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Beyond Bakhtin: Towards a Cultural StylisticsAuthor(s): Fiona PatonReviewed work(s):Source: College English, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Nov., 2000), pp. 166-193Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/379039.

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B e y o n d B a k h t i n T o w a r d sC u l t u r a l S t y l i s t i c s

Fiona Paton

Theprincipaldeaofthisessays that he tudy fverbal rtcanandmust vercomehedivorcebetweennabstractformal"pproachndanequallybstract"ideological"pproach.orm ndcontentn discoursereone,onceweunderstandhatverbal iscoursesasocialhenomenon-socialthroughoutts entirerange nd n each ndevery f ts actors,rom he oundimageotheurthest eachesfabstractmeaning.-M. M. Bakhtin, Discoursenthe Novel"(259)

have ramed hisessaywithBakhtin'speningwords rom"Discoursen theNovel" in order to drawattention to an aspect of his work that remains un-derdeveloped n current iterarycriticism,despiteextensive nterestin andap-plicationsof concepts suchasheteroglossia,dialogism,and the carnivalesque.Bakhtin'sclaimthatnovelisticprose is "socialthroughoutits entire rangeandin eachand everyof its factors" s challengingandmight even be consideredone of his more

grandioseoverstatements.For what does it mean, actually, o claimthat"thestudyofverbalart can and must overcome the divorcebetween an abstract formal'approachandanequallyabstract ideological'approach"?We need to keepin mind thatBakhtinwrote "Discoursein the Novel" in 1935 in response to, on the one hand, the limita-tions of Russian formalismand, on the other hand, the excesses of Marxist propa-gandizing.For Russianformalism,the literarytextwas an autonomousstructurewithno meaningfulconnection to socialhistory;for Marxistcriticism,the literarytext wasmeaningfulonly as socialhistory.Bakhtin advocated nsteada "sociologicalstylistics"and argued that "The internal social dialogism of novelistic discourse requiresthe

Fiona Paton is AssistantProfessor of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Shereceivedher Ph.D. in rhetoric andcomposition from the PennsylvaniaStateUniversity in 1999. Her dis-sertation, "Style and Subversion:Kerouac and the Cultural Cold War,"is an extended analysisof theissues raised in this essay.

CollegeEnglish,Volume 63, Number 2, November 2000

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BeyondBakhtin: owards Cultural tylistics 167

concrete social context of discourseto be exposed,to be revealedas the force thatde-termines its entirestylisticstructure" "Discourse"300).Unfortunately,Bakhtinhim-self did not fully realize this sociological stylistics, although it may seem that theconsiderable contributionsmade by sociolinguistics, literarypragmatics,and readerresponse theory to recent literarystudies havemore than filled the gap.Nonetheless,I would arguethat the divorcebetween stylisticanalysisandideological critiquethatBakhtinnoted in the 1930s still existstoday.This gap has alreadybeen identified bya number of important stylistic critics. Mary Louise Pratt, for instance, writing in1988, noted that "anydiscourse has ideological dimensions-values-just as it hasaesthetic and sociological ones. Poetics and sociolinguisticsare equippingus with astylisticsthat can dealwith these latter two dimensions.Ultimately,we will need a styl-istics that can deal with the firstone too" (33). The purposeof this article is to indi-cate how current stylistic criticism might engage ideological issues by more fullydeveloping Bakhtin's deas through an approachI havecalled culturalstylistics.

Anglo-Americanstylisticshaschanged considerablysince its emergenceas adis-tinct field in the 1950s. As Carter and Simpson have observed,stylisticswas initiallyconcerned with defining "style"asaliteraryconceptandidentifyingthe characteristicsof individualandperiodstyles.The 1960s andearly1970s then sawthe emergenceofNoam Chomsky'stransformationalgrammar,which led to more formalist and sup-posedly more "scientific"applicationsof stylistics.This transformational-generativeapproach(bestrepresentedin the United Statesby RichardOhmann)was then chal-lenged by the functional approachof the Britishlinguist Michael Halliday,who ar-gued thatlinguisticformsare not cognitivelyinnate (asChomsky hadsuggested)butare socially constructed in response to the functions they are requiredto perform.Language,saidHalliday, s a "socialsemiotic" and assuch needs to be studiedin termsof the lived experienceof its users,rather than as an abstractsystem of logicallycon-sistentrules(CarterandSimpson1-3). Halliday'snfluence,particularlyn BritainandAustralia,has been considerable,and his functional approachunderlies the relatedschools of criticallinguistics,discourseanalysis,and literarypragmatics,all of whichemphasizethe socialdimensions of language.Anothercontemporaneousschool of lit-erary criticism, reader response theory, although not affiliatedwith Halliday, alsomade socialcontext the center of stylisticanalysis,usingthe concept of discoursecom-munities to arguefor the constructednessof both individualinterpretationsand thenotion of literatureitself.

