View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Open Research Exeter 1 Memory, History and the Representation of Urban Space in Post-war American Literature Submitted by Alice Levick to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in June 2018 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ………………………………………………………….. 2 Abstract This thesis investigates urban development and locational memory in New York and Los Angeles during the mid to late twentieth century, as represented both materially in the landscape of the city and textually in fiction and memoir. I begin my study in Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, where paved gardens and concretised river beds lie beneath the gridded urban landscape which hides the past and dislocates memory from what is visible in urban space. Next, through my analysis of Marshall Berman’s reflections on his childhood in the Bronx, I paint a picture of New York during the 1950s, during which the proposals of urban planner and master builder Robert Moses were put to work, dismantling many of the city’s pre-existing urban structures and its institutional memory. Subsequently I move to Los Angeles in the late 1960s, analysing two works of fiction by Joan Didion and Alison Lurie. In this chapter I explore California’s spatial and temporal indeterminacy. From imagined to remembered space, I next examine Didion’s family memoirs and personal essays in addition to D. J. Waldie’s reminiscences. I find that despite attempts to cultivate one’s personal history in textual form, a sense of loss is what is long remembered and hard to control. My thesis comes to a close with L. J. Davis and Paula Fox in the early 1970s when there was a new form of change afoot in the built environment in the form of gentrification. In the fragmented, automobile-dominated Los Angeles; in the dislocated Bronx; in California where the past seems to melt into air; and in brownstone Brooklyn, I show that the experience of what Sigmund Freud deems “the uncanny” is rife, appearing in the cracks between the absent and the present, the invisible and the visible, memory and history. The fissures and gaps in the narratives of each author reflect the various processes and consequences of the imposition of twentieth-century modernism in particular urban spaces during this period. 3 CONTENTS Title Page 1 Abstract 2 Contents 3 List of Archives and Repositories Consulted 4 Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 8 Chapter 1. “A Spectacular Form of Amnesia”: The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely 29 and The High Window Chapter 2. Marshall Berman’s Memory Palace: Home and Absence in the 69 Modern City Chapter 3. Imagining California: The Nowhere City and Play It As It Lays 113 Chapter 4. Remembering California: Where I Was From, Slouching Towards 144 Bethlehem and Holy Land Chapter 5. Pentimenti and Palimpsests: A Meaningful Life and 1970s Brooklyn 185 Brownstoners Conclusion 223 Works Cited 246 4 List of Archives and Repositories Consulted 1. Robert Moses Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, New York Public Library, New York, NY. 2. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Records, Manuscripts and Archives, New York Public Library, New York, NY. 3. Morris Dickstein Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, New York, NY. 4. Alfred Kazin Papers, Berg Collection, New York Public Library, New York, NY. 5. Marshall Berman Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, NY. 6. Dan Carpenter Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, NY. 7. James Felt Papers, Dept. of Drawings and Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York. NY. 8. Harlem Neighborhoods Association Records, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY. 9. Christiane C. Collins collection, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY. 10. Bronx County Historical Society, New York, NY. 11. Hofstra University Library, Special Collections Department, Oral History Collections, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY. 12. Municipal Arts Society, Greenacre Reference Library and MAS Archives, New York, NY. 13. Brooklyn Collection, Brooklyn Public Library, New York, NY. 14. Back to the City Collection, Brooklyn Historical Society, New York, NY. 15. H. Dickson McKenna Collection, Brooklyn Historical Society, New York, NY. 16. Brooklyn Neighborhood Renewal and Development Collection, Brooklyn Historical Society, New York, NY. 5 Acknowledgements First of all, I am hugely grateful to my supervisors, Professor Jo Gill and Professor Joe Kember, both of whom have provided a huge amount of insight, constructive criticism and stimulating conversation over the years. Jo Gill, my primary supervisor, has been endlessly patient with my re-writing and