METAMORPHOSIS AND MEDIATION IN WILLIAM FAULKNER by PHILIP ANTHONY JAMES ...

155 Pages·2009·3.2 MB·English

“THE ECHO, NOT THE SHOT”:
METAMORPHOSIS AND MEDIATION IN WILLIAM FAULKNER
by
PHILIP ANTHONYJAMES SMITH
B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1982
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FORTHE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
in
THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
(English)
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
(Vancouver)
April 2009
© Philip AnthonyJames Smith, 2009
Abstract
This thesis is an attempt to situate and contextualize William Faulkner’s novels ofthe 1930s
within the framework ofthe emerging mass culture forms ofthat period, andto investigatethis
author’s assimilation and inversion ofthe structures and the stylistic and formalistic devices
afforded not only by film, but by animated cartoons, newsreels, and radio. Faulkner’s works are
fully immersed in and reflective ofaworld ofmetamorphosis and mediation engendered by these
mass culture forms, a world when social and artistic hierarchies also fully enterthe modernist
period ofincessant flux. ChapterOne will offer a briefoverview ofthe perceptual and literary
effects engendered in the early days ofmedia culture as it may apply to Faulknerand his
contemporary Sherwood Anderson, including a growing loathing ofwhatwas seen as an
increasing tendencytoward “standardization” in both literature and life. For Faulkner however
the media culture which was partially responsible for standardization also provided new formal
possibilities through whichthe writercould address it. ChapterTwo will focus on two of
Faulkner’s most belovedpopular culture fonns -the animated cartoon andthe newsreel and their
-
relation to Light inAugust, Absalom, Absalom! andPylon in particular. The interpolation and
recuperation ofmass culture devices and motifs and the concern with a standardized world reach
an apotheosis inthe 1939 novelIfIForget Thee, Jerusalem (now known as The WildPalms), a
work which also can be seen as the culmination ofFaulkner’s decade-long experiments in the use
ofmultiple narrative voices. ChapterThree ofthe thesis will examine this novel’s and its
narrators’ relation to the contemporaneous culture ofcacophony these media arts were producing,
in particularthat ofradio’s. As this book also functions as acautionary tale as to the convergence
ofwriting and mass culture, Chapter Fourwill discuss the double transfiguration ofgenre codes
and restrictions found withinJerusalem, as well as briefly examine the acceleration ofthe culture
ofcelebrity and the attendant fragmentingmediation ofliterary works found in the later media
age (that oftelevision).
11
Table ofContents
Abstract ii
.
Table ofContents iii
List ofFigures iv
Preface v
Acknowledgements xii
Dedication xiii
Chapter One: The Struggle With Standardizatioiv 1
Anderson and Faulkner inthe Early Media Age
Chapter Two: “Like a Cartoon Comedy Centaur” 32
The Animated Metamorphoses ofWilliam Faulkner
Chapter Three: “The Megaphone’s Bellowing and Bodiless Profanity” 69
IfIForget Thee, Jerusalem and the Culture ofCacophony
Chapter Four: Faulkner and “the Man with a Megaphone” 104
Master ofCeremonies ofa Mediated World
Works Cited 135
111
Table ofFigures
1. “suspended in space watching the globy earth spin” 31
2. “like a cartoon comedy centaur” 66
3. “like a kodak print” I 67
4. “like a Kodak negative” I 67
5. “like a kodak print” II 68
6. “he watched his body grow white out ofthe darkness” 68
7. “the man with the megaphone” I (Unit Director) 133
8. “the man with the megaphone” II (The Dictatorial Director) 133
9. “it’s the influence ofthe movies I always say” (Coming Attractions) 134
iv
Preface
“It’s not avocation that elects our vocations, it’s respectability that makes chiropractors
andclerks andbiliposters and motormen andpulp writers ofus.”
(Faulkner, Jerusalem 114)
In failed medical student turned confessions magazine writer Harry Wilboume’s
above rationale as to his career choice, the implicit equivalency ofthe professions listed
points to a rapidly growing force which would provide both opportunity and danger to
writers in the first halfofthe twentieth century: mass culture. In this light, the thesis is an
attempt to situate and contextualize William Faulkner’s novels ofthe late 1920s through
the late 1930s withinthe framework ofthe emerging mass culture forms ofthat period,
more specifically to investigate this author’s assimilation and inversion ofboth the
structures and the stylistic and formalistic devices afforded by animated cartoons,
newsreels, radio, and pre-Code Hollywood B movies. Faulkner’s works are fully
immersed in and reflective ofa world ofmetamorphosis and mediation engendered by
these popular culture forms, a world in which “rich and poor lined up outside ornate
picture palaces to gawk at former factory hands playing millionaires and actual
millionaires playing factory hands” (Early 146); in other words, this is a time when both
artistic and social hierarchies fully enterthe modernist period ofincessant flux.