At this point I want to deal brieflywith readerresponsetheory because the the-orization of "affectivestylistics"by one of its most influentialpractitioners,StanleyFish, has had such a negative effect on stylisticsin the United States. Fish'saffectivestylisticsemergeddirectlyout of his antagonisticengagementwith post-Chomskyeanstylistics in the 1970s, an engagement that led to what BarbaraHerrnstein Smithcalled his "saturationbombing of stylistics"(158). This attack was motivatedby the



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claim of some stylisticians(e.g., Riffaterre)that their method was scientificallyob-jective. By deconstructingsome of the more implausible tylisticanalyses,Fish demon-stratedthat the relationshipposited between formalpatternsandmeaningwas in factjust as arbitraryas any other method of interpretation.Fish then pushed this line ofreasoning one step furtherand arguedthat "linguisticand textual facts, rather thanbeing the objects of interpretation,are its products"(9). For Fish, the critic createsthe meaning simply by choosing one method over another,andhence the experienceof the readeris the proper object of analysis,not the "text tself" (21). Fish then pro-posed "affectivestylistics"asan alternativeto what he consideredthe willfullyobtuseformalismof existingstylisticsand theorized the idea of the interpretive communityas a way of checking the potentially extreme relativismof his readerresponse criti-cism.Now, the importanceof readerresponsecriticismto recent literary heoryis be-yond question andhardlyneeds to be reiteratedhere. Fishwas also rightto challengethe pretensionstowards scientific objectivityof some literary inguists. But Fish ten-dentiouslycharacterized he entirefield of stylisticsaccordingto the problemsof onlysome of its practitioners,andalthoughhis slickpolemic was combined with logicallysound reasoning,this reasoningwas not alwaysproductive.For instance, Fish quite rightly insists that "theinformationan utterancegives,its message, is a constituent of, but certainlynot to be identified with, its meaning"(32). In other words, meaning is dependent on factorsother than the basicproposi-tionalcontent. Those other factorsare,forinstance,the cumulativeeffect of whattheprecedingtext has generated,the social/educationalbackgroundof the reader,and ofcourse the syntacticdecoding thatunfolds throughthe temporalmovement of read-ing itself. Hence, Fish is arguing that the interpretationof an utterance depends onthe rhetoricalsituation n which the text is consumed.What is problematichere is thatthe text'sown rhetoricalsituationis completely elided, and,therefore,so are the con-ditionsof the text'sproduction.We cannot,of course,recover those conditions in anypure, unmediatedway.But given that the meaning potential of the text is subjecttowhat the readerbrings to it, we ought to bring as much as we can of the text'sorigi-nal context to our interpretationof it and apply that informationto the formalpat-terns that seem most salient. And those formal patterns,while they may not existoutside of interpretation n any absoluteepistemologicalsense, can still be describedin a systematicway that allows other readersto both verify and challenge the signif-icance thatis assignedto them. Byfocusingon whatwe can activate n the textthrougha knowledge of its culturalcontext, we can begin to recover the cultural traces thatthe languagecarrieswith it andhence the ideologicalresonancesof literarystyle.Willsuch interpretationsbe objectively"true"and scientificallyexact?Of course not, butthen only a minority of stylisticiansever claimed this as their goal.The general shift from textualistto contextualiststylisticswas considerablyen-riched by Foucault'stheorizing of discourseand power in the early 1970s. In his ge-



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nealogies of prisons, insane asylums,and sexuality,Foucaultused "discourse" o de-scribe the languagesystemsassociatedwith certain nstitutionsand culturalpractices.Such discourses arehistoricallyspecific;they evolveout of the powerrelationswithinparticular ocial structuresandfunction largely (althoughnot unassailably) o repro-duce those powerrelations.This emphasison the materialeffects of discourseas a gen-erative network for social power has had considerable impact on literary studiesgenerally,most obviouslyin the emergenceof new historicismin the 1980s.New his-toricism has since been critiquedfor too pessimisticanappropriationof Foucault,forwhat Patterson calledits "totalizingvision of an entrappingworld organizednot pri-marilybutexclusivelybystructuresof domination andsubmission" Patterson94). Butif power is produced discursively, t can also be challenged discursively;hence, thefocus by many cultural critics on the politics of significationand their use of linguis-tic analysisto reveal (and therefore challenge) the ideological effects of language.However, such analyses, ncisive as they are, for the most partdealwith non-literarytextssuch as newsreportsandarticles,advertisements,governmentandtechnicaldoc-uments, and so on. Those that do involve literarytexts (Iwill provideexamplesa lit-tle later)remaintext-oriented rather than context-oriented.As Carter and Simpsonnoted in 1989, "The existence of an extra-textualworld of social, political, psycho-logical, or historical forces is often discountedas being beyond the analyticalrealmof stylistics"(7). More recently,Roger Fowler has arguedthat "it is about time westoppedsaying'lackof space preventsafullaccount. .. .'What areneededare,exactly,full descriptions of context and its implicationsfor beliefs and relationships"("OnCriticalLinguistics"10).To find such full descriptionsof context in relation to literarytexts,we need toturn to new historicistandculturalmaterialistcriticismand to the kind of workdoneby (for instance) Stephen GreenblattandJonathan Dollimore. The problem here isthat neither the new historicists nor the culturalmaterialistspay much attention tolanguageor style in their analyses.KiernanRyan,forinstance,hasarguedthat "Rad-ical historicalcriticismis undoubtedlythe poorerfor its reluctance to meet the com-plex demands of a text'sdiction and formalrequirements,"claimingthat "inthe endonly a precise local knowledge of the literarywork, acquiredthrough a 'thick de-scription'of decisiveverbaleffects,will allowthe critic to determinehow farthework'scomplicity with power truly extends"(xviii).One does not necessarilyhave to be a"radical"historicalcritic to see the value in bringingtogether materialistand stylis-tic methods in literarycriticism. To use stylisticanalysissolely to talkabout a work's"complicitywith power" s, perhaps,to restrictone'sinterpretiverange.Nonetheless,Ryan'scritiqueforegroundsanimportantissue with which ourprofessionhas not yetfullyengaged:What is the relationshipbetweenstyleandideology in the literary ext?Culturalcritics,while brilliantly nterrogatingthe ideological implicatednessof a lit-erarytext, rarelyengage with its language; stylisticians,on the other hand, although



