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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 [First Page] [99], (1) Lines: 0 to 37 ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [99], (1) [3] The Divergence of Social Space Mary McCarthy and Paul Goodman Michael Denning describes the leftist “Cultural Front” of the 1930s as “a second American Renaissance” that “triggered a deep and lasting transformation of American modernism and mass culture” (xvi). As Denning shows, American culture in the 1940s and 1950s continued to exhibit many of the concerns of the Popular Front. Similar observations lead Alan Wald to argue that “we must refuse to cut short the 1930s at 1939” and instead consider the powerful legacy of Depression-era literature (“1930s” 18). However, it is also true to say that events such as the onset of World War II and revelations aboutStalin’sshowtrialscausedthesocialistandcommunistcommitments of American writers to decline after the 1930s. It is, therefore, important to assess continuities and discontinuities between American fiction written during and after the 1930s. The epic engagements with historical transformation that we find in the fiction of Dos Passos and Herbst are largely absent in post-1930s fiction. Yet midcentury American fiction returns to the dialectical principles that play a foundationalroleinthehistoricismofearly-twentieth-centuryradical American fiction. Like models of history, fictional versions of critical space undergo significant transformation at midcentury. In the fiction of London, Sinclair, Dos Passos, and Herbst, historicity occupies a primary analytic position and critical space serves an ancillary function . In the midcentury fiction that I discuss in this chapter, critical space sheds this subordinate function, becomes increasingly prominent , and takes on the dominant analytic role that history serves in the fiction discussed in previous chapters.At the same time, critical space vigorously engages with the utopian function that underpins much 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 [100], (2) Lines: 37 ——— 0.0pt P ——— Normal PgEnds: [100], (2) of the fictional spatiality discussed in earlier chapters. The transformation of critical space at midcentury has great significance for the analysis of twentieth-century American fiction. Because it establishes a departure point for the representation of critical space in the fiction ofthelatertwentiethcentury,thismomentoftransformationconnects all the authors studied in this book. The study of representations of critical space therefore supports Wald’s view that the 1930s was not an aberrant and delimited “episode” in the history of American literature (“1930s” 18); rather, the examples of Dos Passos and Herbst indicate that fiction of the 1930s establishes issues that are integral to much subsequent American writing. In this chapter I discuss two very different novels: Mary McCarthy ’s The Oasis (1949) and Paul Goodman’s The Empire City (1959). These novels articulate divergent versions of the transformation of critical space in midcentury American fiction. The Oasis is a satirical treatment of a failed utopian colony. The utopian milieu of this brief novel highlights the prominence of critical space and the decreased significance of historicism. By including characters of various radical persuasions, including those who are committed to deterministic models of history, the novel represents the historicist perspective as a subset of the spatial treatment of its subject matter. At the same time, McCarthy’s critique of the colony and satirization of utopian space reflects the abandonment of critical space’s attachment to traditions of left-wing radicalism. Since McCarthy’s critique of utopianism suggests that political ideals are in reality the expression of social concerns, the critical space of The Oasis is social rather than political in nature. The Empire City also represents a social rather than political version of critical space. However, Goodman’s novel attempts to analyze power relations and renew left-wing critique through its representation of social space. Goodman’s perspective is in key respects opposed to that of McCarthy. McCarthy adheres to a distinction between the social and political spheres, but she suggests that political pretensions mask social preoccupations. As a result, her novel is a critique of the effects of social space. Goodman also abandons both historicism and politics, but he attributes to social space the analytical resources that the authors discussed in previous chapters associate with historicism. Most important, Goodman transfers the...

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