| This dissertation aims at exploring the characteristics of the contemporaryAmerican writer E. L. Doctorow’s city writing, based on the analysis of the boynarrators who are literary flaneurs in three of his novels: The Book of Daniel, World’sFair and Billy Bathgate, arguing that Doctorow’s city writing subverts the Americanliterary tradition of depicting the city as the profane and thus creates an urbanaesthetics that is both positive and critical.The dissertation adopts Benjamin’s theory about flaneurs as a starting point. Bysynthesizing the theory of Third Space by Edward Soja and Homi Bhabha, theory ofCultural Geography by Yifu Tuan and Mike Crane, space narrative theory by JosephFrank and Wesley Kort, together with Bakhtin’s theory about Carnival, the thesisdiscusses the ways how flaneries of the little boy narrators in the city space and theirperception of the places in the city influence their growth and space values. It aims atdisclosing Doctorow’s own attitude towards the city through the analysis of hisfictional characters’ interaction with the city.The flanerie of the boy narrators play different roles in each of the three chosentexts. In The Book of Daniel, wandering is therapeutic for the traumatized protagonistDaniel. With a strong sense of homelessness, his wandering is a process of homesearching. It is in his wander that he realizes the alienation of his house from theneighborhood, the alienation of his family from the Jewish community, and thealienation of himself from history, both the history of the Old Left and the New Left.His final flanerie in Disneyland not only redeems himself, but also redeems the familybetrayer Mindish. And the Futurama in Disneyland reveals his desire for a utopia asan escape from his miserable childhood.In World’s Fair, Edgar’s flanerie becomes a process of self-creating. Hisencounter with gang boys makes him aware of his Jewish identity, while the two tripsto the World’s Fair initiate him into manhood. His witness of death and femalenakedness marks as great milestones in his way towards maturity. Doctorow portrays Edgar as a young artist, in whom we see Doctorow’s own shadow, as a Jewish writeras well as a New Yorker. The cityscape perceived from Edgar’s eyes mirrors the lifeof ordinary people in the1930s’ Bronx. The World’s Fair Edgar and his family strollin is a miniature of New York’s future, tempting but still with signs of decay.In Billy Bathgate, Doctorow portrays a Bronx street boy who takes wandering ashis way of life, by baptizing himself into the Shultz gang group. As a capable gangapprentice, his flanerie means his searching for patrimony and pursuit of AmericanDream, both ending in success in the sense that he finds the gang’s fortune after theyare killed and becomes a father himself. In his flanerie both in New York and othercities, he forms his own spatial value system, with a preference of Manhattan to theBronx, and New York to other cities. His relationship with the city’s crowd illustratesBenjamin’s observation that “the flaneur is at home not in his class but in the crowd.”All of the three novels are set in the city of New York, each having a boy narratorwho likes to wander in the city space in their growing process. Thus they could beconsidered as urban Bildungsromane. Based on close reading of the three texts andcomparing them with Doctorow’s other works, this dissertation concludes the generalcharacteristics of Doctorow’s urban Bildungsromane: firstly, the city space not onlyprovides the environment for the protagonists’ growth, but also triggers their ownconsciousness of identification with the city as urbanites; secondly, the protagonistsare very sensitive, and all seem to be capable perceptive machines with insightfulunderstanding of their surroundings, and record the cubic diorama of the cityscape;thirdly, almost in every of Doctorow’s urban Bildungsroman, there is a “whitegoddess” who may trigger the male protagonists’ nascent sexual excitement and pavetheir way towards sexual maturity; fourthly, Doctorow’s urban Bildungsromane blurthe distinction between fiction and autobiography, thus reveal the relationshipbetween the author himself and the city he lives in, which is also the city most of hisfictional protagonists grow up in; and finally, Doctorow’s urban Bildungsromaneusually end in a description of a positive attitude towards life with a redemption of theprotagonist himself or others, with a kind of pro-utopia desire.But in literary practice, Doctorow intentionally blurs the distinction between genres, be it Bildungsroman, autobiography, detective story or crime novel. Besides,he tends to revivify the oral tradition of story telling. His endeavor to blur thedistinction between popular literature and elite literature is as important as his otherpostmodern experiments with polyphony, parody and paradox. His choice of boywanderers as narrators produces a special perspective in his postmodern city writing,a psychological detachment from adult way of perception and narration, and thus,produces a special urban aesthetics that may lift the city from profane. The “flanerie”approach to Doctorow study, hopefully, may be a useful complement to the studiesfrom other perspectives, say the political engagement, historical narration, Jewishtrajectory and religious implications. |
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