Carry the Fire: Intersections of Apocalypse, Primitivism

227 Pages·2016·0.97 MB·English

University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
UWM Digital Commons
Theses and Dissertations
December 2013
Carry the Fire: Intersections of Apocalypse,
Primitivism, and Masculinity in American
Literature, 1945-2000
Dylan Barth
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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Barth, Dylan, "Carry the Fire: Intersections of Apocalypse, Primitivism, and Masculinity in American Literature, 1945-2000" (2013).
Theses and Dissertations. 661.
https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/661
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CARRY THE FIRE:
INTERSECTIONS OF APOCALYPSE, PRIMITIVISM,
AND MASCULINITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1945-2000

by

Dylan Barth

A Dissertation Submitted in

Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in English

at

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

December 2013
ABSTRACT

CARRY THE FIRE:
INTERSECTIONS OF APOCALYPSE, PRIMITIVISM,
AND MASCULINITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1945-2000

by

Dylan Barth

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2013
Under the Supervision of Professor Kristie Hamilton

This dissertation examines American apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic texts from
1945-2000 in order to consider the varying ways that masculinity has been
constructed in relation to the imagined primitive. The first chapter provides an
overview of studies in apocalypse, primitivism, and masculinity to lay the
foundation for the in-depth, critical analyses that follow. The second chapter
provides an operational definition of American post-apocalyptic fiction as well as
a survey of American post-apocalyptic fiction that includes George Stewart’s
Earth Abides, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon,
Robert Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s
Lucifer’s Hammer, and David Brin’s The Postman. The remaining chapters focus
on analyses of apocalyptic texts, texts that gesture toward apocalypse without
explicitly depicting a catastrophic event. The third chapter, therefore, examines
Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, a non-fiction work of nature writing centered on
the American Southwest in which Abbey constructs the image of the ecocentric
ii
male whose commitment to deep ecological thinking and a rugged, self-sufficient
masculinity become reinforced through direct encounters with the primitive. The
fourth chapter considers how William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer
reimagines the intersections of masculinity, primitivism, and apocalypse in the
heterotopic sites of cyberspace and through the formulation of the virtual male.
The fifth and final chapter analyzes Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, which employs
conventions of the post-apocalyptic genre to highlight the limitations of
apocalyptic fantasy and the effects it has upon contemporary men who think
encounters with the primitive could allow for more “authentic” approaches to
masculinity. Overall, this project highlights several key tensions between white
men and men of color, between moral and savage men, and between sheer
physical force and strength of mind. The intersections of apocalypse and
primitivism, therefore, constitute the figurative territory in which competing
constructions of American manhood have been debated in the late twentieth-
century.

iii
© Copyright by Dylan Barth, 2013
All Rights Reserved

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introduction …………………………………………………………………… 1

