Postmarked Constellations: Historicity and Paraliterary Form in Late American Fictions by Keith Robert Jones Department of English Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Priscilla Wald, Supervisor ___________________________ Thomas J. Ferraro ___________________________ Sean Metzger ___________________________ Frederick C. Moten Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 i v ABSTRACT Postmarked Constellations: Historicity and Paraliterary Form in Late American Fictions by Keith Robert Jones Department of English Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Priscilla Wald, Supervisor ___________________________ Thomas J. Ferraro ___________________________ Sean Metzger ___________________________ Frederick C. Moten An abstract of a dissertation or thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 Copyright by Keith Robert Jones 2012 Abstract “Postmarked Constellations” examines how three late-twentieth century American writers bring long historical processes into view through their use of paraliterary forms. The term paraliterary is used in this study to refer to a set of popular cultural forms that overlap the field of the “literary,” thereby complicating the latter’s assumed autonomy from the impurities of everyday life. Focusing upon the historical fictions of Gayl Jones’s blues novel Corregidora (1975), Samuel R. Delany’s sword and sorcery series Return to Nevèrÿon (1979-1987), and Cormac McCarthy’s Western novel Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West (1985), this dissertation argues that these writers strategically turn to the paraliterary in order to engage their own moment’s historical crisis within a larger trajectory of Anglo-European Western expansionism within the Americas. In adopting the blues (Gayl Jones), sword and sorcery (Delany), and the Western (McCarthy), these writers do not merely incorporate elements of these cultural forms, but rather transform their codes and conventions in order to bring past historical experiences into contact with the present. In so doing these writers draw out the historical dimensions internal to each of these generic forms. They show the degree to which genres are embedded within a larger world system, one that cannot be reduced to a national cultural imaginary, but must be placed within a longer-unfolding geopolitical iv context of colonial modernity, the Atlantic slave trade, the dispossession of indigenous peoples, and the emergence of a world market. While written between the years 1975-1987, the texts of this study explore the deeper historical traumas specific to nineteenth-century U.S. expansionism. In turning to these specific histories—either in directly formal ways, as in McCarthy’s Western or in the much broader terms of their legacies, as in Jones’s blues novel or Delany’s sword and sorcery series—these texts reveal the often obscured continuities between nineteenth-century and late-twentieth century forms of American empire. The chapters of this dissertation underscore how the blues, sword and sorcery, and the Western are tied to popular cultural forms that emerge, if not directly out of a nineteenth-century U.S. imperial literary and mass entertainment culture, then out of the historical experiences upon which such mass cultural phenomena was based. But these texts also complicate such ties to an imperial cultural imaginary by actively transforming the narrative logic of their generic forms. Tracing out the paraliterary dimensions of these texts thus allows each chapter to constellate the historical past that their narratives examine with the late- twentieth century historical present in which they appear. In a period characterized by liberation movements and large-scale revolts both at home and abroad, these texts respond both to specifically national situations as well as to unfinished world v historical processes. In this respect, these are American fictions concerned less with their quintessential Americanness—a preoccupation of both nineteenth- and early- twentieth century writers and critics—than with their peculiar relation to the world as Americans. “Postmarked Constellations” therefore proposes a method for tracking, not just a new engagement with the historicity of cultural forms within late-American fictions, but also for understanding the response of American writers to a radically new experience of globalization. vi Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to three people who would have loved to celebrate its completion: To my father, Robert William Jones: You gave me a love of language, both the sound of it and the thrill of its complexities. You also taught me that no man is poor who has history in his head. I thus am richer today, dad. Thank you. To Laura Townsend who taught me how to listen to the blues. I miss the gravy and the tin bill. When we meet again, it will be at a barstool. Miles Davis beside us at the Blackhawk. To Andie P. Cotton: David Bowie is believed to have said, “I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human,” but I think he took that daring and imaginative flight from you, the original Major Tom. And, besides, propulsive is what he meant to say, but he misheard you, so softly did you speak. vii Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... x Chapter 1: The Nineteenth Century in the Twentieth: Towards a Concept of the Paraliterary ..................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Genre in the Sphere of Culture ............................................................................................. 1 1.2 A Late Cultural Turn ...................................................................................................... 13 1.3 Late American Fictions .................................................................................................. 20 Chapter 2: Repetition / Ursa Corregidora’s New World Song ............................................. 26 2.1 “Building Up” A Blues Aesthetic ................................................................................. 26 2.2 The Global Context of A Blues People ........................................................................ 44 2.3 Women’s Blues and Afro-Diasporic Lives ................................................................ 69 Chapter 3: Seriality / Allegory and Historicity in Return to Nevèrÿon ................................. 87 3.1 Allegory and the Historical Present ............................................................................. 87 3.2 “New Barbarians” and “Cross-Cultural Concepts” ................................................ 97 3.3 Seriality, Historicity, and Experimentation ............................................................ 111 3.4 A “Novel of Crisis” and Allegorical Passageways ................................................ 127 Chapter 4: Sedimentation / Late-Style in Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West ...................................................................................................................................................... 155 4.1 “Always a Bloody Ground Over the Horizon” ........................................................ 160 4.2 Western Variations: “See the Child” ............................................................................ 186 4.3 “Conjoined They Made a Thing”: From Liberators to Scalphunters ............................ 205 viii 4.4 Late-Style: “How Came the Learned Man” .................................................................. 226 Coda ................................................................................................................................... 243 Afterward ................................................................................................................................... 247 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 253 Biography ................................................................................................................................... 261 ix Acknowledgements Many beautiful and generous people have helped me bear this project along. They pushed or pulled, depending on what was needed. When I lost my footing, grew overwhelmed, despaired over what was still to be done I had Noam Toran, Laura Townsend, Joshua Ezrin, Joel Dougherty, Abe Geil, Patrick Jagoda, Tony Tost, Luka Arsenjuk, Michelle Koerner, Timothy Wientzen, Bill and Bev Corbett, my sisters (Carleene, Lori, Maureen, and Pauline) and my mom and dad to restore perspective to my world and replenish me. A special thanks to my committee: Priscilla Wald, Tom Ferraro, Sean Metzger, and Fred Moten. I am extremely grateful for their allowing my writing and thinking to unfold at its own pace, but I am more grateful still for their timely interventions, pressing me to crystalize my argument with kind but forceful insistence. Priscilla