Narrative Machine: The Naturalist, Modernist, And Postmodernist Novel

269 Pages·2019·2.568 MB·English

by  Zena Meadowsong

Narrative Machine
Narrative Machine: The Naturalist, Modernist, and Postmodernist Novel
advances a new history of the novel, identifying a crucial link between
narrative innovation and the historical process of mechanization. In the
late nineteenth century, the novel grapples with a new and increasingly
acute problem: In its attempt to represent the colossal power of modern
machinery—the steam-driven machines of the Industrial Revolution, the
electrical machines of the modern city, and the atomic and digital machines
developed after the Second World War—it encounters the limitations of
traditional representative strategies. Beginning in the naturalist novel,
the machine is typically portrayed as a mythic monster, and though
that monster represents a potentially horrific reality—the superhuman
power of mechanization—it also disrupts the documentary objectives
of narrative realism (the dominant mode of nineteenth-century fiction).
The mechanical monster, realistic and yet at odds with traditional realist
strategies, tears the form of the novel apart. In doing so, it unleashes
a series of innovations that disclose, critique, and contest the force of
mechanization: the innovations associated with literary naturalism,
modernism, and postmodernism.
Zena Meadowsong is Associate Professor of English at Rowan University,
USA.
Narrative Theory and Culture
Series Editor:
Dr. Christopher González,
Utah State University, USA
This new series will focus on bridging the scholarly gap between narra-
tive theory and cultural studies and addressing the disconnect. The study
of narrative is one of the pillars of the study of literature and one of its
foremost movements. However, narrative theory has generally missed
opportunities for examinations of culturally located narratives, just as
cultural studies has tended to look past issues of narrative form and
design. This series aims to put these areas of study into conversation
with one another.
Books considered for this series will appeal to a variety of levels of
academics in the field, with some books being geared to the upper-level
researchers and others designed to be used in the undergraduate class-
room. Research monographs, which are written with the specialist in
mind, should aim to provide the reader with cutting-edge research on
emerging areas of interest, or new perspectives on well-established areas.
Books that are aiming to reach a broader audience, and perhaps be used
in the classroom, should be written in an inviting style that will engage
readers at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Narrative Machine
The Naturalist, Modernist, and Postmodernist Novel
Zena Meadowsong
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Narrative-Theory-and-Culture/book-series/NTAC
Narrative Machine
The Naturalist, Modernist,
and Postmodernist Novel
Zena Meadowsong
First published 2019
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Zena Meadowsong to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-39245-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-02640-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For David

Contents
Acknowledgments xii
Introduction 1
I. The Making of the Monster Machine 1
II. Naturalism, Modernism, Postmodernism 7
III. The State of the Critical Field, and the
Shape of Things to Come 14
PART I
Naturalism and the Mechanical Monster 31
1 Zola’s Monster Machines 33
I. The Mechanical Monsters of Zola’s
“Experimental Novel” 33
II. “Irrational and Supernatural” Explanations 36
III. Bursting out of Narrative Control 38
IV. Under the Deluge, into the Abyss, off the Rails 41
V. The Human Cost of the Zolian Machine 42
VI. The Critical Fortunes of the Rougon-Macquart 44
2 Mechanical Monsters in England and America 52
I. The “Risky Business” of English Naturalism 52
II. The “New-Fashioned” Agricultural Machines of
The Mayor of Casterbridge 53
III. The “Iron Determinism” of Tess of the D’Urbervilles 55
IV. American Naturalism: Frank Norris’s Monster Machines 60
V. The Voracious Gold Mine of McTeague 62
VI. The Monstrous Ramifications of The Octopus 63
VII. The Human Cost of The Octopus 65
viii Contents
3 The Machined Aesthetics of Dreiser, Crane, Moore,
Wharton, and Gissing 74
I. Unmiraculous Machines 74
II. Sister Carrie’s Machine-Made Beauty 76
III. The Factory Aesthetics of Crane, Moore, and Wharton 79
IV. Gissing and the Literary Machine 81
PART II
Modernism versus the Machine 91
4 Lawrence and the Monster Machine 93
I. “Zolaesque Tragedy” in The Rainbow 93
II. Machine Breaker 95
III. Generating the Rainbow 97
IV. Escaping the Machine Apocalypse: Women in Love 99
V. The Fascistic Mechanics of The Plumed Serpent 104
5 Joyce’s Utopian Machine 114
I. Stephen Dedalus’s Malevolent Machines 114
II. Ulysses versus the Monster Machine 116
III. Ulysses-Bloom’s “Infernal Machine” 117
IV. Underwriting Anarchy: The “Mythical Method” 119
V. Undoing the Tyranny of The Odyssey 121
VI. Joyce’s Utopian Machine 124
6 Against the Quotidian Machine: Woolf,
Hemingway, and Proust 133
I. The Postwar Machines of Mrs. Dalloway 133
II. Holding the World Together: Clock, Motorcar, Airplane 135
III. The Wounding Machines of The Sun Also Rises 138
IV. Breaking Down 139
V. Automobiles, Airplanes, and the Telephonic
In Search of Lost Time 142
VI. The “Gesture of a Bomb Dropped upon Us” 144
PART III
Postmodernism: Living with the Machine 153
7 The New Sunshine: Ballard, Vonnegut, and Dick 155
I. From Modernist Machines to “Autogeddon” in Crash 155
II. The Real as a Fiction of Security 158
III. Breakfast of Champions and the Synthetic Apocalypse 161
Contents ix
IV. Deus ex Machina 163
V. A tomic God in a Spray Can: The Infinite Synthetic
Realities of Ubik 166
8 The Digital and Atomic Plots of Pynchon and DeLillo 176
I. The Postmodern Condition and the Digital Computer 176
II. The Binary Code of The Crying of Lot 49 178
III. “A Plot Has Been Mounted against You” 180
IV. Death Sentences 182
V. The Plutonic Number of Underworld 184
VI. Atomic Baseball 187
VII. “Does the Power of Transcendence Linger?” 189
9 The Machinery of Liberation: Georges Perec 199
I. In the Ruins of the Future 199
II. E: The Machine-Made Void 203
III. W: The Origin of the Lipogram 205
IV. W: The Camps 207
V. New Life: A User’s Manual 209
V+I. For Perec, Another V 212
Works Cited 225
Index 239