MOBILE LIVES ‘The Expatriates: Short stories’ and ‘The Possibilities of Expatriate Fiction: Exegesis’ Jo Lennan BA LLB (Hons) BCL Thesis Submitted as a Major Work (Volume I) and Exegesis (Volume II) for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English and Creative Writing, School of Humanities The University of Adelaide, Australia November 2017 VOLUME I The Expatriates: Short Stories ii Table of contents VOLUME I i Table of contents ii Abstract iv Declaration vi Acknowledgments vii The Expatriates: Short Stories 1 1. High Country 1 2. How Is Your Great Life? 20 3. Uncle Koji 37 4. A Land of Hope and Glory 63 5. The Black Madonna 78 6. An Invitation 97 7. Joyride 125 8. Day Zero 146 VOLUME II i Table of contents ii Abstract iv Declaration vi Acknowledgments vii The Possibilities of Expatriate Fiction: Exegesis 1 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Outline of Chapters 3 1.2 Situating Twentieth-Century Expatriatism 5 1.3 Christina Stead and Mavis Gallant as Expatriate Writers 11 2. New York Picaresque: The Cosmopolitanism of Christina Stead’s Letty Fox 20 2.1. Introduction: Letty Fox as an Interloper’s Novel of New York 20 2.2. The Origins of the Picaresque Novel: A Portrayal of Life ‘Abroad’ 24 2.3. Letty Fox as a ‘New York Girl’ and Pícara 27 2.4. Reverence Revived: The Picaresque Novel in the National Literatures of Australia and the United States 32 2.5. Conclusion 36 iii 3. Opportunities and Costs in Mavis Gallant’s Early Short Stories ‘Travellers Must Be Content’ and ‘The Cost of Living’ 41 3.1. Introduction: Gallant’s Early Stories and the Outsider in the Frame 41 3.2. Possibilities of Escape and Transformation for Gallant’s Expatriates 53 3.3. The Other Side of the Coin: Notions of Costliness and Economy 55 3.4. Conclusion 60 4. The Possibilities of Expatriate Fiction Now 63 4.1. From Twentieth-Century Cosmopolitanisms to New Imperatives 63 4.2. The Turn in Readings of Cosmopolitanism and Expatriatism 65 4.3. ‘The Expatriates’ as a Short Story Cycle: A Provisional Ethos and Terrain for Writing of Mobile Lives 71 List of works cited 80 Additional bibliography 89 iv Abstract This is a creative writing PhD thesis comprised of two related parts: the short story cycle ‘The Expatriates’ and its accompanying exegesis ‘The Possibilities of Expatriate Fiction’. Both the short story cycle and the exegesis explore the possibilities of expatriate fiction – here meaning fictional works that are either about expatriates or written by writers living abroad. ‘The Expatriates’ is a cycle of eight short stories. Animated by Walter Benjamin’s notion of the seafaring merchant as a teller of stories from afar, and aspiring to fictional virtues of movement and lightness, these stories seek to render contemporary experiences of living ‘abroad’ – in the original sense of being at large, or the contemporary sense of being in another country. Trading in themes of escape and reinvention, the collection features varied settings: a mill town in southeastern New South Wales; two cities in Japan; the back rooms of Heathrow Airport; an artists’ colony in Spain; an apartment in Moscow; a Sydney café; and an unnamed, Mars-like planet. Rather than treating these settings as exceptionally exotic, however, the stories reveal specific instantiations of modernity, or what Drusilla Modjeska calls ‘the stuff of (modern) lives’ (Timepieces 209). The exegesis, ‘The possibilities of expatriate fiction’, turns first to twentieth-century depictions of modern, mobile lives. Whereas longstanding critical traditions describe Christina Stead and Mavis Gallant as ‘expatriate’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ writers without v examining how these commitments manifested in their works, this study reveals the authors’ distinctive cosmopolitanisms. One chapter examines the cosmopolitan character of Stead’s Letty Fox: Her Luck (1946), an interloper’s novel of New York that was written in the tradition of European picaresque narratives. Another reads two of Gallant’s early stories, ‘Travellers Must Be Content’ (1959) and ‘The Cost of Living’ (1962), as depicting not only the opportunities but also the costs of an expatriate existence, foregrounding notions of costliness and economy. The comparative discussion of these texts reveals a range of ambivalent states and negotiations with ideas of the nation and belonging. A concluding chapter turns to the implications of expatriatism and cosmopolitanism for a contemporary writer. Surveying recent re-readings of these concepts in critical and literary theory, it builds on Shameem Black’s defence of the possibility of ‘noninvasive imaginative acts’ that ‘question, rather than inevitably reinscribe, the inequalities and injustices of a globalizing world’ (65). Offering an account of the overlapping concerns and tactics in ‘The Expatriates’, it