Issue 7: December 2006.
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Home > Issue 7: December 2006 > Criticism
The Manipulation of Affect to Supply Political Meaning: The Social Message Behind Robert Coover’s The Public Burning
by Heather MacNeill
Fredric Jameson contends that “aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production,” to the extent that the concern is on catering to the dominant interest, to creating art with an ephemeral, faddish quality (56). Art with any deeper meaning seems to have been lost to the demand for “ever more novel-seeming goods.” The symptoms of this condition, as seen in American culture particularly, take on the form of heavy-consumerism; an I-want-what-I-want-when-I-want-it mentality that constantly strives to acquire the latest-and-greatest product. This drive to possess, on a deeper level, suggests a discontent and disconnection of Americans with themselves and one another—a subconscious need to fill an emptiness, some unidentifiable void inside. It is this lack of affect, this disconnection with reality and the realness of the products in our lives that Jameson considers an important aspect of the postmodern aesthetic. While this analysis of contemporary American culture and postmodernism seems accurate, there is a flaw in Jameson’s argument that needs to be addressed—that this “loss of the autonomy of culture….makes it much more difficult to speak of cultural systems and to evaluate them in isolation” (Stephanson 12). Jameson would like us to believe that this disconnection with reality, the absence of depth from a work—visually and interpretively—removes the opportunity for interpretation: hidden meaning and intention in the art disappears (Stephanson 4). Though creative and interesting, this assertion is nonetheless incorrect. The “homeopathic” characteristic of postmodernism that Jameson references functions, in terms of affect, as a means to restore political praxis to the art. The over-stimulation of particular elements in a work of art certainly leads to a lack of affect, but the recognition of this lack and saturation on the part of the receiver creates an emotional response, which leads to awareness of a higher message. This paper will use Robert Coover’s The Public Burning as a case study in exploring how pastiche and language function in the service of affect, not only creating disorientation and disconnection, but the exact opposite. By over-stimulating the reader with a pastiche of forms and occasional incongruity of text, Coover creates a cohesiveness that draws the reader’s attention to his manipulation of language so as to control the experience—it becomes a commentary on censorship, propaganda, and the manipulation of the media in the United States.
Affect is controlled in literature by structure and language; postmodern literature by pastiche and saturation, respectively. Though Jameson has gone into great detail to separate the various elements of the postmodern condition, there is an interrelationship—a hierarchy, almost—that seems to be ignored: mainly, that the use of pastiche and manipulation of language leads to, but are not separate elements from, depthlessness and then to disorientation. To suggest that they operate independently or in both directions is misleading; the elements function in one direction only. On the highest plane, it can be seen how pastiche and language are capable of functioning independently, but that psychological elements such as disorientation, depthlessness, dissolution of linearity in time and space, and euphoria are all dependent on the former. These conditions of existence are fabricated in literature by the manipulation of words on the page, by their visual presentation and tone.
Pastiche is more than just “the imitation of a peculiar mask” (Jameson 65). In postmodern literary terms, it is a plurality of mimicry; a placement of forms, not necessarily complimentary, next to one another so as to comment on one another in a new way. By utilizing a plurality of existing forms, an author creates layers that do not necessarily relate in a way that is interactive—one level does not lead to another. They simply coexist. Poetry interwoven with prose may be one way to see this technique in use, but it is likewise effective by interweaving multiple perspectives or tenses. The key, here, is to create a Fifty-Two-Pick-Up effect, throwing all of your cards into the air and seeing what new pattern is formed. This fragmentation creates “flatness,” removing any immediate “interpretive depth” in which the reader might construe some hidden meaning (Stephanson 4). Immediate is the operative word in that last sentence, though, because as Jameson suggests, “This new mode of relationship through difference may…be an achieved new and original way of thinking and perceiving” (75). By placing familiar forms in an unfamiliar way, the author allows a commentary to take place that provides the reader new exposure “to alternative ways of seeing, feeling, and evaluating the world” (Mitchell 47). It is not that the fragmentation removes meaning, but “that any meaning that exists is of our own [individual] creation” (Hutcheon 43). The gap between author and reader becomes subjective; whatever meaning is derived comes directly from the patterns the reader finds, not one prescriptive representation the author projects.
Though pastiche may appear random on the surface, it does not negate intention on the part of the author. The specific placement of forms allows the author an opportunity to place multiple layers of meaning that are independent of one another into a work—something traditional forms do not necessarily allow. Finding some order in the chaos, though, is required if the reader is able to locate themselves in the work, to find some referent with which to contextualize the piece. If they are unable to “complete the hermeneutic gesture,” discerning meaning becomes impossible (Jameson 60). Though Jameson claims that this inability to complete the “hermeneutic gesture” is a characteristic of postmodernism, I argue that by mimicking existing forms, it is an impossibility for the reader not to be able to find some referent. The derivation of meaning may not be immediate, but it is not impossible. The only way this could be achieved would be in the use of a language and form never before seen.