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acknowledgingthe ideological dimensions of the literarytext, rarelymove beyondtslanguage.Bakhtin'sown work, as the opening epigraphimplies,wasvery much con-cerned with this divorce between ideological and formalistanalysis,and his "socio-logicalstylistics"was intended to synthesizethe two. Andyet Bakhtin, orallthe rangeand force of his thinking,never actuallyshows this "sociological stylistics" n action;that is, he never actuallyreconnects the novel under discussion to "the social life ofdiscourse outside the artist'sstudy"("Discourse"259).

This, then, is what I mean by going beyond Bakhtin and towards a culturalstyl-istics. I see culturalstylisticsas anecessary projectbecause,despitethe riseof culturalstudies within the academy,we seem to be still some way from a genuinely material-ist engagement with literary style. And this lack of engagement is significant,for if aliterarytext is as "material"as any other text, then surelywe must consider the waysin which a literarytext'slanguageis alsomateriallyembedded in its culturalmoment.The implicationsof this claim areimportantto the basicpremise that what we do inthe universityhas relevance in the broader social sphere. The postmodern academyhas reconceptualizedthe literarytext as social discourse ratherthan transcendent ar-tifact,and this reconceptualizinghassignificantlyaffected both scholarshipandteach-ing by focusing attention on the political dimensions of literature. Now we need amore thorough considerationof how style functions ideologicallywithin the literarywork overall so that the projectof theorizing the relationshipbetween literature andsociety can acquirea depth commensurateto its existingbreadth.At thispoint,I would like to saysomethingaboutmy own theorizingof "culture,""ideology,"and "style,"all of which are notoriously imprecise as critical terms. Inkeepingwith contemporarycultural-historical heory,I distinguishbetween the eval-uative and analyticalsenses of "culture": he former denotes the fine arts and learn-ing; the latter encompasses"thewhole system of significationsby which a society orasection of it understands tself and its relations with the world"(Dollimore and Sin-field vii). Like Dollimore and Sinfield,I intend the second sense, andhence, I intend"culture"to mean the broad network of material artifactsand social practices thatconnect the individualmembers of a given community.However, unlike the major-ity of both new historicistand culturalmaterialistscholars,I retaina commitment tostudyingthe literarytext as literature. Aesthetics is something that radicalhistoricalcriticismhas, I think,unnecessarily jettisoned in its efforts to avoidfetishizing,mys-tifying,or over-privilegingthe literarytext.Indeed,I hope that a culturalstylisticsap-proach would participate in ongoing considerations of the relationship betweenaesthetics and ideology.

Ideology is itself, of course, a chargedterm. Like the majorityof contemporaryculturalscholars,I do not define ideology in the classic Marxist sense of "falsecon-sciousness."To describesomething as "ideological" s not to imply that it presentsadistortedview of reality.Nor do I consider the ideological as being necessarilythat



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which legitimizes the dominantpowerstructure.But asEagletonhaspointedout, theconcept of power is crucial,for otherwise it becomes difficultto distinguishbetweenwhat is ideological and what is merelycultural(Eagleton8).All culturalpracticesare,ultimately,related to the power structureof a given society, but not alwaysin director significantways. Hence, I use "ideological" o describeactivepoints of intersec-tion betweenthe generalcultureand its powerstructures, ntersectionsthatmaychal-lenge or reinforce those structuresor be complex rearticulationsof their underlyingbelief systems. Literarytexts are now viewed by most culturalcritics in this way, aspointsof intersectionbetweenasociety's ivedexperienceanditspowerstructuresandthereforeasideological.Literarytextsparticipate n theprocessof constructingvalueand belief systems, and the taskof the culturalcritic is usuallyto explore this ideo-logically, that is, in relation to the dominant political order of the moment. Style,however,has not asyet been adequately ntegratedinto such explorations.For Bakhtin, "formand content in discourse are one," but I think this ratherrigid formulation creates certaintheoreticalproblemsthat ultimatelycan prove dis-abling.After all, if meanings areinseparablefrom the forms that encode them, thenit becomes difficultto talk aboutstyle, becausethe implicationis thataparticulardeacan have only one mode of expression,which seems to oversimplifyboth semanticsand aesthetics. I preferto maintaina distinction between form and content, empha-sizing insteadthat differentstylisticchoices can communicate the same logical con-tent but have different rhetoricaleffects. As Fowler has said,style is a propertyof alltexts, and "maybe said to reside in the manipulationof variables n the structureof alanguage" (Essays 5). However, Fowlerhas also pointed out that