II. American Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, 1945-2000 …………………………… 24

III. The Ecocentric Male in Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire ………………... 92

IV. The Virtual Male in William Gibson’s Neuromancer ………………………. 134

V. The Anarcho-Primitive Male in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club …………… 172

Epilogue ..……………………………………………………………………………. 203

Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………… 207

Curriculum Vitae …………………………………………………………………… 219

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1
Chapter One:
Introduction
In the opening scene of Edward Abbey’s post-apocalyptic novel Good
News (1980), the story’s protagonist, Jack Burns, and his Harvard-educated,
Native American sidekick, Sam, sit around a campfire in the desert of the
American southwest, roasting an animal that is described as “part Airedale” and
“part coyote.” As the two discuss the origins of their meal, Sam tells Jack: “You
think too much, boss. Thinking is good but you must not think too much” (7). The
conversation continues and Sam decides to play a trick on Jack; he uses sleight-
of-hand and hypnotism to turn his knife into what appears to be a rattlesnake:
“The blade glitters, flashes; there is a hissing noise, a sudden rasping vibration,
and where the knife had been, a rattlesnake appears, its body draped over Sam’s
shoulder” (7). Jack sees through the illusion, and the two men decide to continue
on their quest; they smother the fire, pack up their things, and head towards the
city to look for Jack’s now-grown son. On the trail, they come across a grim
scene that warns them of the dangers ahead. They “look toward the corral a
hundred yards away and the tall tower—a skeleton of metal—standing within it.
There they see, dangling on a rope, black in silhouette against the eastern sky,
the first of the hanged men” (15). The dead men, strung up by followers loyal to
the novel’s primary antagonist, the Chief, are meant to discourage resistance to
the oppressive, militarized regime that has flourished in the ashes of modern
America.
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Contrast the opening scene of Good News with one that appears several
chapters later, where two other men—one white and one Apache—also sit near a
campfire. In this scene, the two men have bound prisoners accompanying them:
“On the other side of the fire, bound and trussed, lie the two young prisoners. The
first moans fitfully, semideliriously, moving feebly in his bonds. Blood trickles from
his lips, from his ear; his ragged clothes are soaked with sweat and blood” (73).
When interrogation does not persuade the wounded prisoner to talk, Sergeant
Brock, the white man, commands his Native American subordinate, Corporal
Mangus Colorado, Jr., to “finish him off.” When Mangus draws a pistol, Brock
says: “No, no, not right here, you stupid nigger. Not with a gun. Take him out
there ... and use your knife. Don’t play around. Just get rid of him” (75). Mangus
obeys, and after a moment, there are “a series of grunts from the darkness, a
stifled scream. Then silence. The Apache comes back into the firelight, wiping
knife blade on his sleeve” (75). The two men then fasten a rope around the legs
of the second prisoner—a young boy—and dangle him above the fire to continue
their questioning in the service of the Chief.
The contrast between these parallel scenes reveals two varying
constructions of white masculinity that are situated in contrast to a racialized
Other. Within the frontier-like, post-apocalyptic setting of the novel, both white
men establish relationships with Native American men further configured within a
wilderness environment. Jack, an aging cowboy figure whose sole purpose is to
search for his long-lost son, is shown to be a wise and “thinking” (but not
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overeducated) man, and his relationship with his Native American friend Sam,
who uses his knife for parlor tricks and for teaching Jack a lesson rather than for
murder, is depicted in terms of equality and guidance. Sergeant Brock, on the
other hand, who holds a key position in the Chief’s military whose end is to
squash local resistance and “rebuild America, to make her once again the world’s
foremost industrial, military, and ... spiritual power, an example to mankind of
what human beings, properly organized and disciplined, can accomplish,” is not a
“thinking” man but is content with following orders and, in later scenes,
succumbing to his brutish impulses (95). Brock’s superior position allows him to
command Mangus and speak to him in racial slurs, while Mangus himself is
characterized as “stupid” and willingly engages in primitive acts of murder and
torture. This example from Good News highlights the key tensions that I will
examine within the post-apocalyptic and apocalyptic texts of this study: tensions
between white men and men of color, between moral and savage men, and
between sheer physical force and strength of mind. The intersections of
apocalypse and primitivism, therefore, constitute the figurative territory in which
competing constructions of American manhood have been debated in the late
20th century by authors ranging in stature from George Stewart, Pat Frank and
David Brin to Edward Abbey, William Gibson, and Chuck Palahniuk, in genres as
seemingly unlike as the post-apocalyptic novel, American nature writing,
cyberpunk fiction, and the contemporary realist novel.
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* * *
The end of the world seems always to be at hand. Apocalyptic thinking
has been a central part of American mythology since the country’s inception, and
despite the regularity of doomsday warnings that inevitably fail to come true,
Americans tend to be in perpetual fear (and occasional hope) that the end is
near. The majority of apocalyptic warnings have grown out of the historical
events, often crises, that spark enormous cultural change. In his early study of
the role of apocalypse in American fiction—Sense of an Ending (1967)—Frank
Kermode writes that in the twentieth-century, crisis was “inescapably a central
element in our endeavors towards making sense of our world” (94). The invention
of nuclear technology and the resulting proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction had an enormous effect on American culture, and the feeling of
perpetual crisis embodied in the looming threat of nuclear war naturally led to a
surge in apocalyptic thinking and writing. As John R. May puts it in Toward a New
Earth: Apocalypse in the American Novel (1972):
even though the imagination of cosmic catastrophe is nothing new to man,
it is true that the dawning of the thermonuclear age, when man has
developed the literal capacity to destroy the world himself, has added
something of a cutting edge to the anxiety spawned by the literary, artistic,
and even religious imagination of contemporary man. (4)
May’s claim that the nuclear age has created a new sense of urgency in
apocalyptic thinking may be an obvious one, but it provides a clear rationale for