In The Public Burning, Coover utilizes pastiche to its fullest. His re-visioning of the Rosenberg trial of the 1950s is presented in almost every form possible; poetry interweaves with narrative prose, screenplays and scripts butt up against sermons and news reports. This organization, at first, is utterly chaotic and seemingly arbitrary. It takes on a Red-Rover-cum-Simon-Says feeling: Coover is in charge of where we go, when we go, and at what pace we go through the story. The poetic moments, by their very minimalist nature, require a slow, thoughtful reading; the prose, on the other hand, is presented much in the way we naturally converse, and is able to be read and understood at a faster rate. The screenplays and scripts are not literary forms that most readers have extensive experience with, and so these then require not only an orientation with the form, but often a re-reading so as to garner the content as well. This is incredibly frustrating if one is expecting a more traditional linear narrative. Once understanding that this is the way the novel is going to go, though, the reader is forced to make a decision: trust that Coover has an ulterior motive for creating this disorientation and to just go with it, or believe that there is no ulterior motive, that the novel is completely an experiment in randomness. Neither is a comfortable state to be in. Because the very nature of the human mind is to create order out of chaos, to find meaning where there is none, this means that the mental effort required to process the story is more than that of a traditional work. It requires a holistic approach. The reader must be willing to allow for the disorientation to take hold, so that their brain can, in time, make connections in the whole and find a pattern.
In addition to creating disorientation, an almost frenetic feeling reminiscent of the time period itself, the pastiche approach allows Coover to force the reader to pay attention to particular moments in the text more than others, simply by the nature of the form in which he presents them. As a reader, one quickly becomes aware that their premonitory abilities no longer work in this context; they are kept in the moment, anticipating what Coover will present next. Chapter Two of the book is an excellent example of where one can see this happening. After a long first person narration by a re-contextualized Richard Nixon, Chapter Two: “A Rash of Evil Doings,” begins with a newspaper-like form, resembling a series of headlines: “Two ore tankers go around in the mud of St. Clair, Canada. A coffee plot is uncovered in Brazil. Russian tanks tool up, roll toward Berlin” (Coover 36). The reader is presented with a series of facts and statements they must piece together to find some thread. These statements then segue into more comprehensive reports, providing information of what is happening globally at the time. Each report is situated beside another that does not seemingly relate—the political state of King Sihanouk of Cambodia is placed directly before a fruit distribution issue in Guatemala, which comes directly before an assault on clergy members in Italy (37). Interspersed with these reports are updates on the manipulation of the sign that hangs above the Rosenberg stage in Times Square—another fragment that seemingly does not relate. “America the Hope of the World” becomes “America the Rope of the World;” then “Rape,” “Rake,” “Fake,” “Fate,” and “Hate” (36-37). Though outwardly arbitrary in placement, a closer examination allows the reader to find connections between these fragments. In a larger context, we can see that these manipulated slogans comment directly on the information presented before it; “Rape of the World,” for example, is rather poignant in relation to GIs in North Korea and plots surrounding coffee plantations (36). Interestingly, the fragments that correlate—the sign interruptions, for example—when taken together, do not have any particular flow or meaning; it is only in the context of the different forms that they make any sense. Just as we begin to see Coover’s pattern here, however, he switches it up once more. These reports become an omniscient third person narrative on the state of the battle between Uncle Sam and the Phantom; less in newspaper form, and more in literary prose. These prose sections are broken up by the verse of Poet Laureate Time magazine:
americans could not forget
korea and it spoiled
some of their pleasure in
tv sets and cadillacs (Coover 38).
Reading this verse alone certainly provides some context on the self-absorbed nature of American life, but placed in the middle of prose describing the brutality of the war in Korea, and the battle between Uncle Sam and the Phantom, it takes on more meaning. Certainly, this new meaning depends in large part on the ideology of the reader, but it can be assumed that many will feel the shame linked with our dissociation from the rest of the world. While American government is tinkering in foreign countries, and sending young men to battle for something not necessarily concrete, Americans as a whole live their entitled lifestyles oblivious to the rest of the world’s happenings. Upset from seeing this “reality” on television, or from being made aware of the conditions of existence in these foreign lands, is fleeting and inconvenient.
