A MOST PLEASANT BUSINESS: INTRODUCING AUTHORSHIP IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Ross K. Tangedal May 2015 © Copyright All rights reserved Dissertation written by Ross K. Tangedal B.A., Montana State University, 2008 M.A., Montana State University, 2010 Ph.D., Kent State University, 2015 Approved by Robert W. Trogdon, Professor, Ph.D., English , Doctoral Advisor Wesley Raabe, Associate Professor, Ph.D. , Department of English James L.W. West III, Professor, Ph.D. , Department of English Diane Scillia, Professor, Ph.D. , Department of Art History Kim Gruenwald, Associate Professor, Ph.D. , Department of History Accepted by Robert W. Trogdon, Chair, Ph.D. , Department of English James L. Blank, Dean, Ph.D. , College of Arts and Sciences TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... iii DEDICATION .....................................................................................................................v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................................... xiii AUTHOR’S NOTE ..............................................................................................................x INTRODUCTION A Safe Distance: Writers, Authors, and Prefaces ...........................................1 CHAPTERS I. How to Write Introductions: Willa Cather, Ring Lardner, and Prefatory Manipulation I: A Few Straggling Notes: Willa Cather’s Introductions to My Ántonia.....36 II: Piano Tuning, Barbers, and a Mule: Ring Lardner’s Prefaces for the Scribner Boys ................................................................................................57 II. It Was All I Had: F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Anxiety of Authorship I: For Bait to the Hesitant: The Preface to This Side of Paradise and “The Author’s Apology” .......................................................................................85 II: Run as They Read: A Table of Contents to Tales of the Jazz Age .........107 III: An Arduous Precision: Defense, Justification, and Apologies in the 1930s ...........................................................................................................134 III. My Word Yes a Most Pleasant Business: Ernest Hemingway and the Functions of Authorship I: Breaking Forelegs: Exploring the Preface...............................................164 iii II: Excuse the Preface: Introductions for Other Writers .............................191 III: I Hope that I am Very Prejudiced: Authority Reconsidered .................214 IV. Doing the Impossible: James Gould Cozzens, Toni Morrison, and the Retrospective Foreword I: Rarities and Relics: James Gould Cozzens’s Late Career Forewords.....249 II: Highly Vocal Ghosts: Toni Morrison’s Reprint Forewords ..................282 CODA ..............................................................................................................................321 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................324 iv For CJ Tangedal, wife, best friend, and constant blessing & In memory of Dr. Michael D. DuBose friend, scholar, and gentleman. v AKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, this project would not have been possible without the guidance, insight, and good humor of my dissertation director, Robert W. Trogdon. His steadfast belief in my abilities forms the bedrock of my academic life, and the countless hours spent working on this project have been the most rewarding experience because of his confidence in me. He is my biggest influence, greatest teacher, and soundest reviewer. I hope I got it right, Boss. Wesley Raabe graciously provided much needed stylistic and argumentative commentary throughout composition, and James L.W. West III offered me the sagest advice during the process: don’t lose momentum. Their tutelage goes well beyond this project, and I owe them a debt of gratitude and thanks for their sound commentary, trust, and excitement. I would also like to thank Diane Scillia and Kim Gruenwald for their enthusiasm and valuable commentary; my colleagues at Kent State University for letting me discuss this project at length with them; Sara Kosiba for her belief in my work; Kevin Floyd for his guidance and support; editors Suzanne del Gizzo and Kirk Curnutt for agreeing to publish portions of this project in The Hemingway Review and The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review; the Ernest Hemingway Society and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society for supporting my work; and the Kent State University English Department for supporting my research. I wish to thank the following for granting me access to archival materials: Susan Wrynn, curator of the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library; and Don Skemer, curator of manuscripts at Princeton University Library. I wish to thank the vi following organizations for awarding me research grants crucial to the completion of this project: the Ernest Hemingway Foundation & Society for awarding me the Lewis-Smith- Reynolds Founders Fellowship; the John F. Kennedy Library for awarding me the Ernest Hemingway Research Grant; the Department of English at Kent State University for awarding me the Kenneth R. Pringle Dissertation Fellowship; and the Graduate Student Senate of Kent State University for awarding me the Dissertation Research Grant for work at Princeton University Library. I owe the sincerest thanks to my family for their ongoing love and support. I thank my parents, Jerry and Kathy Tangedal, for buying their five-year-old son a complete Encyclopedia Britannica in 1991 and for giving him the template for hard work and dedication; my siblings, Reanne and Ryan Tangedal, for supporting and humoring their brother all these years; my cousin, Jordan Tangedal, for motivating me in Fall 2010; my in-laws, Rich and Cheryl Boberg, for their ongoing kindness and enthusiastic interest in my work; and the rest of my extended family and friends for their continued support. More than anyone, this dissertation belongs to my wife, Catherine “CJ” Tangedal. Her love, patience, and belief in my work made this happen, and I cannot imagine any work of mine without her influence. She is my dream forever coming true, and my reason for everything. This is for her. vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Willa Cather MÁ My Ántonia. Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1918. NUF Not Under Forty. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936. SL The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Eds. Andrew Jewell & Janis Stout. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. Print. WCIP Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches and Letters. L. Brent Bohlke, ed. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1986. Ring Lardner HWSS How to Write Short Stories (with Samples). New York: Scribner’s, 1924. LN The Love Nest and Other Stories. New York: Scribner’s, 1926. F. Scott Fitzgerald BD The Beautiful and Damned. New York: Scribner’s, 1922. GG The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner’s, 1925. TAR Taps at Reveille. New York: Scribner’s, 1935. TITN Tender Is the Night. New York: Scribner’s, 1934. TJA Tales of the Jazz Age. New York: Scribner’s, 1922. TSOP This Side of Paradise. New York: Scribner’s, 1920. Ernest Hemingway DIA Death in the Afternoon. New York: Scribner’s, 1932. FC The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories. New York: Scribner’s, 1938. viii FTA A Farewell to Arms. New York: Scribner’s, 1929. FWBT For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York: Scribner’s, 1940. GHOA Green Hills of Africa. New York: Scribner’s, 1935. IOT In Our Time. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1925. New York: Scribner’s, 1930. Letters 2 The Letters of Ernest Hemingway. Ed. Sandra Spanier et al. Vol. 2. 1923- 1925. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. MAW Men at War. New York: Crown Publishers, 1942. MF-RE A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition. Ed. Seán Hemingway. New York: Scribner’s, 2009. SAR The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner’s, 1926. SL Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961. Ed. Carlos Baker. New York: Scribner’s, 1981. TOS The Torrents of Spring. New York: Scribner’s, 1926. James Gould Cozzens BLP By Love Possessed. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1957. MNN Morning Noon and Night. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968. Toni Morrison SOS Song of Solomon. 1977. New York: Vintage International, 2004. ix AUTHOR’S NOTE This is the first full-length study of authorial introductions of the twentieth century. Therefore, the author draws heavily from unpublished materials from the Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons Publishing Company, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Gould Cozzens at Princeton University Library and from the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library. All quotations from the letters and personal writings of this study’s case authors, editors, and others have been transcribed as accurately as possible. The correspondents’ errors in spelling and punctuation have been retained; diplomatic transcription has been used in cases of unpublished archival material. No emendations have been made. x INTRODUCTION A Safe Distance: Writers, Authors, and Prefaces The general history of the paratext, punctuated by the stages of a technological evolution that supplies it with means and opportunities, would no doubt be the history of those ceaseless phenomena of sliding, substitution,