Accordingly, Chapter One will begin with abriefoverview ofthe perceptual and
possible literary effects engendered in the early days ofmass media, specifically as it
applies to Faulkner and his contemporary and intermittent friend Sherwood Anderson.
The latter’s non-fiction work and memoirs ofthe mid-1920s are important to the
discussion not only in a general sense their consummate ifcranky encapsulation ofthe
-
V
authorial concerns ofthis period but also for their specific resonance with Faulkner’s
-
later fiction. Many ofAnderson’s concerns, references and even particular motifs show
up later in Faulkner’s novels, especially, to use the term which particularly obsesses
Anderson, a loathing ofthe increasing tendency toward “standardization”, whether in
literature, life, or, to cite but one perennial fear, food. Admittedly, it is difficult to find the
actual term “standardization” in Faulkner’s work: the closest one comes may be a scene
in which when arranging an exchange ofevening clothes, one ofHarry Wilbourne’s
roommates does admit “We are all three about standard.” (Jerusalem 31). However,
Faulkner’s recurring term “desiccation” appears to substitute in this author’s case as his
novels also manifest an increasing antipathy toward the forces ofsocial and artistic
standardization, an antipathy which reaches a high-point in 1939’s IfIForget Thee,
Jerusalem, a novel known today as The WildPalms.
As a self-professed “serious” writer and guardian ofthe temple as well as a serious
curmudgeon, what Anderson does not foresee is that the popular culture forms films,
—
magazines, radio and later cartoons, newsreels and comic books which he saw as
—
driving this process ofstandardization could also provide the means by which to address
it, particularly inthe stylistic and formal devices these forms use. By contrast Faulkner
chose to use the tropes and ropes ofmass culture as a means by which to hang it,
absorbing, mutating and ultimately, it will be suggested, transfiguring the raw material
provided by mass culture into his literary masterworks. In other words, iffilm etc. can, to
use Walter Benjamin’s term, “liquidate” the great memory and tradition ofliterature, then
conversely, literature can and perhaps must begin liquidating the mass culture forms in
return.
vi
As the first example ofthis inverted appropriation, Chapter Two ofthe thesis will focus
on two ofFaulkner’s most beloved popular culture forms, one ofwhich is potentially the
most potent and directly correlative in its effects on literature and visual art: the animated
cartoon. These “drawings that move” (Shale 1), already in high ascendancy by the end of
the 1920s, will be seen to inform many ofFaulkner’s 1930s novels such as Light in
August,Absalom, Absalom! and Pylon, both in their overt verbal re-creations ofvisual
cartoon effects, as well as the use ofthese re-creations in conveying the unstable and
constantly metamorphosizing world described above. A companion cinematic short form
ofthis era the newsreel will also be examined with regardto its effect on the idea of
— —
the narratorial voice (over) and its role in furthering an increasingly mediated society, a
form and process Faulkner addresses directly in Pylon.
Boththe use ofpopular culture material and the concern with a standardized world
reach an apotheosis in the 1939 novel IfIForget Thee, Jerusalem, awork which can be
seen as the culmination ofFaulkner’s decade-long experiments in the interpolation and
recuperation ofmass culture devices and motifs and also in his use ofmultiple narrative
voices. Here the two are, it will be argued, inextricably related, these experiments
automatically further intensified by virtue ofthe novel’s bipartite structure: two
independent but related stories are presented in alternating sections over the course ofthe
book (and the citation complications entailed by this divisionwill be addressed at the end
ofthe Preface). Chapter Three ofthe thesis will explore in detail this novel’s relation to
the contemporaneous culture ofcacophony that these media arts were producing, in
particularthose ofthe multitude ofdevices which amplifiedthe human voice, the
profusion ofnew media voices thatradio has created, and the growing din from the mass
vii
audience, sonic barrages which are formally echoed in the narratorial “cross-talk” within
and betweenthe book’s two alternating stories.
