Our class discussion

It seems in discussing Gerald Egan's article "Radical Moral Authority and Desire: The Image of the Male Romanitc Poets in Frontispiece Portraits of Byron and Shelly," our conversation center upon what we could do in our own that mimics or borrows from this essay.  Looking back at all the research I did last weekend, I now have 40-50 sources, many of them are books, it seems that any notion or goal I had for my project changed--or should I say gained vitality--as I continued to search various terms, critical lenses, and authors.  Given these experiences, it seems trying to force fit an agenda too early may disrupt progress as you continue to absorb sources.  As I read, ideas and conflicts came to me that I hadn't realized about AKM and my ideas adjusted accordingly.  For example, the noir elements are certainly now obvious to that book, I wouldn't even had considered how that genre might be grounding the novel as a whole given the descriptive depth and beauty of the language, especially in terms of philosophy, if I had investigated feminist readings of the book.  Likewise, I would have simple adapted cookie-cutter notions of Burden's crisis of identity (in terms of Existentialism and Modernism) and applied them to me investigation if I hadn't done significant reading about Masculinity and Southern Culture.  I guess the point I gleamed here is that initial research should first shape your project, before we can appropriate more sources to reinforce it.  First we must ask what can be done, before investigating what would help accomplish this task.    

Methodology in progress

This is my methodology-in-progress for my research project:

            Out of a research framework consisting in Southern Studies, Masculinity, and Feminist interpretations of Noir literature, I will then construct a reading of various key points in All the King’s Men, paying initial attention to Burden and Stark’s first meeting and the nihilistic ennui that consumes Burden before Willie Stark consolidates Burden into his fascist ranks.  Similarly, I will evaluate this paternalist relationship and set it against the other model’s of masculinity (typically paternal) Burden has available, paying keen attention to Judge Irwin, Adam Stanton, and Willie Stark, and how they each contrast to the persona projected by Burden’s narration.  From there I will move to the first mentions of a few, key women who appear in the book: Sadie Burke, Burden’s mother, and Anne Stanton, as I tie together the imperatives driving the style and content of Burden’s narration and how these imperatives render the narration a recognizably masculine performance though he has fails throughout the novel to achieve an active masculinity like Willie Stark, Adam Stanton, or Judge Irwin, ensnared as he is in this “Reflective Masochistic” state. 

Some further considerations...

            Beyond these evaluations and investigations, my research project might be used to stage a larger assertion that grounds “Reflexive Masochism” as a prerequisite condition to many of the first person, white, male narrators of noir literature and cinema.  Also, this research might go a long way into further informing gender performance as a key element to any first person narration in terms Narrative Theory.

Framing my Research Project on AKM

Since so much of Warren’s All the King’s Men focuses on Jack Burden’s relationship to various potential father figures, I think it would be interesting to launch a gender-based/feminist oriented reading of the novel.  Full of self loathing and erasure, Jack Burden, the narrator, has a deeply cynical voice akin to what you’d expect from the noir films at the time.  This capacity seems to relate to the sociological idea that masculinity—as a compulsive performance—has two principal affectations: first, there are outward pantomimes—called “Surface Acting” (Hochschild) where a man displays the proper—in terms of masculinity—emotion appropriate to any given situation; then there is a more profound sense of performance where, over time, men actually bring themselves to feel or block an emotion.  Like Chandler’s Marlow, it takes some inundation into the mind of Jack Burden to understand the negative emotional distance in which he frames the issues and relationships that preoccupy his narrative.  Throughout the book, the Burden’s philosophical universe changes drastically as he tries understand his agency in the world and model his philosophical outlook on the various father figures he has absorbed throughout his life.  Willie Stark, on the other hand, is a creature of will.  This farm-boy turned fascist is self-made—in the American ideal—but emotionally unavailable to any situation or character who cannot contribute to his political power.  Accordingly, it will be interesting to examine in terms of homosociability how Jack Burdern became a henchman of a man he clearly despises.              