ever-increasing word counts and has guided me through this whole process with immense steadfastness. Thank you Jo, without your expert support I would not have been able to write this. A significant amount of archival reading for this thesis was conducted in the New York Public Library, where I read through the myriad (to say the least) papers in the Robert Moses collection, which proved invaluable, in addition to several other collections. At Columbia University I made use of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library in particular, and I am indebted to Thai Jones for dexterously guiding me through the Marshall Berman papers, to Ben Serby for his painstaking work on their itemisation and collation, and to Shellie Sclan for giving me her blessing to look through the collection at a very early stage. I also spent a lot of time gathering material in both the Brooklyn Collection at the Brooklyn Public Library and at the Brooklyn Historical Society, and I am grateful to both institutions for their help. On this side of the pond I have to acknowledge the British Library, which has provided a second academic home for me for the past six and a half years. Without this reflective space in which to study, think, research, write, dream, I don’t know how I could possibly have either started or finished this thesis. Amazing librarians, curators and archivists in New York helped me in innumerable ways, guiding me to truly valuable and at times surprising resources. Special thanks to Erin Butler at the Municipal Arts Society Reference Library; Sady Sullivan and John Tofanelli at Columbia Butler Library; Laura Tosi at the Bronx County Historical Society; June Koffi at the Brooklyn Public Library; Joanna Lamaida at the Brooklyn Historical Society; Thomas G. 6 Lannon at the New York Public Library; and Geri Solomon at Hofstra University Library Special Collections. I also benefited immensely from the guidance of several academics, fellow researchers and other interested parties whose advice was very much appreciated. I received particularly generous help from Christopher Niedt, Ina Katz and Laurence Levy at Hofstra University, Professor Michael Roth at Wesleyan University, Professor Dolores Hayden at Yale University, Professor Setha M. Low at CUNY, Morris Dickstein, Professor William Sharpe at Barnard College, Phillip Lopate, Professor Kenneth Jackson at Columbia University, Professor Michelle Fine at CUNY, and the ‘Brooklyn Transitions’ book discussion group at the Brooklyn Public Library in Park Slope. Special thanks to Susan Opotow and particularly to her son Nate for driving me around Long Island! Portions of this thesis were published in journals and presented at academic events. A version of Chapter 1 was published in HARTS & Minds (Spring 2015: 2.2 Crime and Concealment) under the title “The Big Sleep, Uncanny Spaces, and Memory” and I would like to express my gratitude to the editor of the paper, Andrew Hicks, in addition to the anonymous reviewers, and to the Editors in Chief for including my work in the collection. Some portions of Chapter 2 can be found in “Looking for Moses in NYC,” a short personal essay published in US Studies Online (March 28 2016). Thank you to Ben Offiler for publishing me and for your assistance with refining the content. An essay which draws from Chapters 2 and 4 in this thesis has been accepted for publication in The City and Time Collection, edited by Dr Anne-Marie Evans and Dr Kaley Kramer for York St John University, under the title “Marshall Berman and DJ Waldie: Memory and Grief in Urban and Suburban Spaces.” I thank both editors, in addition to the anonymous reviewers, for providing key criticisms that greatly improved the text. 7 I owe a huge debt to the people who shared their experiences with me through interviews and conversations. Their personal histories breathed real human life into this thesis, and I am so grateful for their patience, honesty, and generosity with their time. They are: David Allen, Andrew Berman, Richard Fine, Sam Goodman, Vivian Gornick, Amy Hass, Howard Kaminsky, Lee Kopelman, Lawrence Levy, Francis Morrone, Margo Moss, Jack Putnam, Naima Rauam, Rebecca Reitz, Joe Rosen, Shellie Sclan, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Geri Solomon, Joseph Svehlak, Gilbert Tauber and Lee Zimmerman. In particular I must thank Howard, Richard and Amy – I am so lucky to have met them and so grateful for their kindness and inestimable insight. I would like to express my great appreciation to my former boss Nick Carver for somehow convincing the powers that be to let me change my hours so that I would have sufficient time each week to work on my PhD, and for all of his help and accommodation thereafter, without which I would not have even been able to consider starting this process.