This interweaving of forms continues throughout the entire novel, often more explicitly than examined above. But it is not only in genre form that Coover utilizes pastiche. It can, in fact, be seen in a multitude of ways throughout if one looks hard enough. Perspective switches, for example, or the heavy use of pronouns confuse the reader as to who exactly is speaking. The use of multiple plots and their presentation also follows the pastiche approach. Coover initially presents the novel as an exploration of the Rosenberg trial, but quickly the reader finds that equal time and treatment is dedicated to the battle between Uncle Sam and the Phantom, Christianity and Communism, and the political and emotional evolution of Richard Nixon. While each of these plots are playing out, they are presented in a soap-opera-like way; a staged drama that can be dropped into or out of at any given time, without the loss of orientation. At the end of Chapter Two, for example, in a span of three pages, we move from the narration of a letter from Ethel Rosenberg to her children into the “National Maritime Union’s strike” and U.S. Postal Office stamp rate hike, to the Korean peace talks, and into the attempted kidnapping of “Czech refugee Jaroslav Lukas” (Coover 41-44). Unlike the fragments of forms, each of these events (when placed together) are cohesive; though periodic, they will continue to be addressed in a more or less chorological flow throughout the novel, frequently switching at the height of any possible emotional resolution. The very nature of this media replication in both form and order of presentation supports the claim that Coover is making a political statement about the media in the United States, to be addressed shortly. Before discussing political messages, though, it is important to address the second element that controls affect in postmodern literature: the saturation of language in the text.
A theoretical exploration of language tells us that words are signs; they are nothing more than aural associations for particular objects or states of being; a tool simply to be used for communicating efficiently within a given linguistic form (Saussure 10). But words carry more than literal meaning; they possess emotion and positive or negative associations. According to Barthes, it is through language that the “ideological and the imaginary come flowing in” (98). Since “there is no practice except by and in an ideology,” the language cannot be separated from the author—choice in diction and syntax are automatic reflections of the author’s belief system (Althusser 53). Here the political re-emerges in the text. In an interview with Anders Stephanson, Jameson uses the analogy of homeopathy to describe how postmodernism can dissolve the very elements of postmodernism itself; to deconstruct, not politicize (17). The underlying principle of homeopathy is that the substance introduced to treat a dis-ease is the same substance that, in a healthy body, creates the dis-ease. By saturating the system with too much of one substance, the system responds by overcompensating in its production of a substance that reverses the effect. The treatment pushes the body to its limit, forcing it to respond. In postmodern literature, this homeopathic response can take place in many ways. The hyper-stimulation caused by a pastiche of forms, as explored previously, can cause the reader to begin to create patterns where there theoretically are none. Overuse and repetition of other literary elements, likewise, creates a similar condition. However, even more direct in its influence is the deliberate use of language. An author who infuses every sentence with sentimentality, melodrama, apathy or violence will cause desensitization in the reader—similar to the desensitization that occurs with violent or sexual material in the media. When consciously done, an author subconsciously directs the reader’s emotions—in postmodern texts, this is typically to a point of saturation in one particular feeling.
Coover’s use of language in The Public Burning is skillfully employed to manipulate the reader’s emotion. When narration is given in the voice of Nixon, the tone invokes the underdog, the guy who just can’t catch a break. “I knew that Uncle Sam would do what was right and necessary,” Nixon tells us early on:
do your own job well, get your rhetoric ready, and don’t ask too
many irrelevant questions: that seemed the best policy. But maybe
it was not. Maybe I had not done enough. I fussed about, choosing
a ball for teeing up, worried about this. Everything was remarkably
green, the sky was deep blue, the balls a blinding white: my senses
were still on edge from the transmutation. (85)
The tone invoked here rings true with the character of Nixon, constantly unsure of himself, relying on others to give him direction and confirmation. The selection in and of itself does not give too much of an overwhelming feeling of insecurity, but Coover sticks to this tone, and after pages and pages of the constant questioning and deferring to others, it is inevitable that we grow tired and bored with the victim attitude.
Coover takes this same approach with each of his narrators. The omniscient third person narration, though presenting an overview of events, does so through a particular ideological thinking. The sarcastic tone can be seen throughout:
And indeed, now, tonight, as evening marks the close of day and
skies of blue begin to gray, the “good people” emerge, as though
on cue, to protest the executions, attack Uncle Sam and his Legion
of Superheroes on the frontiers and harass him within, violate
human decency, threaten the Free World with terror and disruption,
and strike ruthlessly at the very faith that binds it together. (102)
The use of negative words like “protest,” “attack,” “harass,” “violate,” and “threaten” invoke feelings of anxiety and combativeness. Though it initially may seem to support Uncle Sam et al., in the larger context of the section it comes across as deeply sarcastic toward Uncle Sam and the US. Combined with the use of long, rambling sentences, the heavily descriptive language becomes monotonous. As a reader one stops trying to pay attention to every descriptor, and stops assuming the information is going anywhere. But it isn’t solely negative, pathetic language Coover offers. The positive is included throughout, as well, often in the voice of politicians and clergymen. The first Intermezzo, a “Vision of Dwight David Eisenhower,” is full of positive language:
How far have we come in man’s long pilgrimage
from darkness toward the light?
