The Novel in Motion: An Approach to Modern Fiction

167 Pages·1983·11.655 MB·English

by  Richard Pearce

THE NOVEL IN MOTION
An Approach to Modern Fiction
Richard Pearce
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS: COLUMBUS
The Novel in Motion
Copyright © 1983 by the Ohio State University Press
All rights reserved
Excerpts from A Portrait of the Artist a Young Man, by James Joyce.
(LS
Copyright 1916 by B. W. Huebsch. Copyright renewed 1944 by
Nora Joyce. Definitive Text Copyright © 1964 by the Estate of
James Joyce. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, Inc., the
Society of Authors as the literary representative of the Estate of
James Joyce, the Executors of the James Joyce Estate, and
Jonathan Cape, Ltd.
Excerpts from Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, are copyright © 1955 by
Vladimir Nabokov. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission
of the Putnam Publishing Group and Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov.
Excerpts from Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov, are copyright © 1962 by
G. P. Putnam's Sons. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission
of the Putnam Publishing Group and Mrs. Vladimir N abokov.
Excerpts from 98.6, by Ronald Suckenick, are reprinted by permission
of Fiction Collective, Inc.
Chapter 3, '''Reeling through Faulkner," appeared under the title
"Reeling through Faulkner: Pictures of Motion, Pictures in Motion" in
Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 24, No.4, © 1979 by Purdue Research
Foundation, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907. Reprinted by permission.
The portion of Chapter 4, "From Joyce to Beckett: The Tale that Wags the
Telling," entitled "Ulysses" was published in an earlier version entitled
"Experimentation with the Grotesque: Comic Collisions in the Grotesque
World of Ulysses" in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 20, No.3, © 1974 by
Purdue Research Foundation, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907.
Reprinted by permission.
The portion of Chapter 4, "From Joyce to Beckett: The Tale That Wags the
Telling," entitled "Samuel Beckett's Watt and His Trilogy" was published
twice in an earlier version under the chapter title: in the
Journal of Beckett Studies, No.7 (Spring, 1982), and in
The Seventh of Joyce, edited by Bernard Benstock, published in
1982 by the Indiana University Press. Reprinted by permission of
the Journal of Beckett Studies, the Indiana University Press, and
the Harvester Press, Ltd., London.
An earlier version of Chapter 5 was published as "Enter the Frame" in
the Spring, 1974 (No. 42), issue of TriQuarterly.
An earlier version of Chapter 6 was published as "Nabokov's Black (Hole)
Humor: Lolita and Pale Fire" in Comic Relief: Humor in Contemporary
American Literature, edited by Sarah Blacher Cohen (Urbana, Illinois:
University of Illinois Press, 1978). © 1978 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois. Reprinted by permission.
An earlier version of Chapter 7 was published as "Thomas Pynchon & the
Novel of Motion: Where're They At, Where're They Going?" in the
Massachusetts Review, Vol. 21, No.1 (Spring, 1980), © 1980
The Massachusetts Review, Inc. Reprinted by permission.
(Continued on page vi)
FOR
KARIN
EMILY
-AND JEAN
(Continued from page iv)
An earlier version of Chapter 10 was published as "Bring Back That Line,
Bring Back That Time" in the Spring, 1978 (No. 30), issue of TriQuarterly.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Pearce, Richard, 1932-
The novel in motion.
Includes index.
1. American fiction-20th century-History and criticism.
2. English fiction-20th century-History and criticism. I.
Title.
PS379.P36 1983 813'.5'09 82-24565
ISBN 0-8142-0345-0
CONTENTS
Introduction: The Novel in Motion
IX
CHAPTER ONE
Toward the Novel in Motion: Movement and the
Narrative Eye
3
CHAPTER TWO
From Realism to Modernism: Two Pictures in
Joyce's Portrait 11
CHAPTER THREE
Reeling through Faulkner 24
CHAPTER FOUR
From Joyce to Beckett: The Tale That Wags the Telling 38
CHAPTER FIVE
Enter the Frame: The Loss of Clarity 56
CHAPTER SIX
Dislocation in Nabokov's Black (Hole) Humor:
Lolita and Pale Fire 66
CHAPTER SEVEN
Where're They At, Where're They Going?: Thomas Pynchon
and the American Novel in Motion 83
CHAPTER EIGHT
Robert Coover's Kaleidoscopic Spectacle 102
CHAPTER NINE
Riding the Surf: Raymond Federman, Walter Abish,
and Ronald Sukenick 118
