Prosaic desires : modernist knowledge, boredom, laughter, and anticipation

225 Pages·2010·1.03 MB·English

by  Crangle

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P r o s a i c D e s i r e s
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Modernist Knowledge, Boredom, a
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Laughter, and Anticipation
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Sara Crangle D e s i r e s
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‘Sara Crangle’s inventive book shifts our attention from great desires to the little desires
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of everyday life, such as the desire to laugh, to be relieved of boredom or to be freed of
desire altogether. It is these low-key, “prosaic desires,” Crangle argues, that galvanize the s
modernist imagination. Making ingenious use of Levinas’s ethical thought, Crangle i
combines theoretical insight with sinuous close reading in this scintillating contribution r
to modernist studies.’Maud Ellmann, Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin Professor of the e
Development of the Novel in English, University of Chicago
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‘In this penetrating new study, Sara Crangle argues persuasively that the crisis-driven
aesthetics of literary modernism persistently grounded its unfulfilled longings in the
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“small urgent feelings of the everyday.” Boredom, laughter, anxious anticipation – these
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constitute the surprisingly “prosaic” emotional register that governed the modernists’ u od
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radical experiments with literary form.’ Peter Nicholls, Professor of English, New York University h e
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Exploring a variety of everyday human longings as they arise in modernist fiction, Prosaic r is
Desirescontends that human longings are as endless in kind as they are in manifestation. , a t
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In an extension of Levinasian theory, Prosaic Desiresclaims that desire-driven shifts from d n
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self to other can be located in modernist literature. The banal longings examined here lie A w
within the poles of sexuality and power, and include desires to know and escape boredom, nt le
as well as risibility and anticipation. Authors studied include Joyce, Woolf, Stein, and Beckett, ic d
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all of whom evince a discernible movement away from self-absorbed, grand narratives of p e
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desire toward other-based, evanescent longings throughout their careers. t B
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Central to their modernist writings – and in turn, to Prosaic Desires– o o
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is the conflicted relationship between daily, finite experience and the e
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limitlessness of human desire. o
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Sara Crangleis a lecturer at the University of Sussex and a former ,
research fellow at Queens’ College, Cambridge.
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a Modernist Knowledge,

Jacket image: Study for drawing 1931/k 5: Flight from oneself C
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(first version) from Paul Klee notebooks © Zentrum Paul Klee a
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ISBN 978 0 7486 4085 0 le
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Cover design: www.paulsmithdesign.com u
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Prosaic Desires
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Prosaic Desires
Modernist Knowledge, Boredom, Laughter,
and Anticipation
Sara Crangle
Edinburgh University Press
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© Sara Crangle, 2010
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in 10.5/13 Adobe Sabon
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rose, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 4085 0 (hardback)
The right of Sara Crangle
to be identifi ed as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgments and Dedication vii
Abbreviations ix
Introduction: Mortal Self, Infi nite Longings 1
Productive Desires, Otherness, and Emmanuel Levinas 9
Knowledge, Boredom, Laughter, and Anticipation 19
1 Dying to Know 28
Knowledge and Aesthetics 32
Epiphanic Dead-E nds: Joyce and Woolf 36
Stephen Dedalus and Schopenhauer 40
Parodic Resurrection: Epiphanies in Ulysses 49
Stephen and Nietzsche 55
Bloom and Levinas 60
Conclusions 64
2 Haunted by Boredom 71
Gauging Boredom 76
The Time Being 78
Woolf’s Boredoms 84
Orlando’s Regenerative Oak 89
“The Lady in the Looking-G lass” 91
Conclusions 98
3 Inclining Towards Laughter 104
Modernist Laughter 110
Stein Regales 114
Q.E.D. and Solitary Risibility 119
A Long Gay Book and Shared Laughter 122
Two and Infi nite Levity 127
Conclusions 133
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vi Contents
4 In the Meantime 139
War, Angst, and Patience 142
Between the Acts: Not Now 147
Mrs. Reynolds: Not Yet 157
Conclusions 168
Conclusion: Endlessnessnessness 174
Bibliography 194
Index 211
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Acknowledgments and Dedication
First and foremost, I am indebted to Maud Ellmann for her continued
support of this book, and for all of the lemonade and curried chicken
sandwiches she fed me while discussing its inception. Peter Nicholls
meticulously edited this work in its entirety, and for that, as well as for
my introduction to pin-s harp Pride, I am grateful. Ian Patterson has
been similarly generous in giving his personal time to read and edit my
writing with canny good humor. Countless others have assisted along
the way, including John Forrester, Anne Fernihough, Gillian Beer, David
Trotter, Derek Attridge, and Rachel Bowlby. Bob Perelman made a typi-
cally offhand but discerning suggestion which became the foundation of
Chapter 3. Audiences at talks I gave in Cambridge, Brighton, Zurich,
Dublin, Vancouver, Ottawa, Birmingham, Philadelphia, and London
also contributed to the formulation of this work.
Appreciation must also be extended to the members of Queens’
College, Cambridge, who offered me the research fellowship that
brought this project to fruition. Colleagues at the University of Sussex
– particularly Pam Thurschwell, Keston Sutherland, Daniel Kane,
and J. D. Rhodes – have since been fantastically supportive. Modern
Fiction Studies published and gave permission to reprint the second
chapter, which was awarded the Margaret Church Memorial Prize for
best essay in that journal in 2008 (“The Time Being: On Woolf and
Boredom” 2: 209–32). My thanks to their anonymous readers, and to
the editors of Modern Fiction Studies for their kind recognition of my
writing.
Friends and family also deserve mention. Leanne Holt, Joseph
Rosenberg, Mark Singleton, Sophie Read, Rebecca Stott, Melissa
Plowden- Roberts, Michael Franklin, and most especially, Sam Ladkin,
have sustained me throughout this project. And in a truly relentless,
decades-l ong spirit of goodwill, my parents offered time and resources
that directly facilitated the completion of this book.
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viii Acknowledgments and Dedication
As ever, the Rubys are a motivation both paramount and fundamen-
tal. Here words genuinely fail me.
This book is dedicated to Guthrie Ruby, for his intuitive grasp of infi nite
longing.
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Abbreviations
The following abbreviations have been used throughout:
Joyce
Stephen Hero SH
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man P
Ulysses U
Stein
The Making of Americans MA
A Long Gay Book LGB
Mrs. Reynolds MR
Woolf
A Passionate Apprentice PA
The Voyage Out VO
To the Lighthouse TTL
Mrs Dalloway MD
The Waves W
Pointz Hall PH
Between the Acts BA
Heidegger
Being & Time BT
The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics FCM
Levinas
Existence & Existents EE
Time and the Other TO
Totality and Infi nity TI
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