UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations 1-1-2004 Martyred Cars Andrea Rose Gregovich University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/rtds Repository Citation Gregovich, Andrea Rose, "Martyred Cars" (2004). UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations. 1662. http://dx.doi.org/10.25669/p38y-ciaw This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MARTYRED CARS by Andrea Rose Gregovich Bachelor of Arts DePauw University 1997 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing Department of English College of Liberal Arts Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas May 2004 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1422795 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI UMI Microform 1422795 Copyright 2004 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Thesis Approval The Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas A p r il 12 .20 04 The Thesis prepared by Andrea Rose Gregovich Entitled Martyred Cars is approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Examination Committee Chair Dean of the Graduate College //S Examination Committee Member Lr Examination Committee Member Graduate College Faculty Representative 11 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Copyright by Andrea Rose Gregovich 2004 All Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT Martyred Cars: A Novel In Stories by Andrea Rose Gregovich Douglas Unger, Examination Committee Chair Associate Professor of English University of Nevada, Las Vegas The seven story-like chapters of Martyred Cars explore the daily business and labor of a desert junk yard and its brushes with the supernatural. Each chapter takes the point of view of a different character in their own struggles with work, life, and the entities and elements that taunt them from beyond the boundaries of known science. The novel builds these layers of cosmology of archetypal universals, patterns that recur (whether it be in landscape or the pattern on a man's shirt), and a blurring of the boundary between the inanimate and animate, the spiritual and the mundane. Martyred Cars does not seek to solve problems or answer questions, but to view the world from obtuse and fanciful angles, from the point of view of various people, animals, cars, and things residing and consuming at the bottom of the economy, on the perpetual verge of an apocalypse. Ill Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................... iii PREFACE................................................................................................................................iv CHAPTER 1 JUNK YARD DEVIL ..................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2 JUNK YARD A N G ELS........................................................................... 34 CHAPTER 3 GOOD DOG, BAD DOG ......................................................................... 75 CHAPTER 4 OUT OF HEAVEN ....................................................................................98 CHAPTER 5 DIVISION, SUBDIVISION, FRAGMENTATION OF MOTOR VEHICLES........................................................................132 CHAPTER 6 THE FRITO BANDITO SAGA...............................................................171 CHAPTER 7 PORTRAIT OF THE DELIVERY VAN ................................................191 VITA .....................................................................................................................................219 IV Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREFACE In the early nineties, my father built a junkyard from the ground up in Tucson, Arizona, and operated it for about nine years. It was something of a mid-life crisis for him, something he claims he always wanted to do. My mom was also in on the yard - she did the bookkeeping on her time off from her own job as a social worker. I helped out sometimes, too, when I was home from college, or from my own adventures. I shuffled papers, answered phones, delivered truck engines, transmissions, and various odd formations of chrome, metal, and plastic to other junk yards, garages and body shops. I watched, listened, and started writing about this world, which grew into this novel. Martyred Cars. While my father's junkyard was the primary source for this novel, my literary sources have been various. As a youngster, I was a devotee of John Steinbeck and J.D. Salinger, and Fve realized lately that their work was formative in my own definition of what makes a good read. More recently. I've shamelessly read and re-read Thomas Pynchon, tattooed his symbol on my back, relished his relentlessness and unevenness. I've also felt a kinship with George Saunders, who I think shares my love of urban decay and garishly-themed spaces. And whenever I get a chance, I search for the depths of my own Slavic soul in strange Russian writers like Bulgakov, Gogol, Zoshchenko, Krzhizhanovsky, Biely, Blok, and Pelevin. The overall mood of strangeness in my novel is, I believe, more Russian than anything else. Gogol's Dead Souls in particular helped me through the revision of Martyred Cars. I've been striving for the same kind of pacing Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and lightness of which Gogol is a champion. Furthermore, certain passages in Dead Souls were a direct pep talk for me as a writer about the thanklessness of seeing characters like Brody and company through the kind of lens I've chosen to look through. I must also acknowledge my pop cultural sources as well. Certain literary elements propose that we should shun the corrosive sway of television and cinema on our writing, and I’ve read enough undergraduate fiction to understand the wisdom of this wisdom — it’s been one of my more difficult teaching challenges to get my students to see that their narratives are fading to black or cutting to commercial for no apparent reason. I’ve always known, though, that for me to eschew the influence of TV, movies, and other elements of popular culture on Martyred Cars would be to deny it the energies that gave birth to it. The classic eighties film Repo Man, for example, is my novel's direct ancestor; it resurrects film noir traditions to probe the automotive and the otherworldly for their absurd and comic possibilities. And don't get me started on Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." That a television series depicting very real high school characters in a world of comic book logic can achieve a Shakespearean caliber (no fooling) of allegorical layering and punchy dialogue demonstrates to me that there is hope for us as a society. I also shouldn't get started on professional wrestling - I've discovered brash and passionate literariness on every level of this carnival side show of a "sport." And I can't not recognize David Lynch as one of my sources. He taught me, in his films, that the best kind of satire should blur its intent, leaving the audience unsure whether they should furrow in contemplation or guffaw. I do feel like Martyred Cars should associate with certain -isms and categories, such as urban mythology, comic book realism, automotive allegory, postmodern epic. VI Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. speculativism, and revisionist fantasy. I've made up some of these, borrowed others. I cringe, though, when I hear my novel called "magical realism." Maybe it is, technically. But that particular -ism always seems to imply that the magic is somehow separate from