University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2017 Don't go unless you mean it : a novel with critical afterword : heteronormative masculine performance in contemporary fictions of the rural American south. Nathan N. Gower University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the Fiction Commons Recommended Citation Gower, Nathan N., "Don't go unless you mean it : a novel with critical afterword : heteronormative masculine performance in contemporary fictions of the rural American south." (2017). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2729. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2729 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DON’T GO UNLESS YOU MEAN IT: A NOVEL WITH CRITICAL AFTERWORD: HETERONORMATIVE MASCULINE PERFORMANCE IN CONTEMPORARY FICTIONS OF THE RURAL AMERICAN SOUTH By Nathan N. Gower B.A., Campbellsville University, 2006 M.F.A., Spalding University, 2008 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Humanities Department of Comparative Humanities University of Louisville Louisville, KY May 2017 Copyright 2017 by Nathan Gower All rights reserved DON’T GO UNLESS YOU MEAN IT: A NOVEL WITH CRITICAL AFTERWORD: HETERONORMATIVE MASCULINE PERFORMANCE IN CONTEMPORARY FICTIONS OF THE RURAL AMERICAN SOUTH By Nathan N. Gower B.A., Campbellsville University, 2006 M.F.A., Spalding University, 2008 A Dissertation Approved on March 29, 2017 By the following Dissertation Committee: ________________________________ Dissertation Director Dr. Annette Allen ________________________________ Prof. Brad Watson _______________________________ Dr. Michael Williams _______________________________ Prof. Paul Griner ii DEDICATION To Rochelle, for your fierce love and support, always. To Ariana, Elin, Avelyn, and Finnegan for making all the work worthwhile. iii ACKNOWELDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the many people who helped make this dissertation possible, a fraction of which I will mention specifically here. First, thank you to my dissertation director, Dr. Annette Allen, for being a constant buoy throughout my doctoral coursework and candidacy, and for being the best type of scholar possible: one that is simultaneously accessible and brilliant. I’d also like to thank Dr. Michael Williams for his continuous encouragement, and for his clear, succinct, and invaluable feedback on my dissertation. His measured advice helped my writing at every turn, and for that, I am grateful. My appreciation also extends to Prof. Brad Watson of the University of Wyoming, who sacrificed his own personal time to join my committee. A long-time literary hero of mine, Professor Watson was able to translate what I have always admired about his work into personalized instruction that has made my work better in areas of character development, pacing, and plotting consistencies. I’m grateful, too, for the help of Professor Paul Griner, who, in addition to serving as Outside Reader, sent encouraging messages and timely reading suggestions that resonated with me immediately. Finally, I’d like to thank the Appalachian College Association, whose generous support of my project made it possible for me to complete my research and writing well ahead of what would have otherwise been possible. iv ABSTRACT DON’T GO UNLESS YOU MEAN IT: A NOVEL WITH CRITICAL AFTERWORD: HETERONORMATIVE MASCULINE PERFORMANCE IN CONTEMPORARY FICTIONS OF THE RURAL AMERICAN SOUTH Nathan Gower March 29, 2017 This dissertation consists of a full-length novel for an adult audience as well as a substantial critical afterword to elucidate and complicate germane thematic concerns of the creative artifact. The novel, leaning on the rich traditions and many genre conventions of fictions of the American south, tells the story of an unlikely underground coal miner in Blue Banks, a fictional southern town set in the caverns and rolling hills of the western Kentucky coal fields. The narrative follows its fish-out-of-water protagonist, Cody Culver, a fledgling academic who thought he had escaped his fate as a third-generation coal miner when he left Kentucky for graduate school in Chicago, as he finds himself back in the small mining town of his youth, poverty stricken and desperate for work to support his new wife and baby on-the-way. When Cody meets a fellow outsider—the enigmatic Hunter McCready, who has just been released from prison for the attempted murder of Cody’s older brother, Luke—they form a quick, unsettling bond that could turn Cody against his family and the close-knit mining community at large. When the v friendship eventually becomes sexual, the affair threatens Cody’s reputation, his marriage, and even his life. Along the way, Cody’s identity is complicated, especially as he learns that Hunter McCready has Klinefelter Syndrome, a condition in which a phenotypic male has an XXY chromosome in place of the much more common XY (male) or XX (female); in other words, Hunter McCready is simultaneously male, female, and neither. If Cody Culver is attracted to, and in love with, someone who is “invisibly” intersex, what does this mean for Cody himself—a cisgender man—concerning his sexuality? Is Cody gay, straight, bisexual, or something else altogether? In what ways does it matter? Who gets to make that decision? These rhetorical questions lead directly into the critical afterword, which is divided into three subtitled sections. The first section synthesizes work by Foucault, Butler, and Blank to consider constructed binaries of sexual orientation, gender, and biological sex. The second section suggests how those constructs interact with the rural American South, giving particular focus to conservative Christian influence. The third section uses examples from selected contemporary literature, including my own creative artifact, to argue the importance of challenging character archetypes in new fictions of the rural American South. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ………………………………………………………………………...…iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………………………………………………………...……iv ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………………v DON’T GO UNLESS YOU MEAN IT: A NOVEL CHAPTER 1 ……………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER 2 ………………………………………………………………….…18 CHAPTER 3 …………………………………………………………….………37 CHAPTER 4 …………………………………………………………………….50 CHAPTER 5 …………………………………………………………………….63 CHAPTER 6 ………………………………………...………….....………….…75 CHAPTER 7 …………………………………………………………………….90 CHAPTER 8 …………………………………………………………………...103 CHAPTER 9 .......................................................................................................119 CHAPTER 10 .....................................................................................................131 CHAPTER 11 .....................................................................................................147 CHAPTER 12 .....................................................................................................160 CHAPTER 13 .....................................................................................................172 CHAPTER 14 .....................................................................................................188 CHAPTER 15 .....................................................................................................201 CHAPTER 16 .....................................................................................................216 CHAPTER 17 .....................................................................................................230 CHAPTER 18 .....................................................................................................244 CHAPTER 19 .....................................................................................................254 CHAPTER 20 .....................................................................................................268 CRITICAL AFTERWORD: HETERONORMATIVE MASCULINE PERFORMACE IN CONTEMPORARY FICTIONS OF THE RURAL AMERICAN SOUTH INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................283 BINARIES OF SEXUAL ORIENTATION, GENDER, AND SEX ..................288 PLACE, SPACE, AND SEX: CHALLENGES IN THE RURUAL SOUTH ....297 REIMAGINING GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN NEW FICTIONS .............307 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................318 REFERENCES ...................................................................................................320 WORKS CONSULTED .....................................................................................324 CURRICULUM VITAE .....................................................................................332 vii CHAPTER 1 The truck’s hazard lights blinked in steady cadence, their red glow slinging Cody’s shadow against the tree line of the woods that banked the two-lane highway. He had walked behind the truck to check for damage, but instead found the