Theory and Interpretation of Narrative James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz, Series Editors Acknowledgments | ii the real, the true, THE REAL, THE TRUE, AND THE TOLD Postmodern Historical Narrative and the Ethics of Representation ERIC L. BERLATSKY theTHE OHIO ST ATE UNIVERtoldSITY PRESS • COLUMBUS For Jennie, Katie, and Julia Copyright © 2011 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berlatsky, Eric L., 1972– The real, the true, and the told : postmodern historical narrative and the ethics of representa- tion / Eric L. Berlatsky. p. cm. — (Theory and interpretation of narrative series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-1153-3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8142-1153-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-9254-9 (cd) 1. Historical fiction—History and criticism. 2. Postmodernism (Literature) 3. History—Phi- losophy. 4. Historiography. 5. Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941—Criticism and interpretation. 6. Swift, Graham, 1949—Criticism and interpretation. 7. Rushdie, Salman—Criticism and interpretation. 8. Spiegelman, Art—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. II. Series: Theory and interpretation of narrative series. PN3441.B47 2011 809.3’81—dc22 2010033740 This book is available in the following editions Cloth (ISBN 978-0-8142-1153-3) CD-ROM (ISBN 978-0-8142-9254-9 Cover design by Jeffrey Smith. Text design by Jennifer Shoffey Forsythe. Type set in Adobe Minion Pro. Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 contentsCONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction Memory as Forgetting: Historical Reference, Ethics, and Postmodernist Fiction 1 Chapter 1 The Pageantry of the Past and the Reflection of the Present: History, Reality, and Feminism in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts 39 Chapter 2 “A Knife Blade Called Now”: Historiography, Narrativity, and the “Here and Now” in Graham Swift’s Waterland 77 Chapter 3 “What’s Real and What’s True”: Metaphors, Errata, and the Shadow of the Real in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children 109 Chapter 4 “It’s Enough Stories”: Truth and Experience in Art Spiegelman’s Maus 145 Conclusion Expanding the Field 187 Notes 197 Works Cited 217 Index 237 acknowlwegmentsACKNOWLEDGMENTS here are a wide variety of people who can take credit for this book T finally reaching fruition. They are, of course, not to be blamed for its shortcomings. First, and foremost is my wife, Jennie, who has been reading this book, in one version or another, for almost ten years—two- thirds of our married life. It is a testament to her patience and love that she has done so with an absolute minimum of complaint. If there is anyone who is happier that the project is complete than me, it is certainly she. The support she provided was not only emotional and intellectual, but also, for my years in graduate school, financial. In addition, she has proven willing to pick up and move far from family, friends, comfort, and security on my behalf. This book is as much hers as it is mine. I must also thank my daughters, Katie and Julia, who occasionally provided me with quiet and time to work, and more often provided a welcome distraction. Katie’s capacity for prodigious napping in her earliest years was especially notable in allowing me to complete the dissertation from which this book developed. My parents, Joel and Teddi, and my brother, Noah, are also due thanks for support of various kinds, including blind faith balanced by masked concern. My grandmother, Raedina Winters, always admonished me to make the book “sexy.” If I failed to comply, it is through no fault of hers. I am only sorry and saddened that she did not live long enough to see its publication. I would also like to thank Jennie’s sprawling family. While they often have only the vaguest idea what I actually do, they never fail to provide support and congratulations when and if I actually achieve something. No doubt, this will be no different. ix x | Acknowledgments The book has origins at the University of Maryland graduate program in English, particularly in the classes of Brian Richardson, Susan Leonardi, Kandice Chuh, and Jonathan Auerbach. All of these professors nurtured and contributed to transforming a variety of half-baked ideas into a bona fide book, introducing me to the concepts of narrative theory, life writing, critical race theory, and postmodernism that were the backbones of this project. I would also like to thank William Cohen for being the first in a long line of people who contributed titles that I shamelessly stole and for giving me the opportunity to hone my research skills. Also at the University of Maryland, I would like to thank fellow students-cum-professors who workshopped my dissertation. In particular, Steve Severn and Ryan Claycomb saw things through to their ultimate conclusion, and Ryan has continued to provide me with useful and insightful feedback to the developing book in postgraduate years. Thanks also to an old and dear friend, Donjiro Ban, who, many years ago, before scanners were on every desk and in every English department, scanned some images from Spiegelman’s Maus for me. I am still using those scans, perhaps for the last time. I would also like to thank him for taking time out of a pretty busy day to try to make me look good on the back-cover photograph for this book. The blame for any failure to do so must fall upon the subject, not the photographer. Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues and students at Florida Atlantic University, many of whom have contributed to the revision and development of this book. In particular, both undergraduate and graduate classes of Postcolonial Literature contributed mightily to the Midnight’s Chil- dren chapter, and participants in the Comics and Graphic Novels course(s) were instrumental in revisions to my ideas about Maus. Two separate Vir- ginia Woolf graduate seminars also made it possible to position my ideas about Between the Acts in relation to the remainder of the Woolf corpus. Special thanks are due to those who scheduled these courses, Johnnie Stover and Wenying Xu. Their flexibility in course schedule allowed me to teach these courses and therefore remain connected to my research. As chairs, Wenying Xu and Andy Furman also deserve special thanks for encouraging and facilitating the research of junior faculty like myself. I would also like to acknowledge the importance of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, who allowed me to “finish” the book (for the second or third time) by granting me a Scholarly and Creative Achievement Fellowship (SCAF) in 2006–7. FAU has been a welcoming and receptive place, despite budgetary and institutional obstacles, and for that I thank the above people as well as the faculty and students at large. At The Ohio State University Press, I must thank Jim Phelan and Peter Rabinowitz for their lengthy and painstaking efforts to push this book in the Acknowledgments | xi right direction. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewer, whose comments helped me reshape it (for the third or fourth time). Sandy Crooms is also due thanks for her efforts in shepherding the project to the starting gate and the finish line. Although I sometimes like to construct a narrative of myself working in an antisocial vacuum of sorts, the above indicates how reliant I actually am on the strength and wisdom of others. Thank you all. Portions of the introduction and chapter 4 were previously published in sub- stantially different form in “Memory as Forgetting: The Problem of the Post- modern in Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and Spiegelman’s Maus.” Cultural Critique 55 (Fall 2003): 101–51. Much of chapter 2 was previously published as “‘The Swamps of Myth . and Empirical Fishing Lines’: Historiography, Narrativity, and the ‘Here and Now’ in Graham Swift’s Waterland.” Journal of Narrative Theory 36.2 (Summer 2006): 254–92. A tiny segment of chapter 1 was published previously as “The Pageantry of the Past and the Reflection of the Present: History, ‘Reality,’ and Feminism in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts.” The Twelfth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf Proceedings: Across the Generations. Eds. Merry Pawlowski and Eileen Barrett. Bakersfield, CA: The Center for Virginia Woolf Studies, 2003. 170-76. http://www.csub.edu/woolf_center/open.html (Publications). Thank you to Cultural Critique and The Journal of Narrative Theory for the right to reprint those portions of the above that were published in their pages. I gratefully acknowledge Random House, Inc., for permission to reprint from the following: • Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale/My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman, copyright © 1973, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986 by Art Spie- gelman. Used by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. • Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale/And Here My Trouble Began by Art Spie- gelman, copyright © 1986, 1989, 1990, 1991 by Art Spiegelman. Used by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. introductionINTRODUCTION Memory as Forgetting Historical Reference, Ethics, and Postmodernist Fiction Can’t bring back time. Like holding water in your hand. —James Joyce, Ulysses (168) Art and morality are, with certain provisos . one. Their essence is the same. The essence of both of them is love. Love is the perception of individuals. Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. —Iris Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good” (215) ilan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting opens in Prague, M with two scenes that send contradictory messages about the pos- sibility and necessity of recovering and representing the past.