Evasive, Oblique and Indirect Discourse in Allen Tate, Tennessee Williams and Lewis

220 Pages·2007·0.86 MB·English

PERKINS, BETHANY, Ph.D. “In a roundabout way”: Evasive, Oblique and Indirect
Discourse in Allen Tate, Tennessee Williams and Lewis Nordan. (2007)
Directed by Dr. Scott Romine. 214 pp.

Allen Tate’s The Fathers, Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie and A
Streetcar Named Desire, and Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle represent a few of the
numerous southern texts which demonstrate an historically evasive rhetorical style,
particularly when dealing with difficult or socially taboo issues. Typically, the more
important the subject, the less direct the approach. Preoccupation with hospitality,
etiquette, and public appearance results in oblique discursive strategies which structure
social norms and narrative practices in the American South. In each case, the author’s
self-identification with southern culture foregrounds his familiarity with these codes and
the author’s biographies, interviews and critical writings support his use of such systems.
In addition, each author employs a generic device which furthers the elisions and
circumventions exemplified by their characters. Tate, Williams and Nordan utilize
techniques such as gothicism, plastic theater, and magical realism which blur the
boundaries between reality and illusion. These conventions paradoxically distance the
reader from the text, at times neglecting important matters and yet, at others, offering
ambiguous spaces where contemplation of otherwise unspeakable concerns may occur.
“IN A ROUNDABOUT WAY”: EVASIVE, OBLIQUE AND
INDIRECT DISCOURSE IN ALLEN TATE,
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
AND LEWIS NORDAN

by

Bethany Perkins

A Dissertation Submitted to
the Faculty of The Graduate School at
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy

Greensboro
2007

Approved by

Scott Romine _________
Committee Chair
To Mom and Dad
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APPROVAL PAGE

This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of

The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Committee Chair ______________________________
Scott Romine

Committee Members ______________________________
Karen Weyler

______________________________
Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater

October 30, 2007_______________
Date of Acceptance by Committee

October 30, 2007_______________
Date of Final Oral Examination
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to Scott Romine, Karen Weyler, and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater

for their professional and personal guidance during this process. To my graduate school
partners in crime, Heidi Hanrahan, Emily Clark, Litasha Dennis, Uzzie Cannon, and Jane
Kitchen, I can’t begin to tell you how much your friendship, humor, advice, and
willingness to participate in capers has helped me. And especially to Gretchen Martin,
my mentor and southern literature cohort, thank you for setting such a capable example
and showing me how to have fun in the process. In addition, I am grateful to Gary
Freeze, my colleagues at Cape Fear Community College, and all my students who
willingly discussed their opinions about southern culture.
Thanks to my family for their years (and years) of unquestioning support. Mom,
Dad and Cathy, Adam and Leyla, Mina, Xander, Zahra, Jordan and Michael, Anne and
John, Ethel, Carolyn, Emily, Mark, Maryellen and Maeve, thank you for sharing this with
me. Finally, a great big thanks to the people who were there day in and day out, my
husband, Peter Lamson, and my daughter, Keating. Without you, none of this means
much.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

CHAPTER

INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................................1

I. “THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES”: THE HISTORY AND ORIGINS
OF RHETORICAL EVASION .......................................................................18

II. “IN A ROUNDABOUT WAY, THE WAY HE ALWAYS TOLD
UNPLEASANT THINGS”: EVASIVE GENTILITY AND ELUSORY
GOTHICISM IN ALLEN TATE’S THE FATHERS .....................................58

III. THE OBLIQUE TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: HONESTY WITH TASTE .....105

IV. “NOT MY STORY TO TELL”: THE ELUSIVE BLACK VOICE IN
LEWIS NORDAN’S WOLF WHISTLE ......................................................167

WORKS CITED .............................................................................................................203
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INTRODUCTION

In Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South Bertram Wyatt-Brown
notes that southern hospitality, or “affability” as the eighteenth century gentleman called
it, distinguished southern character from that of the Yankee. Citing an early example,
Wyatt-Brown claims,

As early as 1773, for instance, Josiah Quincy Jr., who was visiting South Carolina
to ascertain patriotic sentiments, was appalled – as were many later Yankees – by
the prevalence of “men of the turf and gamesters.” It worried him that matters of
political philosophy and religion were so frivolously set aside for lighter subjects
of conversation. (90)

