(RE-)EXAMINING BLANK FICTION: An excerpt from Barely Anything, a novel & SEX, NARCISSISM AND DISCONNECTION IN AUSTRALIA AND THE UNITED STATES A thesis presented by Tobias McCorkell (298441) to The School of Culture and Communication in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD of Philosophy in the field of Creative Writing (190402) in the School of Culture and Communication The University of Melbourne Supervisor: Dr Eddie Paterson Co-Supervisor: Dr Grant Caldwell August 2016 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, and most importantly, I would like to thank my principal supervisors, Dr Tony Birch and Dr Eddie Paterson. Your support, criticism, encouragement, patience and unwavering insistence on the value of this research has made this process bearable and rewarding. And to those members of the Creative Writing faculty, and to my co-supervisor (and Honours supervisor) Dr Grant Caldwell, who have all at various stages of development contributed their insight, I thank you for your time and effort. I would like, also, to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people on whose native lands this thesis was conducted, researched, written. And to the city of Melbourne and my home suburb, Coburg, for always being the greatest of inspirations. Finally, I need to thank my family – Mum, Nanma and Pa – for their continual support of my academic and creative pursuits, and their unconditional love. And to Rihana, without whom none of this, all of this – research, success, life – would have been made possible. Words fail to articulate my deepest and most sincere appreciation for what you’ve all given me over the many, many years that I’ve been studying and attempting to express myself. Just know that it may finally be over now … sort of. This thesis is for the lady on the train (I have some letters before my name now, too. So, up yours!) and for that last reserve of hatred I still hold in my heart and lungs. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS TITLE PAGE ..................................................................................................................... 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... 3 ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... 4 BRIDGING DOCUMENT ................................................................................................ 5 CREATIVE COMPONENT: An excerpt from Barely Anything, a novel ......................... 6 CRITICAL COMPONENT: Sex, Narcissism and Disconnection in Australia and the United States ...................................................................................................................... 120 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 121 CHAPTER 1: FEMININITY AND IMAGERY IN THE DELIVERY MAN AND SNAKE BITE .......................................................................................................... 201 1.1 She walked through the world as though she were in a Pussycat Dolls video clip .............................................................................................. 143 1.2 Following the ‘script’ .......................................................................... 156 1.3 Entrapment, subservience and abuse ................................................... 165 CHAPTER 2: MASCULINITY, NARCISSISM AND VIOLENCE IN LESS THAN ZERO AND ROHYPNOL ...................................................................................... 174 2.1 The horror! The horror! ....................................................................... 176 2.2 Flight into fantasy ................................................................................ 188 CHAPTER 3: MALAISE, DISCONNECTION AND CIRCULARITY: A CLOSE READY OF LESS THAN ZERO AND LOADED ................................................. 199 3.1 There is no future ................................................................................. 201 3.2 I ain’t ever going to connect ................................................................ 212 3.3 Circularity: The end? ........................................................................... 218 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 226 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................. 232 APPENDIX A .................................................................................................................... 244 APPENDIX B .................................................................................................................... 250 3 ABSTRACT This thesis begins with an excerpt of a novel entitled Barely Anything. Barely Anything, like other Blank Fiction novels, details the social practices of a small group of young adults, addressing themes of sex, boredom and privilege on both sides of Melbourne’s Yarra River. The critical component of this dissertation re-examines works of ‘Blank Fiction’ from Australia and the United States, including: Less Than Zero (1985) by Bret Easton Ellis, Loaded (1995) by Christos Tsiolkas, Rohypnol (2007) by Andrew Hutchinson, The Delivery Man (2008) by Joe McGinniss Jr., and Snake Bite (2014) by Christie Thompson. It examines the use of images drawn from celebrity and lifestyle magazines, music videos, pop songs, advertising, pornography, television, and Hollywood cinema and argues that these novels co- opt images of mass culture in an effort to critique contemporary social practices, values, and lifestyles. 4 BRIDGING STATEMENT The creative component of this thesis – a Blank Fiction novel entitled Barely Anything – follows the lives of three young Melbournians: Everett, James and Ruth. The selection of work chosen for presentation here comprises the first two chapters of the novel and was chosen as it can be read in isolation while still conveying the overarching themes of the work in its entirety. However, this thesis invites the examiner to read the additional chapters that make up the novel, which can be found in Appendix B. The novel is split between three first-person perspective narratives, taking on the world-view and voice of each individual protagonist, and divided evenly between chapters. Like the vast majority of Blank Fiction, Barely Anything combines both first-person perspective with present tense, heightening the immediacy of the narrative and character actions. This creative work explores the tension between privilege, sex and boredom on both sides of the Yarra River, the central river dividing the city of Melbourne between two halves, marked by distinct socio-economic and political differences. Picking up on similar trends noted and detailed in Christos Tsiolkas’ debut novel Loaded, Barely Anything explores divisions in class, cultural attitudes and values in Melbourne. Additionally, Barely Anything explores the relationship between men and women, as well as the construction of their gendered bodies and their expressions of sexuality within a sexualised, aggressive, and sometimes violent, culture. Finally, Barely Anything conveys the general malaise experienced by, and the disconnection between, Blank characters, where the novel lacks clear resolutions, depicts inertia amongst its individual protagonists, and demonstrates a circularity in its narrative structure. 5 BARELY ANYTHING For the beautiful boys and girls. For all the nights. And for Butters. Miss you. And you just keep lowering your standards, to deal with the barely anything. Luke Davies, Candy 6 I Summer 7 CHAPTER 1 JAMES: Thinking little, staring out across the Merri Creek from my favourite spot: a short, steep- sloping embankment covered in long grass that overlooks a ford of large stones. Michele, in her low-slung jeans and sandals and white blouse, through which I can see the outline of a black bra, her nails polished and painted her signature pale mint green, pleads with me to reconsider the weekend, says, ‘come with me to Gippsland. you need it, J. look at you, you’re a mess,’ just as her phone begins to ring. She digs into her jeans pocket with her pale mint green fingernails to extract the phone, swipes right across the illuminated screen to answer the call, which is from Grace, and pulls a face at me because I’ve been holding us up, says into the thin, black monolith: ‘we’re on our way now … probably, like, ten/fifteen tops.’ ‘Come on,’ she says to me and I pull myself up and begin to walk away from the creek with her. In my mind Michele is only ever naked and lying on the floor of her bedroom in Eltham, her long, slender, tomboy body with the mosquito-bite breasts glistening with buds of sweat that cause strands of hair to stick to her neck – the way she was in the summers during high school because she was afraid her mum would notice if our come/s got on the bed sheets. Upstairs, on the floor of Michele’s room, years ago, we practiced a particular brand of slow fucking during those long sunny days over summer break when my knees would burn on the carpet, and I consider that it’s something of a loss that we no longer fuck in this way anymore. 8 The short shadows of gum trees are pointing west in the mid-morning sun as we walk up over the rise through the brush and onto the bike track, and then up and out onto the roads behind Nicholson