by its insistence that it accurately reflect some facet of social reality, it proved too brittle to resist and too formulaic to accommodate itself to the innovative efforts of two de­ cades of insurgent fiction writers. As recently as 1960 the novel offered itself as a prefabricated home which a writer could furnish, perhaps remodel slightly, but which he could not build from scratch. Then the onslaught began. In terms of subject matter Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer and the New Journalists refused to continue efforts to write fiction as if it were real, so they wrote about reality as if it were a novel. In terms of technique John Barth, Thomas Pynchon and writers of "exhausted" fiction began exaggerating, parodying, exposing and undermining the conventional methods of narration. Still other writers like Bernard Malamud and John Hawkes delved into -1- —2— allegory, myth, fable and other pre-novel conventions, breaking clearly if not cleanly with mimetic narrative. Each effort opened up a new front on which writers continue to conduct an aggressive guerilla war against the bastille of novelistic tradition. Surprisingly hot on the heels of this innovative fiction has come a barrage of excellent but uncoordinated critical commentary. For example, while critics of contemporary American fiction agree that the term "novel" is obsolete for their purposes, its removal has created a quandary in our critical vocabulary. Metafiction, critifiction, superfiction, parafiction, surfiction, fictitious dis­ course, disruptive fiction, anti-realist fiction, black humor fiction, fiction of the absurd, fabulation. Each term denotes a generic con­ cept and each concept overlaps — at least partially — each of the others. Agreement among critics occurs primarily when discussing what American fiction of the 60*s and 70's is not — it is not a collection of novels - - and disintegrates when attempting to define just what that fiction is. My purpose here is nothing so ambitious as to correct any deficiency there may be in our critical overview of contemporary American fiction. In fact, readers of this fiction are repeatedly made aware of the paradox that hard-edge definition is distortion, that it is, as Tony Tanner observes, "the beginning of rigidity, and rigidity is the beginning of rigor mortis." Yet I do wish to point out that each of the above terms has been applied to both book-length fictions and shorter fictional forms, and this, I think, is a mistake. Whereas critics thus far have tended to analyze the fictions of this variously labelled movement as reactions to the novel tradition, many writers, finding the forms of novel- length narrative too bound to tradition to accommodate their fic­ tional inçulses, have sought refuge and friendlier footing in shorter fictional forms. And it has often been the explorations and achieve­ ments in short fictional forms which have liberated the applied imaginations of contenqjorary writers, facilitating their innovative accomplishments in book-length fictions. Robert Coover’s Pricksongs and Descants (1969) is indeed a book of innovative fiction, and it should and has been studied in relation to other volumes of disruptive fiction, metafiction, fab­ ulation, etc. But it is also a book of short fictions, and should be studied as it relates to the tradition and conventions of the short story and tale. The same applies to John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse (1968), Donald Barthelme's Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts (1968) and City Life (1970), William Gass' In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (1968), and Ronald Sukenick's The Death of the Novel and Other Stories (1969), And since all these volumes of in­ novative short fiction were published within a three-year period, they should also be studied in relation to one another. Each volume is a part of the macro-movement of innovative, anti-traditional fiction; each, of course, is an integral part of the literary de­ velopment of its author; and together they constitute a generic de­ velopment of significance, a breakthrough in new short fictional forms. By analyzing the specific innovations practiced by each author and the contributions of these innovations to their respective volumes, I hope to clarify the tactics and strategies of this one campaign —4— of the revolution in American fiction writing, 1. The scope of the new fiction; the ceremonies of the new character. Critics of contemporary American fiction, trying to name that fiction, have created a funhouse of labels in which we can easily get lost unless we keep the cause of this effect in mind. It is not just whimsy or academic diversion (although, let's face it, neither are they negligible), but the radically innovative and different techniques used by contemporary story-tellers; in short, a quantum change in narrative dynamics. Such a leap is not un­ precedented; I am thinking of the narrative revolution in 18th century England, It too had arrived well before the literary world could settle on its name. Remember "comic-epic poem in prose?" Yet such radical literary developments do not occur often.