Narrative Machine: The Naturalist, Modernist, and Postmodernist Novel (Narrative Theory and Culture)

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 Cover......Page 1 Half Title......Page 2 Series......Page 3 Title......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 13 I. The Making of the Monster Machine......Page 16 II. Naturalism, Modernism, Postmodernism......Page 22 III. The State of the Critical Field, and the Shape of Things to Come......Page 29 Part I Naturalism and the Mechanical Monster......Page 46 I. The Mechanical Monsters of Zola’s “Experimental Novel”......Page 48 II. “Irrational and Supernatural” Explanations......Page 51 III. Bursting out of Narrative Control......Page 53 IV. Under the Deluge, into the Abyss, off the Rails......Page 56 V. The Human Cost of the Zolian Machine......Page 57 VI. The Critical Fortunes of the Rougon-Macquart......Page 59 I. The “Risky Business” of English Naturalism......Page 67 II. The “New-Fashioned” Agricultural Machines of The Mayor of Casterbridge......Page 68 III. The “Iron Determinism” of Tess of the D’Urbervilles......Page 70 IV. American Naturalism: Frank Norris’s Monster Machines......Page 75 V. The Voracious Gold Mine of McTeague......Page 77 VI. The Monstrous Ramifications of The Octopus......Page 78 VII. The Human Cost of The Octopus......Page 80 I. Unmiraculous Machines......Page 89 II. Sister Carrie’s Machine-Made Beauty......Page 91 III. The Factory Aesthetics of Crane, Moore, and Wharton......Page 94 IV. Gissing and the Literary Machine......Page 96 Part II Modernism versus the Machine......Page 106 I. “Zolaesque Tragedy” in The Rainbow......Page 108 II. Machine Breaker......Page 110 III. Generating the Rainbow......Page 112 IV. Escaping the Machine Apocalypse: Women in Love......Page 114 V. The Fascistic Mechanics of The Plumed Serpent......Page 119 I. Stephen Dedalus’s Malevolent Machines......Page 129 II. Ulysses versus the Monster Machine......Page 131 III. Ulysses-Bloom’s “Infernal Machine”......Page 132 IV. Underwriting Anarchy: The “Mythical Method”......Page 134 V. Undoing the Tyranny of The Odyssey......Page 136 VI. Joyce’s Utopian Machine......Page 139 I. The Postwar Machines of Mrs. Dalloway......Page 148 II. Holding the World Together: Clock, Motorcar, Airplane......Page 150 III. The Wounding Machines of The Sun Also Rises......Page 153 IV. Breaking Down......Page 154 V. Automobiles, Airplanes, and the Telephonic In Search of Lost Time......Page 157 VI. The “Gesture of a Bomb Dropped upon Us”......Page 159 Part III Postmodernism: Living with the Machine......Page 168 I. From Modernist Machines to “Autogeddon” in Crash......Page 170 II. The Real as a Fiction of Security......Page 173 III. Breakfast of Champions and the Synthetic Apocalypse......Page 176 IV. Deus ex Machina......Page 178 V. Atomic God in a Spray Can: The Infinite Synthetic Realities of Ubik......Page 181 I. The Postmodern Condition and the Digital Computer......Page 191 II. The Binary Code of The Crying of Lot 49......Page 193 III. “A Plot Has Been Mounted against You”......Page 195 IV. Death Sentences......Page 197 V. The Plutonic Number of Underworld......Page 199 VI. Atomic Baseball......Page 202 VII. “Does the Power of Transcendence Linger?”......Page 204 I. In the Ruins of the Future......Page 214 II. E: The Machine-Made Void......Page 218 III. W: The Origin of the Lipogram......Page 220 IV. W: The Camps......Page 222 V. New Life: A User’s Manual......Page 224 V+I. For Perec, Another V......Page 227 Works Cited......Page 240 Index......Page 254