there sbynomeansan nvariantrelationshipetweenlinguistictructure ndcriticalsignificance. urely inguisticanalysis annotreveal hissignificance:nlya criticalanalysis hich ealizeshe textasamodeofdiscourse, hichrecognizes ragmaticsndsocial and historicalcontext, can do so; and treatingtext as discoursestretches the ca-pabilityof linguisticsaspresentlyconstituted,takingus towardatheory of languageina full and dynamicsense, languagefunctioningwithin historical,social, andrhetoricalcontexts. (CriticalLinguistics )This is a crucialpoint, andI will arguebelow that Fowlerdoes not fullyenact his ownmethodological principles.Nonetheless, his theorizing of literatureasdiscourse,andas social discoursespecifically,allies him preciselywith Bakhtinand has providedtheframeworkfor what I am calling culturalstylistics.In due course,I will illustratethepossibilities of this culturalstylistics by reconnecting Kerouac'smost experimentaland least readnovel, DoctorSax, to the culturalpolitics of the Cold War.First,how-ever,I think it is necessaryto presentamore detailedcritiqueof Bakhtin's1reatmentof literarystyle and of existingsociolinguisticapproachesto literature.Bakhtin'sprimary objective in "Discourse in the Novel" is to demonstrate theintrinsicallydialogic nature of the novel as a genre and to argue for the inabilityof



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existing linguistic theory to theorize it adequately.Saussure'sconcept of langue(thegeneralsystemof languagerules)andparolethe individualutterance)hadsignificantlyinfluenced the Russian formalistsand their view of the literarytext as a unified, self-containedentity that articulatedan individualartisticconsciousnessrather than a so-cialconsciousness.This view wasunacceptable o Bakhtinbecause"theunityof astylethuspresupposeson the one hand aunityof language(in the sense of a systemof gen-eral normativeforms)and on the other hand the unity of an individualperson realiz-ing himself in this language" "Discourse"264). Hence, not only does style become apurely personal(ratherthan a social)issue, but also the literary ext is viewed, like thegenerallanguagesystem,as a stableand self-containedunity.For Bakhtin,suchunitymight conceivablybe tenableforpoetic genres,but it wasabsolutelyuntenable for thenovel, which not only did not require linguistic unity but "evenmakesof the internalstratificationof language,of its socialheteroglossiaandthe varietyof individualvoicesin it, the prerequisitefor authenticnovelisticprose"("Discourse"264). I do not havethe spacehere to disputeBakhtin's atherproblematicdistinctionbetween poetryandfiction;insteadI want to representwhat he considers to be the characteristic eaturesof the novel asagenre and indicatethe implicationsof this for his own stylistic theory.For Bakhtin,all languagehas the potential to be heteroglossic-that is, to con-tain words from differentregisters,dialects,sociolects, or genres. Spoken languageisthe most heteroglossic,as it constantlyenacts the intersectionof differentsocialgroupsand belief systems.And because languageis alwaysevolving, its living, spoken formis constantly resistingwhat Bakhtin calls the centripetalpull towardscentralizationandunification-the kindof pull thatis exertedby anystronglyconsolidatedideolog-ical system. Poetry,becauseof its inherent impulse towardsunity of voice and form,has historicallytended to contributeto "processesof sociopoliticaland cultural cen-tralization" "Discourse"271). The novel, on the other hand,because it activelyrep-resentsthe diversityand contradictionsof spoken anguage, s bynaturemorestratified,more centrifugal,more heteroglossic.Bakhtinuses a numberof specificterms to ana-lyze this stratification: tylization,hybridization,parody,and hidden polemic. Thesetermswill be definedand appliedin the discussionof Kerouacthat follows. For now,I want to bring them together under the umbrellaof dialogismand use this broaderterm to identifyboth the strengthsandweaknessesof Bakhtin's tylistictheory.There has been much criticaldebateabout the precisemeaningof dialogism, ndthis is in no small partdue to Bakhtin'sown impressionisticuse of the term and thedifficultyof distinguishingit from the relatedtermsheteroglossiandpolyphony.findit useful to think of the three terms in descending order of specificity.Hence het-eroglossiancompassesthe diversityof speech types within languagegenerally,whiledialogism enotes the actual ntersectionsof certainof these speech types (orregisters)within a particularcontext. This is importantbecause,as Bakhtinsays,what matters"is not the mere presence of specific linguistic styles, social dialects, and so forth, a



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presenceestablishedby purely linguistic criteria;what mattersis the dialogical ngleatwhich these styles anddialectsarejuxtaposedor counterposedin the work"(Problems182;emphasisin original).Polyphonys the most specific of all and refers to the rep-resentationof individualcharactervoices in the novel. I will remainon the level of di-alogism,which is particularlycrucialto Bakhtin'sclaim that

