Fictions Inc.: The Corporation in Postmodern Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture PDF
Preview Fictions Inc.: The Corporation in Postmodern Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture
Fictions Inc. Fictions Inc. The Corporation in Postmodern Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture ralph clare Rutgers University Press new brunswick, new jersey, and london library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Clare, Ralph, 1975– Fictions Inc. : the corporation in postmodern fiction, film, and popular culture / Ralph Clare. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–8135–6588–0 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978–0–8135–6587–3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978–0–8135–6589–7 (e-book) 1. American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Capitalism in literature. 3. Corporations in literature. 4. Industries in literature. 5. Motion pictures—Social aspects—United States—History—20th century. 6. Motion pictures—United States— Plots, themes, etc. 7. Postmodernism—United States—History—20th century. I. Title. II. Title: Corporation in postmodern fiction, film, and popular culture. PS374.C36C53 2014 813’.5093553—dc23 2014000068 A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. A version of chapter 5 originally appeared in Studies in the Novel 45.1 (2013): 102–122, and a version of chapter 6 appeared in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 54.1 (2012): 28–45. The author wishes to thank both journals for the permission to reprint the essays in modified form here. The Hal Leonard Corporation has granted permission to use the lyrics from Stereolab’s “Wow and Flutter,” written by Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadler, from the album Mars Audio Quintet (Elektra, 1994). The University of California Press has given permission to use several lines from Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Swan” from Rilke: Selected Poems. Trans. C.F. MacIntyre. U of California P, 1940. Copyright © 2014 by Ralph Clare. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Visit our website: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu Manufactured in the United States of America A book in the American Literatures Initiative (ALI), a collaborative publishing project of NYU Press, Fordham University Press, Rutgers University Press, Temple University Press, and the University of Virginia Press. The Initiative is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information, please visit www.americanliteratures.org. For my parents The first thing I did was make a mistake. I thought I had understood capitalism, but what I had done was assume an attitude—melancholy sadness— toward it. This attitude is not correct. —donald barthelme, “the rise of capitalism” Contents Acknowledgments xi Introduction: From Manchuria to Manchuria Inc. 1 1 California Dreaming: Twentieth-Century Corporate Fictions at the End of the Frontier 18 2 “Domo Arigato, Mr. Sakamoto, for the New Non-Union Contract!”: (Multi)national Threats and the Decline of the American Auto Industry in Ron Howard’s Gung Ho 50 3 Good Times, Bad Times . . . You Know I Had My Share(s): The Corporation in Five Popular Films 74 4 A Capital Death: Medicine, Technology, and the Care of the Self in Don DeLillo’s White Noise 115 5 Family Incorporated: William Gaddis’s J R and the Embodiment of Capitalism 136 6 Your Loss Is Their Gain: The Corporate Body and the Corporeal Body in Richard Powers’s Gain 158 Conclusion: Corporate Hegemony, Cubed 180 Notes 207 Works Cited 221 Index 235
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