Janine Utell - Literary Couples and 20th-Century Life Writing: Narrative and Intimacy

Literary Couples and 20th-Century Life Writing

Must you tell me all your secrets when its hard enough to love you knowing nothing?

Lloyd Cole

Literary Couples and 20th-Century Life Writing

Narrative and Intimacy

Janine Utell

Contents

This book has been part of my life for a long time, and I have benefited immeasurably from many wonderful people in all parts of my life as I have worked on it. Thanks are due first to the editorial team at Bloomsbury Academic: David Avital, who has not only been a pleasure to work with but brought his creativity and critical insight to bear on many rich conversations about the study of and research in twentieth-century literature; and Clara Herberg, Mark Richardson, Lucy Brown, and Angelique Neumann, who supported and expertly shepherded this project. Thanks also to my anonymous peer reviewers at the proposal and manuscript stages. Their generous and genuinely helpful feedback dramatically enhanced this project. I would also like to acknowledge those with whom I have worked on my previous books; this project builds on those endeavors.

Much of the work here was conceptualized at the 2011 Project Narrative Summer Institute at Ohio State University, under the direction of James Phelan and Frederick Luis Aldama. I cannot thank them enough for guiding this project toward a shape and direction, and for facilitating my processes of analysis and problem-solving. My gratitude also goes to my PNSI cohort; parts of Chapter 4 were written and shared over the course of the institute, and I benefited greatly from their feedback and in general from their conversation and enthusiasm. I owe a debt of gratitude to Robyn Warhol for providing a quiet and lovely space to live and write. Special thanks go to Emily Anderson and Todd Cesaratto, and especially to Leah Anderst, James Donahue, Jennifer Ho, and Shaun Morgan for interest and support during and after those weeks in Columbus.

Like others who have lived with book projects for an extended period of time, I have taken advantage of the generosity (and patience) of mentors and colleagues. Friends and colleagues online as well as at gatherings of the Modern Language Association, the Northeast Modern Language Association, the International Society for the Study of Narrative, the Modernist Studies Association, and The Space Between Society have all contributed to this project with their enthusiasm, interest, and intellectual companionship. Particular thanks go (in no particular order) to Emily Kopley, Claire Battershill, Stephen Ross, Elizabeth Alsop, Anne Langendorfer, Erin Templeton, Beth Wightman, Greg Erickson, Kevin Dettmar, Genevive Brassard, Jeffrey Drouin, Melissa Bradshaw, Allison Pease, Celia Marshik, Anne Fernald, Polly Atkin, Kathryn Holland, Amanda Golden, Jim Berg, Elizabeth Blake, Susan Van Dyne, Melanie Micir, Nicholas Roe, Marie-Laure Ryan, Siobhan Phillips, Rachel Hollander, Ella Ophir, Lara Vetter, Sean Weidman, and Aimee Armande Wilson. (I have also tried to acknowledge specific interlocutors in the notes, and this book owes everything to those scholars cited throughout.) Very early on in the work on this book I had the pleasure of attending Writings of Intimacy in the 20th and 21st Centuries at Loughborough University, organized by Jennifer Cooke; this conference provided a collegial and invigorating space within which to begin formulating my arguments, and I would like to acknowledge particularly Rosamund Davies. I would like to also especially acknowledge four people who at various points were invaluable. Tim Carmody shared a number of resources with me early on that proved most helpful. Melissa Dinsman has been a friend, a collaborator, and my accountability partner. Theodora Dryer helped turn our Queen Village apartment building into the best little writers colony in Philadelphia. Sadly, the last must be acknowledged in memoriam : Georgia Johnston, who was a great advocate for this project and who is missed. As one of my anonymous readers said, it is a sadness that Georgia is not here to see this in the world, and it stands as a tribute to her influence and generosity.

This endeavor received support from several sources. I am happy to acknowledge assistance from staff and faculty members at: Wolfgram Memorial Library at Widener University, especially interlibrary loan services and especially Susan Tsiouris; Morris Library at the University of Delaware; Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania; and the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Profound thanks go to Susan Purcell, senior services coordinator of the Delaware County Public Library System, and to the Pennsylvania Humanities Council; the PHC awarded us several grants to create public reading groups on the topics of intimate life writing and biography, which I had the privilege of facilitating from 2009 to 2011 at several libraries around Delaware County. Those conversations very much informed the writing here, and my gratitude goes to the reading group participants and sponsoring libraries. My home institution, Widener University, provided much-needed support in the forms of travel funds, Provost Grants, Faculty Development Grants, and two sabbatical leaves. I am grateful to the administrators, staff, and faculty colleagues who made this support possible: Stephen Wilhite, Matthew Poslusny, Scott Van Bramer, Mara Parker, Beth Homan, and the Faculty Council Grants and Awards and Faculty Council Faculty Affairs Committees.

My Widener colleagues, in English and Creative Writing and beyond, deserve my most heartfelt thanks for their support of and interest in this project: friends, colleagues, and fellow writers Chris Murphy, Diana Vecchio, James Esch, Annalisa Castaldo, Michael Cocchiarale, Ken Pobo, Mark Graybill, and Kate Goodrich; and the members of the Widener University Faculty Writing Group. Thanks, too, to my students past and present, who have been engaged in these conversations with me all along.

Finally, as always, my deepest gratitude goes to my family. Thank you to my parents, John and Linda Utell, without whom this would not be possible. Many, many thanks to my sister and brother-in-law, Tracy and Glen Farber, for more than I could begin to put into words but which includes overwhelming love, support, patience, and humor. John-Paul Spiro has been my steadfast support and my best interlocutorhe makes our world of two a wonderful place to be.

This book is dedicated, with all my love, to my niece Abigail Lindh Farber. I started working on it in earnest the year she was born, and while this book has not always given me joy, she has, from the day she came into my life.

Permission granted by Lloyd Cole and Maine Road Management to use the line from Four Flights Up (from the 1984 album Rattlesnakes by Lloyd Cole and The Commotions) as an epigraph is gratefully acknowledged.

Parts of Chapter 1 appeared in slightly different form in the Virginia Woolf Miscellany (89/90, 2016; 79, 2011). Acknowledgment is due to the journal and to Vara Neverow for permission to include this material herein.

Permission granted by Jenny Olivia Johnson to use the image of Glass Heart (Bells for Sylvia Plath ) featured in Chapter 5 is gratefully acknowledged.