[a]ny tylistics apable f dealingwith the distinctivenessf the novel asagenremustbe asociologicaltylistics.he internal ocialdialogism f novelisticdiscourse equiresthe concrete ocialcontextof discourse o be exposed,o be revealed sthe force hatdeterminestsentire tylistictructure,ts"form"nd ts"content,"eterminingtnotfromwithout,butfromwithin; or ndeed ocialdialogueeverberatesnallaspects fdiscourse,n thoserelating o "content" s well as the "formal"aspects hemselves.("Discourse"00;emphasisnoriginal)The implicationsof this statement for Bakhtin'sstylistictheoryareconsiderable.One of the fundamentalprinciplesof dialogismis that words are never neutralbut carrywith them "the 'taste'of a profession,a genre, a tendency,a party,a partic-ularwork,aparticularperson,ageneration,anage group,the dayandhour. Eachwordtastes of the context andcontextsin which it has lived its sociallychargedlife"("Dis-course"293). Within the novel, the social tensions of heteroglossic languageare ex-

ploited within the artistic structureof the text, and differentdialects, registers, andvoices playoff one another-in a sense, they "speak"o each other,generatinglevelsof meaning beyondthe basicpropositionalcontent of theutterance.This is the essenceof "double-voicing"-the intersection (often antagonistic)of differentworldviewsasrepresentedby the complex connotations of differentwords. Clearly,then, Bakhtinis advocatinga profoundlyrhetoricalapproachto the analysisof literarytexts, one inwhich the text is viewed as a microcosm of its culturalmoment: "The social andhis-torical voices populating language,all its words and all its forms,which providelan-guage with its particularconcrete conceptualizations,areorganizedin the novel intoa structuredstylistic system that expressesthe differentiatedsocio-ideological posi-tion of the author amid the heteroglossia of his epoch" ("Discourse"300). So, anynovel will be dialoguing,to a greateror lesser degree, with the language,and hencethe social forces, of its culturalmoment. The text is thereforepartof a rhetoricalex-changewith the broadersocialspherebut in a muchmore fundamentalwaythanhis-toricalscholarship typicallyrepresents,for this exchangeis carriedout at the level ofthe syntaxitself, in the style of the text, "in each and every of its factors, from thesound image to the furthestreaches of abstractmeaning"("Discourse"259). Giventhis framework,it seems possible to engage much more concretely with the com-pelling but amorphous question of ideology in the literarytext.

Unfortunately,Bakhtin himself never actuallydoes this. Whether he is dealingwith Dostoyevsky,Dickens, orTurgenev,Bakhtinnever makes a concreteconnectionbetween the textand "thesocial life of discourseoutsidethe artist's tudy" "Discourse"



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259). Instead, he falls back on tantalizing generalizations, as when he says of Tur-genev,"Wesense acutelythe various distances between the author andvariousaspectsof his language, which smack of the social universes and belief systems of others"("Discourse" 316). But those belief systems are never actually specified. In fact,Bakhtin'stendencyis to containdialogismwithin the parametersof the novel in ques-tion. He essentiallyreverts himself to the same formalismthat he challenges,becausehe analyzesthe novels in question only as self-contained aesthetic constructs.Bakhtin'sdiscussion of Dickens's LittleDorritdemonstratesmy point more fully.BakhtinusesLittleDorritto illustratewhat he calls the "hybridconstruction"-an ut-terance that, although belonging to a single speaker,contains within it "two speechmanners, two styles, two 'languages,'two semantic and axiological belief systems"("Discourse"304). The intersection of different"languages"within one utterance isthe source of the dialogism that Bakhtinparticularlyassociateswith the comic novel.He offers the following example:

The illustriousmanandgreatnational rnament,Mr.Merdle,continuedhisshiningcourse. tbegan o bewidelyunderstoodhatone whohaddonesociety headmirableservice fmakingo muchmoneyoutofit,couldnot besufferedoremain commoner.Abaronetcy asspoken fwithconfidence;peeragewas requentlymentioned.Qtd.in "Discourse"06)Bakhtin'sanalysisof thispassage, n termsof traditionalliterarycriticism, s exemplary.By pointing out that the epithets appliedto Merdle representnot the narrator'spointofview but that of the bourgeoiscommunitywithinwhich Merdleshines,Bakhtingetsvery preciselyat the source of the irony.Common opinion and narrativevoice coex-ist within a singleutterance, or,asBakhtinputsit, "The main andsubordinateclausesare constructed n differentsemanticandaxiologicalconceptualsystems" "Discourse"306). This analysisdoes not, however,demonstratethe waysin which "The internalpolitics of style (how the elements areput together) is determinedby its externalpol-itics (its relationshipto alien discourse)" "Discourse"284).Dickens himself, in his prefaceto LittleDorrit,says,"If I might make so bold asto defend that extravagantconception, Mr Merdle, I would hint that it originatedafterthe Railroad-shareepoch, in the times of a certain Irishbank,andof one or twoother equally laudableenterprises"(Dickens 5). As editors Wall and Small suggest,Dickens is alludinghere to the "freneticspeculation"of the 1840s and the financialcollapse of "RailwayKing" George Hudson, as well as to the rampantcorruptionwithin the TipperaryBank n the 1850s (Walland Small844). Since, as Bakhtinhim-selfsays,asociologicalstylisticsrequires hat "the concrete socialcontextof discourse"be exposed ("Discourse"300), a connection surelyneeds to be made between Dick-ens'sironic dialogism and contemporary public discourseson both speculationandfraudgenerallyand on the actualpersonagesandeventsin question.AlthoughBakhtinclaims that all words carrywith them the "taste"of their socially charged lives, he