Are we nearing the light—
a day of freedom and peace for all mankind?
Or are the shadows of another night
closing in upon us? (original italics, Coover 149)
This overlaying of positive, negative and emotional language is clever in its execution. While the pastiche approach does allow for the switching of emotion and tone, the switch is always into another emotion or tone of equal saturation. Ethel Rosenberg’s sections ring a bit on the melodramatic side; conversely, Uncle Sam’s come across as ironic and Carnivalesque (Hassan 506). There is no reprieve from the onslaught of stimuli. More than simply creating a lack of affect, however, this bombardment simultaneously comments on society as well. Not only do we receive information from every direction imaginable; these relays are also deeply infused with different ideologies—we are constantly being told what to believe.
Though it seems clear that over-stimulation in form and language can push a reader to the point where the emotion no longer exists, it is my contention that the consciousness of this push draws the reader to some larger point, some commentary on the condition of this emotion in society. The text that
exceeds demand, transcends prattle, and…attempts
to overflow, to break through the constraint of adjectives….
the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts
(perhaps to the state of certain boredom), unsettles the
reader’s historical, cultural, psychological assumptions,
the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a
crisis” not only his relationship with language, but his
relationship with the world. (Barthes 98)
“Irony, perspectivism, reflexiveness,” Hassan reminds us, “express the ineluctable recreations of mind in search of a truth that continually eludes it, leaving it with only an ironic access or excess of self-consciousness” (506). Recognizing the lack of affect in a piece because of a particular form and/or language allows the reader to perceive the discrepancy between what they have always “known” and what the new perspective reveals. “Consciousness duplication,” whether in form (the frenetic feeling mentioned earlier, for example) or character, allows the author to replicate conditions of existence on multiple planes and becomes “a matter of considering the possible truths or aptness of alternative ‘senses of life’” (Mitchell 49). In Coover’s text, it is not in any one section that we find meaning; in fact, it is not in the text proper at all. Meaning comes from piecing the different elements of pastiche and language saturation together, on our own, after the reading. Attention can, in fact, be drawn to more than one message, messages that hang out there independent of one another. Richard Walsh, in his essay “Narrative Inscription, History, and the Reader in Robert Coover’s The Public Burning,” found the underlying message to be one of “scape-goating” in the American system, a reflection of the fickleness of the culture as a whole. Frank L. Cioffi, however, decided that “Coover uses his novel to theorize about the world-making and reading processes of fiction” (27). While both of these arguments have merit, Coover’s text also offers another interpretation: that the pastiche and manipulation of language are commentaries on the state of information dissemination in the US. By overloading the reader with a variety of forms, Coover allows the whole to draw attention to itself. As readers, we cannot help but notice the constant switching and variety in play. The form mimics the multitude of ways information is communicated to us on a daily basis—a constant bombardment of information on the subway, on television, in newspapers and on the radio. It is a steady influx of information, too much for the brain to process at once. Combining this mixing of form with the soap-opera feel mentioned earlier, and the deliberate manipulation of language, the message is “mechanically fitted into the plot”—something distinctly political (Brecht 75). If content is included here, we can see that the plot supports the message; more than once in the text we are privy to the propagandistic messages given by the government. Coover controls our experience as a reader and the means through which we receive information—he gives us multiple specific “realities” in which to receive and interpret “facts,” which all add up to a “little morality play” (119).
In creating a lack of affect through form and language, the political praxis is returned to The Public Burning. It is distinctly postmodern in this “and/both,” rather than “either/or,” approach, and as Hutcheon contends, “teaches us about those [who fight the ‘one-dimensionality’ of mass culture], if we are willing to listen” (41). By giving us so many perspectives, each in a different extreme, Coover forces us to realize what we, by sheer coping mechanisms, ignore each day: the truth is relative, and every bit of information conveyed is done so through a particular lens. It is our job, as educated members of society, to find the grains of truth hidden in each perspective. This deeply political message is timeless—it is as relevant today (the lies surrounding Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib still unfold), as it was ten years ago in the Clinton administration (Monica Lewinski) and thirty years ago during the Reagan era. The Public Burning serves as a reminder to take each “truth” with a grain of salt, and to forever be wary of those who claim they know best.
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