Americanness In The Post-Cold War American Novels

This dissertation seeks to mark out and investigate the idea of Americanness through the lens of the post-Cold War American novels. In particular, this dissertation will examine four family saga novels that were published in the late 1990s and early 2000s, namely, John Updike’s In the Beauty of the Lilies, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, and Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex, which, it argues that, interrogate the problematic Americanness and explore the essence of Americanness, participating in America’s self-reflection and re-affirmation of Americanness at the turn of the new millennium.Throughout American history, the idea of Americanness has been under constant evaluation and reconstruction, with a great number of intellectual works and literary texts having been committed to exploring the distinctive characteristics of America and qualities of being American. This dissertation suggests that, as such an Adamic country consisting of diverse ethnicities, America is well-grounded for a flexible definition of Americanness, which cannot be sealed in a list of common traits but can only be crystallized in a series of consensuses. Those consensuses, themselves, are achieved through the negotiations between the different versions of sacred faith and secular activities, between the diverse ethnic descents and unified consent, between the heritage of traditional values and idiosyncrasies of the status quo, between the idealistic dreams and down-to-earth practices. However, in the second half of the twentieth century, especially at the turn of the new millennium when the end of the Cold War deprives America of an "other" and the 9/11 terrorist attacks give a fatal blow to America’s triumphalist narrative, the idea of Americanness has become notably problematic, which triggers great anxiety in American academia. For instance, the overstatement of ethnicity and its consequent threat to national unity bring about the debate over multiculturalism, the disruption of American sacred-secular mode of consensus and the decline of traditional Anglo-Saxon-Protestant American. values arouse the anxiety over the cultural war, and the disparity between America’s promise and individual’s actualization in reality gives rise to the unsettlement over America’s future prospects. This dissertation argues that, the post-Cold War decade, which is bracketed by the end of the Cold War on one side and the nightmare of 9/11 on the other, is remarkably noteworthy for America’s retrospection and introspection, during which American writers and intellectuals are similarly devoted to interrogating the problematic Americanness, exploring the essence of Americanness and reaffirming the significance of Americanness.Rather than the passive reflection of history, society and culture, literature is one of the active participants in the construction of social ideology and cultural discourse, and even the external reality. In this light, the interpretation of literary texts, as the re-textualization of reality, is equally valuable for investigating the social concerns and seeking out the possible solutions. Therefore, a dialogical reading between literary texts and non-literary works, including those of the authors themselves, as well as the social critics and intellectuals, not only contributes to a comprehensive understanding of literature, but also sheds much light on the real world. In particular, this dissertation is committed to a dialogical reading between four post-Cold War American family saga novels and other historical, social and cultural works, not only illuminating how the national history is dramatically represented by the fictional stories of the multi-generational families, but also manifesting American authors and intellectuals’shared concern over America’s national character and individual personality, as well as their implying suggestions to deal with the problematic Americanness at the turn of the new millennium.Focusing on a four-generation family’s story spanning from the 1910s to the 1990s, John Updike’s In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996) chronicles the evolution of American faith and interrogates the recurring disruptions to America’s sacred-secular mode of consensus. From the belief in Protestant tenets to the commitment to America’s national promise, then to the worship of American movie as a kind of mass religion, the idea of Americanness is incarnated in the novel as a quintessential American faith, which is represented in each generation’s consensual practice of granting secular activities with sacred meanings. However, the novel illustrates that, this sacred-secular mode of consensus has encountered notable disruptions in the twentieth century, such as the decline of Protestantism, the lack of moral constrain in individual’s actualization of national promise, and the morbid obsession with a mass cult. Through recounting each generation’s different manifestations of Americanness as well as their respective disruptions, the novel displays the problematic nature of Americanness and confirms the significance of preserving American faith, both of which are also the major concerns in the cultural war campaign at the end of the