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never actuallybuilds the necessarybridge between the novel and its social context.Without such a bridge, it is difficult to say anythingmeaningfulabout ideology andstyle in anyliterarytext, becauseideologys an analyticalconcept canonly be produc-tively appliedin relationto specific historicalcontexts.2

Roger Fowler is one criticwho, influencedby both Bakhtinand Britishculturalstudies, acknowledgesthe necessity of a situationalapproachto ideology and style."What areneeded,"he has said, "are,exactly,full descriptionsof context and its im-plicationsfor beliefs andrelationships" "OnCriticalLinguistics"10).In carryingouthis criticallinguisticsproject,Fowler is openlyeclectic in method,using, forinstance,Shklovsky'sdea of defamiliarization,Grice'stheoryof implicatures,or Austin'sspeechact theory as needed, while utilizing a systematic linguistic vocabularythat encom-passesall levels of languagestructure.Much of this vocabularycomes from MichaelHalliday,whose functionallinguisticsclaims that "The particular orm taken by thegrammatical ystemof language s closelyrelated to the socialandpersonalneeds thatlanguageis requiredto serve"(Hallidayqtd. in Fowler,Literature 8). Conceptually,then, Fowler is veryclose to Bakhtin,viewing languageasa "socialsemiotic" that en-codes ideological relations as well as transmits information. For Fowler, this ideo-logical function extends to the literarytext, which he sees as embodying a particularworldviewin its stylistic patterns:

We wantto show hat anovelora poem s acomplexlytructuredext; hat tsstruc-tural orm,bysocialsemioticprocesses, onstitutes representationf aworld,char-acterized yactivities nd tatesandvalues;hat his ext s acommunicativenteractionbetween tsproducer nd ts consumers,withinrelevant ocialand nstitutional on-texts.Now thesecharacteristicsfthenovelorpoemareno more hanwhat unctionallinguisticsslooking or nstudying, ay, onversationsrlettersorofficialdocuments.Perhapshis is a richerandthusmoreacceptableharacterizationf the aimsof lin-guisticanalysishan iterary riticsusually xpect.Butforme atanyrate, his is whattheorization slanguagenvolves.("Studying"75;emphasisnoriginal)

Thus Fowler, like Bakhtin,views literarytexts as rhetorical,not justat their point ofconsumption,but also at theirpoint of production.The implicationis that the text isdialoguingwith its own culturalmoment aswell as with its ideal futurereader.And,since linguistic criticism claims that language is integral to this rhetorical perfor-mance, it follows thatthe criticallinguist ought to studythe relationshipbetween thetext'sstyle and its culturalmoment of production. But Fowler, like Bakhtin,neverpushes this approachto its own logical conclusions.I will limit myself here to one example, his frequently anthologized essay,"Polyphony and Problematic in Hard Times."Fowler links the novel's "ideologicalcomplexity" o the characters' peech stylesby consideringhow the fictionaldialogue"encodes in its specific linguistic form a world-view,a set of attitudes"(80). UsingBakhtin's heoryof polyphony Fowleranalyzes he "multiplicityof voices"(79) repre-sented bythe circuspeople, the millworkers,the tradeunionists,andthe mill owners.



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The factoryhandStephenBlackpool,for example, s given speech characteristics hat"suggestthe regional,uneducated,oralpropertiesof the Hands"(85)-non-standardspellings, elisions, dialectwords, and the generallylinear,unstructuredflow of ideas.Fowler contrasts Stephen's speech with that of Harthouse, the bourgeois gentlemanof leisure, whose speech "is markedas middle-class,elaborated,evasive" 85). How-ever,Fowler'sultimatepoint about these speech styles is rather weak:

I think here s acontrast fvaluesntendedhere: olidarityndnaturalnessntheonehand,deviousnessnd nsincerityntheother. cannotprove hisbyreference o thelanguagelone; simply uggesthatDickens susing peech tylestereotypeso whichhisreaders, n thebasisoftheir ociolinguisticompetencend heirknowledge fthenovel'splot,assign onventionalignificances.87)Fowler's own sense of the limitationsof his analysis s exactly right:values cannot be"prove[d]by reference to the languagealone"because there is no necessary,a priorirelationshipbetween the languageof a text and the valuesit embodies.Values andthewords that expressthem aresituationallyconstrained,and hence the goal of a mate-riallybasedstylisticssurely ought to be to follow the text'slanguageoutwards nto itsown social milieu andto considerwhat culturalforcesmight haveproducedthe styl-istic effects under discussion. Fowler never pushes his analysisto this point and sonever actuallyenablesa readingof the text as "socialdiscourse."3The sameproblemafflictsthe relatedandalsopredominantlyEuropeanschoolsof literarypragmaticsand critical discourseanalysis.The formerapproach s best rep-resented by the 1991 collection of essays,LiteraryPragmatics, dited by Roger Sell.The collection is dedicatedto Nils Enkvist and celebrates his commitment to "atextlinguisticswhich sees entire processesof productionandreception asspecific to par-ticularsociocultural, situational,and interactionalcircumstances"xiii).AccordingtoSell, literarypragmatics s motivatedby the belief that contextualizationcanbringto-getherthe oft-opposed literarycritic andthe linguist by reinstating"the ancient link-age between rhetoric and poetics" (xiv). However, the emphasis in the essays thatfollow is still more on text than context, andwhen context is considered,it is invari-ablyon the context of reading,or reception, rather than that of production.4Norman Faircloughestablishedcriticaldiscourseanalysis n the early1980swithan explicitlypolitical agenda-as "aresource for people who are struggling againstdomination and oppression in its linguistic forms"(Fairclough 1). Unsurprisingly,then, Faircloughfocusesspecificallyon contemporarymedia and technicaldiscourse,using methods drawnfrom Halliday's unctionallinguisticsto expose the powerrela-tions codedwithin, forinstance,a medical interview.As Faircloughrightlypointsout,"The heterogeneities of texts area sensitiveindicatorof socioculturalcontradictions,anda sensitivebarometerof their evolution"(2).The sociological orientationof crit-ical discourseanalysisshould be clearfrom the following sampleof essaytitles fromthe recent collection editedby Caldas-Coulthardet al., Texts nd Practices: eadingsn



