THE UNLOCKED ROOM PROBLEM: EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY INVESTIGATION NARRATIVES Erin Bartels Buller A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2013 Approved by: Minrose Gwin Linda Wagner-Martin Ruth Salvaggio John Marx Christopher Teuton ©2013 Erin Bartels Buller ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT ERIN BARTELS BULLER: The Unlocked Room Problem: Evidence and Interpretation in Twentieth-Century Investigation Narratives (Under the direction of Minrose Gwin) This project examines how a range of 20 th -century fictions and memoirs use tropes borrowed from detective fiction to understand the past. It considers the way the historiographical endeavor and the idea of evidence and interpretation are presented in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! , Go Down Moses, Intruder in the Dust , and the stories in Knight’s Gambit ; Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men ; Louis Owens’s The Sharpest Sight and Bone Game ; and Lillian Hellman’s memoirs ( An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, Scoundrel Time , and Maybe ). The historical novel and sometimes even memoir, in the 20 th century, often closely resembled the detective novel, and this project attempts to account for why. Long before Hayden White and other late 20 th - century theorists of historical practice demonstrated how much historical writing owes to narrative conventions, writers such as Faulkner and Warren had anticipated those scholars’ claims. By foregrounding the interpretation necessary to any historical narrative, these works suggest that the way investigators identify evidence and decide what it means is controlled by the rhetorical demands of the stories they are planning to tell about what has happened and by the prior loyalties and training of the investigators. The narratives investigators ultimately tell about what has happened in the past are already taking shape as the investigation proceeds, and it is the need to develop a persuasive account that determines what investigators are able to see and therefore what iii counts as evidence. In its final chapter, this study moves beyond the historical novel to explore, in memoir, the tension between the interpretation of documentary evidence and the narrative form of what James Olney calls the “voice of memory.” The project concludes by considering the versions of justice that persist once these 20 th -century novels and memoirs have severed the direct link between the reconstruction of the past (specifically the crime) and justice that predominates in genre detective fiction. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are a number of people, in both professional and personal contexts, without whom this project would never have come together. My advisor, Minrose Gwin, has consistently been more than a professional mentor; she has encouraged me all along the way and has helped me believe in my ability to do all this research and writing and do it well. She has been an advocate for my work throughout these dissertation years, and she has been a model of how work in this profession—both research and teaching—can be not just intellectual but also human and caring. I am particularly thankful that when I decided I wanted to work on my dissertation full-time for eight months in order to finish before my second child arrived, she was willing to keep pace with me and gave up so much of her time to read the drafts that were coming in so rapidly. I could not have accomplished my goal without her help. I am also very grateful to the other members of my committee. Linda Wagner- Martin has been like a second advisor to me. She has a gift for explaining the ins and outs of literary studies to newcomers to the field without assuming that they already know more than they do. I always appreciated her detailed advice on how articles and books come to be, as well as the way she shared her remarkable knowledge of Faulkner and Faulkner criticism. Ruth Salvaggio was immensely helpful as I was first designing this dissertation. We had several conversations that very much enlarged the way I was thinking about the project, and since then she has continued to ask me questions that help me imagine its implications more broadly. She is a person of big ideas and enthusiasm, v and I aspire to bring that same enthusiasm to my own work with my students. John Marx has worked with me not only in graduate school but from my very first English course in college. His courses made academic work exciting to me in the first place. He has a gift for making students feel like their ideas matter and yet pushing them to make those ideas better. Every time I talk to him or receive feedback from him on a draft, I get excited about the possibilities of literary study all over again. Chris Teuton joined my committee at a late date, but he still asked some amazing questions that helped me re-focus the direction of my analysis in both my Owens chapter and my Introduction. I am thankful to him for agreeing to work with me for just these last six months and for being willing to do most of it electronically when I was unable to come to Chapel Hill as often as I would have liked. I also want to thank two other professors who had a role in how my project shaped up. Megan Matchinske showed great enthusiasm for the early version of the Faulkner chapter and helped me decide on the overall direction of the project. Tol Foster not only helped me develop the early versions of the Owens chapter but also helped me learn how to navigate academic conferences and took an active part in teaching me to teach literature. He was incredibly generous with his time and had a great eye for identifying what I did not already know about the profession and steering me along. I would like to thank the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of Chapel Hill for the funding to travel to Austin to work with Lillian Hellman’s papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center and the staff of the Ransom Center for their help while I was there. I am also deeply grateful for the vi dissertation fellowship from the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC that enabled me to finish this project. Many of my graduate school colleagues have helped me along the way with advice about teaching and research, but one has stood out from all the others. I have turned over and over to Katie Carlson with questions both practical and theoretical, and she has always responded generously and knowledgeably. In the last year and a half her help has extended even to picking up my campus mail, scoping out my dissertation defense room when I was unable to make it to Chapel Hill, and hosting me at her home at least three times when I did come to town. I am thankful to her not only for the constant assistance but most of all for her friendship, which goes all the way back to our supper club our first year. My parents are the kind every child should have: they have believed in me and cheered for me in all of my adventures in life. They taught me to love to read, encouraged me when I said as a little girl that I wanted to be a professional reader, and have never tried to make me do something practical. They have proofread drafts for me for years even when, as they say, they have no idea what I’m writing about. Their love is constant and unconditional, and I am so thankful for it. My sister, Megan, and brother, Brett, check in on me with phone calls and support and inspire me with their own dedication to their families, friends, and careers. My grandparents have been endlessly supportive with calls and cards. The real reason I have been able to finish this dissertation is my husband, Tom, who has helped me believe that I am smart enough, loved me even when my work made me stressed and cranky, and done more than his fair share of the work around the house vii after coming home from his own demanding job. In these last few months, he even started reading my drafts and talking about my arguments with me when I told him how talking about my ideas out loud helps me re-engage with them. I can’t believe how much he loves me or how patiently he puts in the time and the work to help me do what I need to do, even in this most difficult year. My son, Noah, is not with us on earth anymore, but I ask for his intercession every day before I start writing, and I can feel the strength of his prayers as I work. Noah and I have always been a team, for the eleven months he was with me and even now that he is gone. I love him and miss him immensely. My daughter, Christine, is kicking me in the ribs as I write this, and I look forward to meeting her any day now. She has been a silent motivation for me as she has grown bigger and stronger, and I am so thankful that I will be able to rest for a while and spend these next few months learning to love her. My parents, my children, and especially my husband, I love you more than I can ever explain to you, and this is for you.