The Passage of Literature: Genealogies of Modernism in Conrad, Rhys, and Pramoedya

351 Pages·2011·1.62 MB·English

by  Christopher GoGwilt

THE PASSAGE OF LITERATURE
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THE PASSAGE OF
LITERATURE
Genealogies of Modernism in Conrad, Rhys,
and Pramoedya
Christopher GoGwilt
1

2011
1

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
GoGwilt, Christopher Lloyd.
The passage of literature : genealogies of modernism in Conrad, Rhys,
and Pramoedya / Christopher GoGwilt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-975162-4
1. Modernism (Literature)—Great Britain. 2. Modernism (Literature)—
Caribbean Area. 3. Modernism (Literature)—Indonesia. 4. Postcolonialism in
literature. 5. Comparative literature—English and Caribbean (English) 6. Comparative
literature—Caribbean (English) and E nglish. 7. Comparative literature—English
and Indonesian. 8. Comparative literature—Indonesian and English. 9. Conrad,
Joseph, 1857–1924—Criticism and interpretation. 10. Rhys, Jean, 1890–1979—
Criticism and interpretation. 11. Toer, Pramoedya Ananta,
1925–2006—Criticism and i nterpretation. I. Title.
PR888.M63G64 2010
823'.91209—dc22 2010009507
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
untuk Go Tie Siem
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
his book has emerged from a number of different conversa-
tions, exchanges, and crossings of paths. Growing from so
many different occasions, the book has been enriched by many
more people than I can possibly thank individually here.
I owe an enormous debt to all those who have supported my
informal apprenticeship in Indonesian studies: Ben Anderson, for
his generous comments and advice in 1995 and 1996; Go Gien
Tjwan, for many conversations about Indonesian history and
politics; and all those who helped organize and who participated in
the events of April 1999, during Pramoedya’s visit to New York,
especially Joesoef Isak, Maemoenah Thamrin, and Pramoedya
Ananta Toer; and also the co-organizers, Will Schwalbe and John
McGlynn. For ongoing conversations, I thank Alex Bardsley, Nancy
Florida, Peter Hitchcock, Sanjay Krishnan, Max Lane, Henk Maier,
John Pemberton, and André Vltchek. Above all, I thank my
father-in-law, Go Tie Siem, for the wealth of his experience, for
material help in translating Indonesian texts, and for the gener-
osity of his time arranging meetings with Go Gien Tjwan, Wim
Wertheim, and Oei Tjoe Tat, not to mention Pram himself.
The book has been enriched by conversations at many different
academic conferences and seminars, including several MLA panels,
conferences on Conrad in Philadelphia (1997), Gdan´sk (1997),
Vancouver, BC (2002), and Orange, California (2010); and events
organized for the Symposium on the Diaspora of Cultural Studies
and the Literary Studies Program at Fordham. I have drawn
numerous insights from conversations at these and other events,
and thank (among many others) Andrzej Busza, Robert Caserio,
Yvette Christiansë, Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, Laurence Davies, Kim
Hall, Nico Israel, James Kim, Jakob Lothe, Peter Mallios, Roz
Morris, Zdzisław Najder, Francesca Parmeggiani, John Peters,
Nicola Pitchford, Ann Stoler, and Andrea White. I acknowledge my
debt to three very different readers of Conrad I was privileged to be
able to meet while they were alive: Eloise Knapp Hay, Hans van
Marle, and G. J. Resink. I continue to learn from all my students,
colleagues, and friends, and I thank those who have read por-
tions of the manuscript, or who have provided crucial advice at
critical moments: John M. Archer, Madeleine Brainerd, Fraser
Easton, T. Kaori Kitao, and Fawzia Mustafa.
Formally, I acknowledge the support of two Fordham faculty
fellowships—one in the academic year 2000–1 that enabled me to
conceive the overall shape of the project; and one in fall 2005 that
helped me complete a substantial portion of the manuscript.
I thank Liz Foley O’Connor and Fordham’s Graduate School of
Arts & Sciences for providing her the research assistantship to help
with the fi nal stages of this book manuscript. I owe special thanks
to both of Oxford’s anonymous reviewers for their invaluable sug-
gestions. I would also like to thank Brendan O’Neill and the entire
editorial team at Oxford for their invaluable assistance in realizing
the fi nal shape of the book.
Parts of the following study have appeared in earlier versions
elsewhere. A version of chapter 2 was published in C onrad in the
Twenty-First Century: Contemporary Critical Approaches and
Perspectives , edited by Carola Kaplan, Peter Mallios, and Andrea
White (New York: Routledge, 2005). I thank Routledge for permis-
sion to republish an expanded and revised version of this essay.
I thank the editors, too, for their valuable comments. The photo-
graphs from Rob Nieuwenhuys’s T empo Doeloe referred to in
chapter 2 were reproduced in that essay (with permission from
Querido), but I have not reprinted these photographs here, wishing
to emphasize the medium of the printed word rather than the pho-
tographic record, while at the same time underscoring the fact that
the printed word is itself inscribed in relation to a photographic—
and phonographic—archive. A version of c hapter 4 was published
in Geographies of Modernism , edited by Peter Brooker and Andrew
Thacker (New York: Routledge, 2005). I thank Routledge for per-
mission to republish an expanded and revised version of this
article. I thank the editors, too, for the opportunity to publish this
essay and for their comments on the essay itself. A version of
chapter 6 was published in Comparative Literature Studies 44, no.
4 (Winter 2007), 409–33. I thank the Penn State Press for permis-
sion to republish an expanded and revised version of this article.
Last, but by no means least, I want to thank my family. I have an
impressionistic childhood memory, before I could read myself,
almost a baby, of seeing the title cover of Jean Rhys’s W ide Sargasso
Sea on a bookshelf at home. The distortion of memory is all my
own, but whatever I may have learned right about reading and
writing words I owe both to my mother and to my father. I trust
viii Acknowledgments
Richard and Philip can patiently correct my childhood memory
and I thank them for a brotherly apprenticeship in listening to the
inevitably distorting Scottish effects of English words. I thank Cai
and Keir for allowing me to bring dictionaries to the dinner table
so often. No words can express my thanks to Siu Li. I owe her
everything. For their wisdom, experience, and practical help, I
thank May Li and Soesilowati. I have already acknowledged the
debt this work owes to my father-in-law, Go Tie Siem. For the
countless ways he has supported my study of Pramoedya, I dedi-
cate the book to him. I hope that dedication might also be under-
stood as acknowledgment of my debt to the family he raised in
Rome, the family he now lives with in Toronto, and the extended
family of Tan sisters, whose Stamboek (Tan Tjwan Liong. Soerabaia.
1915 ) now includes Cai and Keir, along with many other family
relatives (k erna kita bisa taoe kita ampoenja toeroennan ). Their
genealogies cross paths with the genealogies of modernism traced
in this book.
Acknowledgments ix