maps a provisional ethos and terrain for a fiction that evokes new expatriate states. vi Declaration I certify that this work contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in my name, in any university or other tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. In addition, I certify that no part of this work will, in the future, be used in a submission in my name, for any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution without the prior approval of the University of Adelaide and where applicable, any partner institution responsible for the joint-award of this degree. I give consent to this copy of my thesis when deposited in the University Library, being made available for loan and photocopying, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I acknowledge that copyright of published works contained within this thesis resides with the copyright holder(s) of those works. I also give permission for the digital version of my thesis to be made available on the web, via the University’s digital research repository, the Library Search and also through web search engines, unless permission has been granted by the University to restrict access for a period of time. I acknowledge the support I have received for my research through the provision of an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. vii Acknowledgments I thank my supervisor, Professor Nicholas Jose, for offering guidance, erudition and unfailing wit over the course of this doctorate. The project strayed a long way from my first proposal and survived multiple interruptions, and special thanks are due to Nick for supporting the late-stage change in direction that brought these stories into being. Thank you also to my co-supervisors, first Dr Phillip Edmonds and then Professor Brian Castro. I received invaluable financial support from the Australian Government and the University of Adelaide, which granted me an Australian Postgraduate Award. I benefited from the welcoming community of writers and scholars in the university’s Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, and I particularly wish to thank Brian for convening seminars. Further afield, I was grateful for the opportunity to attend writing residencies at Can Serrat, in Spain, and Varuna, the Writers’ House in the Blue Mountains. I am very grateful to those who read drafts of these stories: Nick; Tegan Bennett Daylight; Jenny Hewson; Tessa Khan; Laura Scrivano; and Geraldine Hakewill. Some have appeared in print or online and were improved by editing. I thank Meanjin and its then editor Zora Sanders for publishing two stories; James Purdon and others at The Junket for publishing another; and Amanda Lohrey, Kirstie Innes-Will and others at Black Inc for including ‘How is your great life?’ in Best Australian Stories 2015. Kerrie Le Lievre, a professional member of IPEd, provided proofreading and copy editing assistance with the thesis in accordance with the relevant guidelines. viii Thanks are due to many people who helped along the way. In Sydney: Nadia Rosenman, Harriet Kater, Frances Simmons, Jonathan Pearlman, Brynn O’Brien, Frances Foster- Thorpe, Ryan Manuel, Kit Ming Leung, and Gretchen Shirm. Adelaide: Paul Bullock and Erin Brooks, and Magda Halt and Carl Driesener. The U.K: Nicola Stanek and Nichlas Heikkilä, Adrian Zuckerman and Joanna Knatchbull, Jon Day, and Matthew Moorhead. Finally, thanks to my family and the Nolans for their support. And thanks above all to Andrew, for everything. Jo Lennan, November 2017 The Expatriates: Short Stories 1. High Country When I was ten, almost eleven, my father shaved off his beard, letting the clippings drop onto pages of the Herald. We had moved to a new town where the locals did not like hippies and where shop windows carried signs declaring ‘Greens Cost Jobs’. There were two Fifties motels, a plinth for the World Wars, and a swimming pool for use during the dry summers. There was also a timber mill and a Mobil service station, with a flat roof that fell in one year after heavy snows. At the red-brick primary school, my teacher was Mr Sedden, who peered at us like we were beasts and wouldn’t give me my pen licence. He didn’t give a reason and I felt it was unjust, being made to go on scratching resentfully in pencil long after the others were allowed to write in ink. Why did we move there? Not many people did, and the men in the town complained that all the women moved away. But my parents, outdoor types, lived in fear of suburbia, and they moved every so often to some neglected backwater, somewhere that butted up against the wild places of the state. We had decamped from the coast because development had threatened, meaning specifically the building of a supermarket. My dad had taken a job at the high school in the town, teaching science subjects and sometimes agriculture.