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CriticalDiscourseAnalysis:"The Official Version: Audience Manipulationin PoliceRecords of Interviews with Suspects";"The Genesis of Racist Discourse in Austriasince 1989";and "'Women Who Pay for Sex. And Enjoy It': TransgressionversusMorality in Women'sMagazines."But how does one make this connection in literarytexts, where the situationalcontext is not immediatelyandconcretelyrecoverable?Criticaldiscourseanalysishasbecomean established chool in literary tylistics,but it has not asyet managed o over-come the problemsassociatedwith literary pragmatics.In their introduction to Lan-guage,Discourse,ndLiterature: n Introductoryeader n DiscourseStylistics, arterandSimpson note that "Workwithin alternativetraditionsof discourse thus takes us be-yond the traditional concern of stylisticswith aestheticvaluestowards concern withthe social and political ideologies encoded in texts"(Carterand Simpson 16). PaulSimpson's"Politeness Phenomena in Ionesco'sTheLesson"s agood exampleof boththe strengths and weaknessesof the collection. Simpson uses the theory of "polite-ness phenomenon" developed by Brown and Levinson to analyzethe conversationalstrategiesof Ionesco'scharacters.Here we see a typicaltactic of discoursestylistics:methods used to analyzereal-worlddiscourseareappliedto literarytexts, and hencethe "social"dimensions of literary language are revealed. Simpson'sanalysisof dia-logue does, in fact,very effectivelyreveal the shifting dynamicsbetween the charac-ters throughoutthe course of the play.But because it remainstext-based,his analysiscannot reallyget at "thesocial and politicalideologies encoded in texts"(CarterandSimpson 16)-at least, not in any concrete way.Buthow does one go aboutreconnectingthe literaryworkanditslanguageo theculturalmilieu outside the artist'sstudy?Is it possible to do so in any more than ab-stractterms?Certainly, he task s aratherdauntingone, given the potentiallybound-less extent of "the social life of discourse."However, Stephen Mailloux's rhetoricalhermeneuticsprovidesa useful way to circumscribean otherwise overwhelmingan-alyticalpurview.Maillouxpithilydescribesrhetoricalhermeneuticsas"us[ing]rhetoricto practicetheory by doing history" (Reception istoriesx). What is at staketheoreti-callyforMailloux is anantifoundationalistapproach o interpretation hat remainspo-liticallyconstructive.His approachconnects interpretationsof literarytexts to theirculturalcontexts in order to show the extent to which interpretationis sociallycon-structed,and the resultingpolitical mplications.Forinstance, n his most recentbook,ReceptionHistories,Mailloux readsMargaretFuller'sreview of FrederickDouglass'sNarrativethroughcontemporaneousdebatesaboutslavery,abolition,and Biblicalex-egesis, arguingthat Fuller'spreoccupationwith the religious dimensions of the Nar-rative s not "misreading"on her part,but evidence of her own engagementwith the"Biblepolitics"of the time (80). Hence, Fuller'sreview is presented as participatingin a broader"historicalconversation,"a concept that Mailloux takes from KennethBurke's able of the belated guest joining a parlorroom discussion:"You isten for a