The concluding chapter ofthe thesis will deal with this novel’s assimilation and
inversion, particularly as related to gender, ofthe stock plots ofearly 193Os B-pictures,
otherwise known as “programmers”. This resonance with these films is particularly
relevant here for it is in this novel thatFaulkner completes his decade-long project in the
redemption of“trash”; the book, it will be suggested, is both a scathing criticism and
grudging celebration ofthese mass culture forms. This split-screen response is in turn
manifested in the actual narrative, specifically in the transfiguration ofthe degraded
confessions magazine writer Harry Wilboume. Over the course ofhis story this character
transforms from being a derided and self-deriding hackto a powerful and poetic serious
writer, albeit a transformation, as the story illustrates in archetypal confessional mode,
with avery high material price.
This reading ofthe novel does suggest some withstanding ofthe onslaught ofthe
standardizing forces which Faulkner and Anderson so elaborately and forcefully
articulate. In some ways Jerusalem can be seen as a subtle, sobering and powerful
parable as to howthe redemptive power ofwriting may still be able to survive in a media
age. “May” is indeed the operative word here as the book also functions as a cautionary
tale as to the convergence ofwriting and mass culture so the Conclusion ofthe thesis will
also briefly examine the acceleration ofthe culture ofcelebrity and the attendant
fragmenting mediation ofliterary works as it applies to writers in general and to Faulkner
in particular which the later media age (that oftelevision) begets.
The intrinsically mediating and self-referential figure ofthe hack writer is central to
viii
the overall argument ofthis thesis, Faulkner’s self-conception and work, and indeed to
modernist writing as a whole as, for example, in Ezra Pound’s 1920 epic poem “Hugh
Selwyn Mauberley”. This personification ofstandardization is a figure already
demonized by Anderson in the early 1920s:
Perhaps at this very moment the man who has written so many stories offootball
games is writing another. In fancy I can hear the click ofhis typewriter machine.
He is fighting, it seems, to maintain a certain position in life, a house by the sea, an
automobile....he told me, with tears in his eyes, that he wanted to grow up, to let
his fanciful life keep pace with his physical life but thatthe magazine editors
would not let him. He blamed the editors ofmagazines he blamed his wife and
—
daughter -as I remember our conversation, he did not blame himself.
(Story Teller 440 —41)
The unresolved and increasingly destructive battle between “physical life” and “fanciful
life” also lies at the heart ofFaulkner’s work. As this author will portray, there is plenty
ofblame to go around for the modern diminution ofthe latter, but perhaps chastened by
his own “hack” experiences those ofa Hollywood script-writer he is not quite so
— —
dismissive as Anderson ofthe complicated quandaries facing awriter in the early media
age.
***
One note regarding terminology and one regarding citation form: to the first, for the
purposes ofthis thesis, the term “early media age” will refer to the period from the
beginning ofthe 1920s the decade in which term “media” is first used in its current
-
sense, in which silent film reaches its apotheosis and, by decade’s end, radio, cartoons,
x
newsreels and the like have obtained a degree ofcommon currency to the end ofthe
-
1930s when these forms as well as sound film, puips, and comic books had reached a
stage offormal and technological stability. The end ofthe 1930s is also significanthere
as 1939 is both the year ofJerusalem’s publication and what can be seen as the beginning
ofthe second media age: its harbinger television will receive its formal public
— -
“coming out” at that year’s New York World’s Fair.
With regard to citation form: when discussingJerusalem, the difficulty ofdealing with
this alternating current ofa novel —the two “separate” stories within the book— has been
compounded by the alternating ofthe title ofthe book as a whole. The author’s original
title for the novel was IfIForget Thee, Jerusalem, but for reasons discussed within the
thesis it was firstpublished as The WildPalms. Within this book are the two stories The
WildPalms and OldMan which alternate throughout. Since the book’s original
publication, the title ofthe overall volume has alternatedbetween the original Jerusalem
and The WildPalms, the latter currently yet again the book’s title. However, this is of
course is also the title ofone ofthe stories which alternate within the book. To add to the
confusion, both storytitles are italicized within the text, the story title being the only
heading each time a section ofthe respective story appears; no chapter numbers or other
headings are used, compounding the feeling ofa potential yet circumspect autonomy of
each story within the whole, an autonomy undermined by the myriad ofconnections and
echoes between the two.
Because much ofthis thesis deals with this interplay between the two tales, it is
necessary to draw a sharp distinction with regardto reference and citation form between
the two quasi-independent stories and any discussions ofthe book as a whole.
x