twentieth century.Philip Roth’s American Pastoral (1997) presents a literary reflection on the problematic Americanness of ethnic-Americans, which, as another great concern in the post-Cold War decade, has triggered heated debate over multiculturalism in American academia. Concentrating on the tragic fortune of a Jewish-American family in the late 1960s, the novel portrays and interrogates the ethnic-Americans’ problematic perceptions of Americanness, such as the false equation of Americanness with Wasp-conformity and the overstatement of ethnic heterogeneity, both of which upset the balance of ethnic-Americans’ hyphenated identity. What’s more, the novel also proposes a synthetic treatment of Americanness for ethnic-Americans, which maintains the negotiation rather than the contradiction between America’s diverse ethnicity and national unity. No matter whether in terms of its interrogation of the problematic Americanness for ethnic-Americans or its suggestion of a synthetic perspective, the novel accomplishes a retrospection on America’s different ideologies to deal with ethnic issues, including the melting-pot policy, the campaign of cultural pluralism and multiculturalism, and the post-ethnic proposition, participating in the historical discussions over America’s "diversity-unity" thesis, especially the one among American intellectuals and social critics in the late twentieth century.Similarly engaged in America’s another post-Cold War concern, namely, the anxiety over the crisis of American self-cognition after the demise of the Evil Empire as an important "Other", Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections (2001) is committed to a dramatic investigation of American individuals’changing perceptions of their American selfhood. Through the lens of a middle-class family’s story from the 1960s to the 1990s, the novel interrogates the decline of traditional American values in the post-WWII era. Not only the Protestant ethics and mid-western regionalist ideals, which have been the consensual foundations of the older generations’ Americanness, are disrupted by hedonism and globalization, but also Americanness of the younger generation is problematized by the narcissist culture, liberal sensibility and identity politics in contemporary times. Apart from the interrogation, the novel also indicates the corrective possibilities to salvage the problematic Americanness, reaffirming the significance of traditional American values and ethics in spite of the changing social and cultural ethos. In a broad sense, the novel’s celebration of the virtuous American heritage corresponds with the conservative inclination in the post-Cold War American academia, which appeals for the recuperation of Anglo-Saxon-Protestant creeds in order to define and distinguish American selfhood.As a literary reaction to the 9/11 catastrophe, Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex (2002) examines the problematic nature of the triumphalist Americanness. Devoted to an epic chronicle of a three-generation Greek-American family’s American Odyssey from the 1920s to the 2000s, the novel manifests the disparity between America’s promise in self-reinvention and individual’s actualization in reality. In addition to the thematic allegory of the problematic American triumphalism, the novel employs a hybrid narrator and adopts the historiographical metafictional narrative, which bridge the representation of the past with the mediation on the present, thereby, illustrate the potentials of hybrid Americanness in the post-9/11 America. In front of the shocking blow of 9/11 to America’s national confidence and personal expectations to the future, the novel not only interrogates the problematic Americanness underlying in American triumphalism, but more importantly, reaffirms the value of American promise in preserving national power and individual’s vitality.One of the essential characteristics of America is its constant concern over the American "self", no matter whether in view of its distinctive national character or individual’s personality. Throughout American history, especially in the post-Cold War decade, when the new millennium is at the threshold, and America has witnessed the end of the Cold War and the horrible disaster of 9/11, the idea of Americanness has been under close investigation, interrogation and reaffirmation by American writers and intellectuals. Based on a dialogical reading between the four selected literary texts and a number of the non-literary works, together with a consideration of the historical controversies and the post-Cold War debates in American academia, this dissertation suggests that, Americanness of ethnic Americans should be achieved in the negotiation between ethnic heterogeneity and national unity, and the traditional American values are still of great significance in defining and distinguishing American selfhood, in spite of contemporary social and cultural changes. As a nation of self-reflection, America never stops its evaluation and reconstruction of Americanness, and as the active participants in the construction of social ideology and cultural discourse, the post-Cold War American novels contribute a dramatic interrogation of the problematic Americanness and an insightful exploration of the American self.