Competing perceptions that southerners are, in a positive sense, exceedingly polite and
congenial or, in a negative sense, that they routinely evade or dodge important matters to
the detriment of the issue and the speaker’s moral character, arise from a southern
preference for uncontroversial subjects. But despite opposing opinions about its
consequences, the consensus seems to be that southerners don’t “just come out and say it
like it is.” As journalist Roy Reed has said of southern authors, “No discussion, sermon,
or quarrel should be telescoped when it can be drawn out all afternoon with endless
opportunity for dodging, feinting, and keeping one’s position obscured” (Reed and Reed
141). Nashville Agrarian/Fugitive Stark Young addressed complaints that southerners
evaded important issues, approached them obliquely, or obfuscated them in a rush of
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ornate deception, explaining,

As to manners and the accusations against Southerners of insincerity, floweriness,
gush, and indirection, the answer is that such reproaches are the defensive
arguments of selfishness, of meager natures, of self-conscious egotism, of middle-
class Puritanism, or of laziness: it is easier not to consider the other man’s
feelings. (435)

From its colonial inception, southern culture has reflected the notion that evasive or
indirect discourse comprises a portion of its rhetorical habits. For the northern Quincy,
this practice highlights frivolity; for the southern Young, it showcases hospitality and
sensitivity to one’s fellows. For Reed, it comprises an important part of southern literary
aesthetics.
These examples represent a few of the numerous writings about southern
literature and culture which suggest the prevalence of a rhetorically evasive style,
particularly when dealing with uncomfortable or volatile issues. Paradoxically, the more
important the subject the less direct the approach and the less open the discussion. This
study will investigate instances of indirect discourse and narrative elision in the works of
Allen Tate, Tennessee Williams, and Lewis Nordan. Specifically, in the fiction and
dramas discussed herein, characters engage in rhetorical modes and dialogic exchanges
which illustrate a southern tendency to obliquely approach or evade difficult subject
matter. I argue that this tendency is rooted in preoccupations with public opinion,
reputation, and appearance which continue to inform southern social norms and narrative
practices. In each case, the author’s self-identification with southern culture foregrounds
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his familiarity with these codes, and in each case the author’s biographies, interviews or
nonfiction support his use of such systems.
The authors’ texts also connect by means of different generic or stylistic devices
which facilitate the elisions and circumventions seen in the biographical backgrounds and
fictional characters of each artist. Tate, Williams, and Nordan each employ techniques
designed to blur the boundaries between reality and the illusory or imaginary. For Tate it
is gothicism. For Williams it is plastic theater. And for Nordan it is magical realism.
The strangeness produced by gothicism and magical realism, and to a lesser extent plastic
theater, refracts the practices seen in the historical examples and fictional creations
explored in this study through a destabilizing lens. In some cases, particularly Tate’s The
Fathers, the evasion of consequential subjects like chattel slavery and miscegenation
leaves valuable questions unanswered or furthers the inequities he hints toward
addressing. And yet in other cases, most notably in Nordan’s Wolf Whistle, an indirect
approach to difficult subject material like a real life lynching establishes a space where
contemplation of the otherwise unthinkable may occur. In this sense, the parameters of
each genre may facilitate a greater engagement with important problems and questions
that might otherwise have gone unexplored.
This examination reflects New Historicism’s adage that non-literary texts rival
their fictional counterparts as makers of meaning and that the two interrogate and
influence each other. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan explain, “The project of a new
socio-historical criticism is, then, to analyze the interplay of culture-specific discursive
practices – mindful that it, too, is such a practice and so participates in the interplay it
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seeks to analyze” (782). Tate’s, Williams’ and Nordan’s texts reflect the authors’
positions within a social framework they each define as southern and the process is
reciprocal. Their texts reflect the culturally specific, or culturally emphasized, practice of
rhetorical evasion through the dialogue of their characters, and they simultaneously
participate in the dialogic practices their characters exhibit by, among other methods, the
use of non-realistic generic devices. That is, they participate in the interplay they seek to
analyze, but in a less literal way than their characters.
Thus, I imagine, as Stephen Greenblatt might put it, “a poetics of southern
rhetorical evasion” wherein the authors in this study both reflect and perform the South’s
tendency to gloss difficult subjects. Despite some judgment about the social value of
these texts, I have in large measure attempted to avoid what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
implicates as the “good dog/ bad dog” pitfall of New Historicism’s politics and its
temptations to punish those authors who support political ideologies now considered
unreasonable while praising those whose points of view have survived history more
favorably. Such a system discounts the difficult, tangled nature of history and engages in
cultural finger-pointing which reduces the texts’ complexity and dismisses the valuable
lessons available from ideologically flawed or historically outdated perspectives. Tate,
Williams, and Nordan are products of their cultural locations, and their works reflect and
complicate the ideologies found there. Therefore, when I offer an evaluative judgment of
an author’s work, it is because it demands attention to such an extent that not to mention
its political consequence would do the text a disservice or too easily excuse excessive
iniquity.
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