Turtles All the Way Down: Foundation, Edifice, and Ruin in Faulkner and McCarthy

Faulkner Journal Robert Rudnicki Turtles All the Way Down: Foundation, Edifice, and Ruin in Faulkner and McCarthy He stands in this absurd world and points out its ephemeral char­ acter. He seeks his way amid these ruins. —Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus” (24) What shall we say who have knowledge Carried to the heart? Shall we take the act To the grave? Shall we, more hopeful, set up the grave In the house? —Allen Tate, “Ode to the Confederate Dead” (69) Little pig, little pig, let me come in. No, not by the hair of my chinny chin chin. Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in. —Joseph Jacobs, “The Story of the Three Little Pigs” (74) M any writers and intellectuals have suggested that the world is ulti­ mately a delusion whose only truths are the network of discourses and epistemic formations that define us from age to age, and that we are not so much noble wayfarers lost in a cosmos as we are inscribed by a postmodern house of cards that disguises itself according to just such ratio­ nal, nostalgic, and comforting linear narratives. This argument is about houses— customhouses, farmhouses, prisonhouses, slaughterhouses, churchhouses, bighouses , schoolhouses, and human edifices of all shapes and sizes in our histories and fictions—as well as the literal and figurative foundations upon which they stand. I hope to point out that, whether cast by using binaries such as foundationalism and antifoundationalism or essentialism and anti-essentialism, modern and contemporary narratives are replete with tensions between positions that are fundamentally relativistic or referential. Assuming that it is possible to reason­ ably define and characterize these positions, one might say that foundationalists believe that knowledge is subject to constraints originating outside ofhuman cul­ ture, whereas antifoundationalists argue that all human knowledge is the product ofcontingent historical and institutional contexts. Imaginative variations of these positions can be detected in literature that has been associated with the modern American South. I try to identify forms ofthis debate as it has manifested itself in this fiction and attempt to demonstrate that it continues to shape contemporary narrative. I look at Faulkner’s A Fable with respect to his teleological speculations about the future ofhumanity, followed bya discussion ofCormac McCarthy’s two 23 24 Robert Rudnicki Foundation, Edifice, and Ruin in Faulkner and McCarthy most impressive achievements, Blood Meridian and Suttree, which weave profound ontological speculation with violence and despair. Both Faulkner and McCarthy frame versions ofthe foundationalist/antifoundationalist dilemma in what may be called “tales of the edifice.” Their writings are especially attuned to our intellectual and ethical foundations, the literal, architectural edifices that sit precariously atop them, and the zigzag fissures that whisper promises of ruin. The origins of this conflict are ancient and have found many forms of ex­ pression in the history of our philosophy and culture. Because language itself is sometimes thrown into question in this debate, some might reject the very terms used to characterize the two positions. However, such a claim privileges the antifoundationalist perspective, precluding a dialogue between the two. In the realm of poststructuralist literary theory, for example, antifoundational thinking rejects absolutism and orienting points of reference in all forms and has come to stand for a denial of not only metaphysics and transcendence—obvious forms of foundationalism —as a context for giving meaning to literary enterprises, but also of classical humanism, the beliefthat the “self” is in the end more than a social, ideo­ logical, discursive, and neurological construct. However, after years of fallout from the dominance of this antifoundational approach, some have argued that we have now come to an age of “post-theory” and are seeing a renewed interest in ways that ethics and other essentially foundational positions can further contribute to the discussion ofbasic existential questions about whywe should read and how we should live. Some critics characterize this return as mere nostalgic yearning, one of many inevitable bubbles that will make its way to the surface of the unstoppable tide ofrelativism; others argue that any core beliefin the value ofliterature, and the self-contemplation it encourages, presupposes the validity of the very ontologi­ cal issues...