Though later cut out for the far superior opening that now exists, the Polk’s “Restored Edition” retains—in the appendix—the original opening of the book where Burden unabashedly refers to Willie (though recognized a dark principal of political power) as a son of a bitch.  Anyway, it will be interesting also to examine the sort of ennui and nihilism that Jack Burden found himself in when he was recruited to Stark’s inner circle of factotums and minions.  Out of work and basically floating through the day in a sort of womanizing, boozy bliss, he gets the call from Stark and says yes without hesitation, despite his initial hostility towards the hapless Stark in his first—futile—run for governor.  Ultimately, it seems Burden, develops a sort of “Reflective Masochism” whereby he brutalizes himself internally for not being intellectually self-sufficient (thus manlike) enough to finish his PhD thesis (which would contain an inherent, comprehensive worldview).  Out of this inward nihilism, Willie Stark, with his indomitable volition and will to power, becomes paternalistically and homosocially attractive.  Thus, it would also be interesting to study how masculinity shapes fascism, both in terms of the “boss” who is clearly a vestige of the old southern stereotype of manliness (self-made, in control, haunting/looming, and worshipped) and this new type of failing masculinity whose only agency comes in loathing the self and its feeble powers to ascertain a viable position in the universe.

Along the way, it seems I must study the formation of Burden’s relationship with Stark (by comparison this paternal relationship will contain all other father figures); Burden’s relationship to Anne Stanton and how she stands apart from his typical womanizing; and, finally, a detailed analysis of Burden’s relationship to his mother.

Research Notes on my All the King's Men Project

My research thus far has taken me all over the map: From whiteness in Southern culture, to gender studies in Southern Literature, to ideas about Masculinity/Manhood in America, I’ve tried ground my project in a more current framework of gender and gender performance.  Surprisingly, only one major book-length work I’ve encounter has been devoted entirely to a feminist reading of All the Kings Men—Sleeping With the Boss: Female Subjectivity and Narrative Pattern in Robert Penn Warren, by Lucy Ferriss.  There are other anthologized essay collections like The Legacy of Robert Penn Warren that contain essay’s like “Medusa, Movies, and All the King’s Men” (Deborah Wilson) that make explicit connections between the book’s narration and the film noir of the 20’s-40’s, but this focuses on female representations in the book.  Not many, it seems, have focused on Masculinity and issues of Homosociability in AKM.  This is exciting for me, because it allows me the opportunity to combine a critical reading of the text (my favorite) under various critical and cultural lenses.           

            Typically, the scholarship as it exists does examine Burden’s various vicarious paternal relationships, but always in terms of his metaphysics and Stark’s—narrated—teleology.  Accordingly, it will be interesting to take this conversation “out of the columns and into the colored lights” of gender performance. I've done various searches under the terms of Masculinity in Southern Literature, Gender Crisis in Southern Literature, Masculinity and Fascism, Gender Performance, Masculinity in America, each providing decent yields in various, useful secondary sources.  Over the past few days, it's been nice to see how these various concepts have combined to recast or intensify my initial reading of AKM.  New connections come to me all the time and it will be interesting to see how I can organize and relay these multiplying insights.    

Response to one of the questions on my ERP

It seems in my previous ERP I kept making the distinction--however superficially--between details seeming peripheral to the text (watermarks, signatures, catchwords, the paper, how much white space existed on that paper, etcetera)  and the narrative composed in the text itself.  Rereading this, it's now apparent to me that I'd still clung to the old idea of the central primacy of the author and her actual accomplishments on the page, instead of embracing the ways other facets of the"Communication Circuit" manifest themselves in the book itself.  When thinking about descriptive bibliography, it's the book, as O'Donnell states, that we must first listen to, not necessarily the narrative contained within its pages.  This reversal is key.  For instance, since ever book in the pre-industrialized were purchased then bound on a case by case basis, one can tell much about the status of the work at the time of its binding if, say multiple inks were used (this would be expensive), or the source of its paper by its watermark.  Anyway, as prompted by Dr. Snead's comments, these issues do become central, not peripheral, and when it comes to Descriptive Bibliography, you search the material body of a book--even in terms of its text--and look for anomalies in the typeset or traceable clues that will key us into the world of the book as imprinted by commercial, social, and political forces.     