CHAPTER TEN
Bring Back That Line, Bring Back That Time 131
Notes 145
Index 153
INTRODUCTION
The Novel in Motion
"We shall sing of the man at the steering wheel." F. T. Marinetti
The dynamo-revolving "at some vertiginous speed" within
arm's length of Henry Adams-makes the very earth seem unim
pressive "in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolu
tion." And Henry Adams begins to see "'1 story as governed by the
law of acceleration. Everyone wants to see moving pictures-of
people, horses, trains, but especially of the chase in Edwin
Porter's Great Train Robbery and the "last-minute rescues" of
D. W. Griffith. Collision, says Sergei Eisenstein, is the key to
montage. Ragtime derives its energy from syncopation-from
what were once called "driving notes," or a rhythm that displaces
the regular beat and seems to run away from the steady bass. Im
provisation, the "break" or "hot lick," is the driving force of jazz.
In painting, fixed vantage gives way to shifting perspectives. For
Einstein matter is always in motion, and motion determines the
size and weight of material objects. Yeats portrays the modern
experience in terms of centrifugal force-the falcon "turning in a
widening gyre." Leopold Bloom is always on the move, physically
and mentally, and the reader of Ulysses leaps back and forth be
tween modern and Homeric times. Dos Passos centers on the new
automobile, airplane, and movie industries, but, even more, on
America's aimless and uncontrollable energy. Hemingway and
Fitzgerald picture the ceaseless movement of the Lost Generation.
Faulkner's characters run, hunt, gallop, fly, raid, chase, and
escape throughout Yoknapatawpha County. The picaro travels
through the novel of the fifties. Robbe-Grillet creates a world of
shifting landscapes and inscapes. "Where we going?" asks Benny
x / Introduction
Profane in Thomas Pynchon's V. "The way we're heading,"
answers Pig Bodine. "Move your ass."
Movement-a creative ideal a~d a destructive obsession of
modern consciousness-dominates the modern novel, especially
in America. But what is it that actually moves? Dos Passos relates
twentieth-century history to the development of the automobile,
the airplane, and the movies. But, except for Charlie Anderson's
suicidal race with the speeding train, there is little actual move
ment in U.S.A. Most of the scenes are static, and a thousand pages
of pedestrian narrative clog the spirited tempo of the newsreels,
biographies, and camera eye. Fitzgerald's characters are restless;
and, speeding in Gatsby's yellow roadster, Daisy Buchanan runs
over her husband's mistress. But we never see the climactic scene.
Among the most memorable images are Daisy and Jordan
"buoyed up" on an enormous white couch, the director and his
star holding for a kiss beneath the white plum tree, and the enor
mous eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg staring out from a faded bill
board. Hemingway mastered the pure sequence of movement in
bullfights and fishing; but there is far more talk than. action in
The Sun Also Rises, and "Big Two-Hearted River" conveys far
more inner tension than outward movement.
Movement is the continuous going from point to point, the pro
cess of changing places, or displacement. But a writer cannot con
tinually focus on the going or changing without sacrificing a
density that traditional readers expect in a novel. Faulkner's
Pylon contains pages and pages where nothing happens except
that the reporter-sometimes alone, sometimes with the flyers
whose story he is covering-crosses town from the newspaper
office to the hotel to his apartment to the airport, always against
the current of the Mardi Gras crowds. This movement dominates
the novel after the hero crashes. It is intensified by the descrip
tions of eating and drinking, and it intensifies the dramatically
central descriptions of the air races.l But Pylon has been one of
Faulkner's least-read or -discussed novels because it does not
satisfy conventional expectations for characters with deeper
motivations or richer complexities. Faulkner could satisfy these
expectations in his portrayals of such flat characters as Jason
Compson and the Snopeses. And he could evoke the sensation of
motion not only by focusing on the continual movement of his
characters but through his continual and disorienting shifts of
focus-even upon motionless subjects. Indeed, we can distinguish
between his pictures o/motion (where his subjects run, ride, chase,