The New American Novel of Manners: The Fiction of Richard Yates, Dan Wakefield, and Thomas McGuane by Jerome Klinkowitz (review)

Book Reviews105 théâtre panique as a superior example of a theatre based on total play and rooted in the limited phenomenon of Artaudian theatre as a "metaphysics in action." Finally, Marilyn Schuler's feminist reading of Anouilh and Giraudoux in " 'Goddess ' vs. 'Gyn/Ecologist': A Comparative View oíAntigone and LaFoIIe de Chaillot" yields two very different plays. Antigone is shown to be a patriarchal representation of self-sacrificing women, La Folle represents a "woman-centered strategy" for survival called "gyn/ecology" (142); she reaffirms "the abiding importance of feminine virtues" (//o/7-alienation from eco-biological needs) which are essential to the foundation of a healthy urban civilization (141). Although while reading this book I enjoyed the opportunity to refresh my knowledge of modern French theatre, I felt frustrated because generally only the first twenty of the last thirty years are represented, when more seemed promised. Clearly, I understood the "contemporary" in the title too literally. As for the "myths" — the "realities" come through more clearly. I was left wondering whether, even in the eighties, certain legends, if not myths, hold fast: Brecht, Artaud, Giraudoux, Genet. What about today's questions, such as the role of the mise en scène and the place of the text? Who is going to the theatre? Who is writing for them, and what are they saying? True, 1984 was two years ago, but it still was not too early to begin to tell. M. CLARE MATHER College of William and Mary JEROME KLINKOWITZ. The New American Novel ofManners: The Fiction of Richard Yates, Dan Wakefield, and Thomas McGuane. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986. 176 p. In his introduction to The New Journalism, Tom Wolfe observed that he and his "paraJournalist" colleagues had been astonished to find the rich social turf of the sixties left uncontested by the traditional novelists. In a remark Jerome Klinkowitz cites, Wolfe points out that while "Balzac prided himself on being 'the secretary of French society' " the serious novelists of our day "would rather cut their wrists than be known as 'the secretary of American society (5).' " In this study Jerome Klinkowitz sets out to show that Wolfe's death notice for the American novel of manners was premature. He focuses on three novelists whose collective careers span thirty years of American fiction. Two of these writers, Yates and Wakefield, were themselves New Journalists, and the works of all three reflect that movement's emphasis on styles, manners, affectations, and the minutiae of material culture. This emphasis, Klinkowitz points out, is a repercussion of structuralism and semiology. The new novelists of manners have appropriated the Barthesian discovery that every aspect of human experience participates in a system of signs. This thesis is highly revealing. As he has often done in the past, Klinkowitz has brought original insights to bear on the fictional mainstream. Yates, Wakefield, and McGuane have all done significant work in journalism and screenwriting, and Klinkowitz's approach allows him to integrate these works easily into his discussion 106Rocky Mountain Review with interesting results, as when he compares Wakefield's interest in TV soap operas to his fiction, or McGuane's novels to his sporting journalism. For all the strengths of its conception, however, The New American Novel of Manners is something of a disappointment in practice. Though Klinkowitz's choice of authors is interesting, it is not clear why he has narrowed the field so drastically. A subject as broad as the contemporary American novel of manners obviously takes in a considerable range of writers, some of whom might have greater claims on our attention than Yates, Wakefield, and McGuane. Surely Bellow, Cheever, Updike, and Roth are as much "novelists of manners" as the three men discussed here. The definition of "manners" in this study is a problem. Klinkowitz assimilates all sorts of social phenomena to this category: styles of speaking, dressing, writing, sexual choices, modes of rebellion. After a while one begins to wonder if there is anything in any story of human affairs that would not be an instance of "manners." The root of the trouble is the absence of a theory of American manners. The looseness of Klinkowitz's analysis...