The first thing I think I might need to circulate about my project—and about this class in general—is that I need to be comfortable with the fact that I’m a novice.  Certainly, this is difficult, considering the fact that I’m thirty-five, have an MFA (thus, supposedly, competent in the realm of fiction), and have taught others to research in Freshman Composition, but—I’ve realized after a wonderful chat with Dr. Snead—the professionalism, authority, and knowledge I hope to otherwise exude has to be left at the door.  Not only are we forced to start from the ground up, we’re expected to.  It’s ok that we don’t know the best methods or academic journals or all the criticism out there.  This course was designed to inform us.  Despite this understanding, however, you still have to engage your project with authority and confidence (particularly in the writing) even though you aren’t yet and expert in whatever topic or field you’re engaging.  I liken this approach to those first stories I composed in my first graduate workshop where I wrote like I knew all the rules and possible perspectives people could take to my work only to find later—post workshop—that my knowledge—though expansive—did have limitations.  Now, I realize I just have to be more conscious of this process, that’s all.  Anyway, this realization came with some relief, and I thought I would share with the rest of the class.

As for the research, also in my meeting with Dr. Snead I finally gained a comprehensive perspective of the project I hope to do in research methods and how I can tie my work and research into the critical issues I’m already facing as an author.  Before we begin, it seems—at least to me—that at this stage we should be looking at issues and not individual works or authors.  Maps after all contain many destinations, and, if want to generate a good one, we should allow for variety of routes between each of them.  Anyway, the time of post-graduate academic study where one picks an author and focuses on them is long gone (I got my BA in English and Philosophy in 2000).  It is all about an intersection of various fields or disciplines working within literature than a constellation of two or three different thinkers/writers.  Or so it seems to me.  Anyway, in my case, writing as I do about Kentucky, I find it problematic that the only literature that gets published out of this region has a rural—sometimes gothic—flare.  When I say I’m a Kentucky author, I realize typically all the lit. mags will expect me to write in this fashion.  Never mind that Louisville is a diverse metropolis with over 600,000 people, or that Hazard (where my mother is from) has a severe prescription drug problem.  They want blood on the farm or in the woods or comely, wise tales praising the ways of the land or the sages that occupy this old wisdom.  This is a cheap cutout for sure, but the problem is that Kentucky (and much of the rest of the south) isn’t even remotely the place it was thirty years ago.    I didn’t grow up with religion (another hallmark of the Kentucky brand is some sort of biblical inflection) and have instead posited the natural world as the source of my mythos and, in many ways, magical realism has much more to say to me than the Gospel.  Kentucky is a knobby jungle—at least the part I like to write about—crawling with vines and briar and bugs of all kinds of biting sorts.  In my opinion, nature is obscure and wondrous enough to encompass/accommodate the robust, metaphysical mysteries that religion previously (and this is in my case) imbued.  Similarly, I remember attending a reading with a prominent Kentucky author where he said that he can’t even write about the Kentucky of today, but instead engages a forgotten, almost mythical past that seems more real to his idea of the Bluegrass state than its present incarnation.  This only further corroborated my intimation that The South isn’t what people want to believe that it is. Not anymore.  Accordingly, it seems my major preoccupation is how do we engage this current Kentucky—in my case the Kentucky that attributes to The South—in our creative writing? 

Ultimately, no matter what direction or topic I take up in my research, it will always return to this idea of cultural identity and how we define ourselves against the institutions and systems of our past.  In my opinion, the contrast between how southerners (and Kentuckians) want to consider themselves has never been more disparate from how they actually are.  The south is more urban, (more people live now in cities than on the countryside) diverse, and—though it has taken much time—less patriarchic.  The interstate cities have more economic opportunities and the remote, satellite towns like Hazard are threatened—beyond their drug issues—with economic extinction.   

In terms of this research guide, it seems it’s best to put the broadest terms first and then work your way in, trusting that those broader categories to include other prevalent topics (like maybe race, class, and gender).

So my criteria might look like:

1.  20^th Century American Lit.

2. Regionalism.

3. Southern Lit and Culture.

4. Eco-Criticism

5. (Whiteness studies.)   

Again I think it’s best to work your way down from the broadest to most specific.  Again, since I’m interested in how the South has changed over the last forty or fifty years, I think 20^th Century American Lit. represents a broad enough platform in which to start.  Each subsequent stage becomes more focused.  Anyway, the main idea is to engage this research realizing that my central contradiction/dilemma lies between the misconceived South of today and prototypical South propagated through the articles/texts/ and narratives of the past.