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while, until you decide thatyou havecaughtthe tenor of the argument,then you putin your oar.... However, the discussion is interminable.The hour grows late, youmust depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress"(Burkeqtd. in Mailloux,Rhetorical ower58).The ideaof ahistoricalconversationhas also providedanoverarchingmetaphorformy own culturalstylisticsproject,although my emphasisdifferssignificantlyfromMailloux's.Forwhile Maillouxis interestedprimarily n the rhetoricalsituatednessofcriticalinterpretations,I am interestedprimarily n the rhetorical situatednessof theliterarytext itself. Suppose, insteadof focusing on criticalinterpretations,we look atthe text itself as a rhetorical intervention in an ongoing cultural conversation?Andgoing one step further,suppose we consider the text'slanguage as integral to thatrhetoricalintervention?Doing this requires,of course, that we reconstruct the cul-turalconversationfully enough to establishmeaningfulconnections between it andthe literarytext. But what culturalconversation,exactly?All periods consist of mul-tipleparlorswithinwhichverydifferentgroupsof people debateverydifferent ssues.But inevitablythere are moments when one conversationgrows largerand begins todominate;the parlorfills up with anincreasinglyheterogeneous collection of partic-ipants,not all of whom areinvited guests, and differentsocial groups begin to inter-sect throughasharedtopic of conversation.Bothrhetoricalhermeneuticsand culturalstylistics look at the main themes or preoccupationsof a literaryor critical text andthen look for points of intersection between it and other discourseson the same is-sues.Thus, Mailloux,in Rhetorical ower, eads the initialcriticalreception of Huckle-berryFinnthroughthe 1890sanxietyaboutjuvenile delinquency,atopicthatresonatedacrosssocial, political,and religious spheres.The cultural conversation that I have chosen to reconstruct in my reading ofKerouac'sDoctorSax is one thatpervadedthe Cold Warperiodon anumberof levels:the politics of popular culture. This conversation was intimately connected to theneed for a strong nationalidentity after World WarII, when, in the absenceof directmilitary engagement between the superpowers, anxiety about Soviet propagandacaused the American government to focus much more directly on the ideologicalpower of popularculture. One of the most striking examplesof this anxietywas theSmith-MundtAct, which was hastilypassedin 1948 when Senator AlexanderSmithandRepresentativeKarlMundt returnedfrom a tour of Europewith alarmingreportsof the Soviet Union's vehement anti-Americanpropaganda.To quote Chief Educa-tion OfficerWilliamJohnstone, the Act "authorized he Department of State in co-operationwith privateagencies,to undertakean informationaland educationexchangeprogram throughout the world designed to tell the story of Americanlife and insti-tutions by means of press,radio,andmotion pictures"(739). The Smith-MundtActwas the first stage of Truman's"Campaignof Truth,"which he describedin 1950 as"astruggle, above all else, for the minds of men"(Truman669). In this struggle, said



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Truman,Americahadto counter the "deceit, distortion,and lies" of the SovietUnionwith "plain,simple, unvarnished ruth"as represented by "ourgreatpublicinforma-tion channels-newspapers andmagazines,radio and motion pictures" Truman671).Throughout the Cold War,significantamountsof money were invested in such

programsas the VoiceofAmerica(VOA), which by 1953 was broadcasting n 46 dif-ferentlanguagesandreachingaudiencesasdistantasMalaysiaandBurma Hixson 37).Along with news programming,VOA broadcastAmericanpopularmusic, testimonyfrompoliticalrefugees,anddescriptionsof typicalAmerican families. One broadcastdescribed the Smiths andthe Browns,who "own a one-familyhouse (there is proba-bly amortgageon it, but atverylow interest),and own a car.The women likecareers,but aregood mothers andwives too, and workfairlyhard around the house, althoughtheyhaveallmannerof gadgets,frozenfoods, and husbandswho helpwith the dishes"(qtd. in Hixson 45). The United States InformationAgency, of which VOA was apart,also distributedhuge numbers of "featurepackets" hat includedpressreleases,reprintsfrom magazinessuch as Collier's ndReader'sDigest,glossy celebrity photos,and comic books. CaptainAmerica,who had come andgone with World WarII, wasrevived in the fifties as a "commiesmasher,"andsent out to battle creatures such asElectro, a green monster with a hammerand sickleon its chest (Goulart24).With Americancultureplayingsuch an integralpartin the containment of com-munism abroad, t is hardlysurprising hatpoliticiansshould also begin to scrutinizethe steadily risingflood of popularcultureathome, which, thanksto increasing eisuretimeanddevelopingtechnologies,Americanswere now consumingen masse.Afterall,if movies andcomic booksandradio shows had the power to underminecommunismabroad,might theynot, in thewronghands,also havethe powerto underminedemoc-racyat home? The 1947 hearingsof the House Committee on Un-American Activi-ties, which targetedHollywood screenwritersand directorssuspectedof communistsympathies,are, of course, the most extreme exampleof the intersection of politicsandpopularculture.But this intersection wasbecoming explicitat all levels of Amer-ican society. RichardSchwartz,in Cold WarCulture:Media and theArts, claims thatthe situationcomedies, dramas,andsoap operasof the 1950swere a significantaspectof Cold War ideology in their almost uniform presentationof affluentmiddle-classsuburbia:"Perhapstelevision'smost profoundeffect on Cold War culture, at homeandabroad,was the wayit reinforcedAmericans'generalbelief thatAmerican ifewasmuch nicer thanany other kind of life could possiblybe"(ColdWarCulture311). TheGoldbergs1949-195 5), I LoveLucy 1951-1957), TheAdventuresof Ozzie andHarriet(1952-1966), FatherKnowsBest 1954-1962), and Leave t toBeaver 1957-1963), whiledepicting a varietyof domestic trialsand tribulations,never faltered in their reassur-ing vision of the white, middle-classfamilylivingout the AmericanDream in aworldof appliancesandgadgetsthat,nonetheless,didnot corrupt heirdown-to-earth, evel-headed familyvalues. In one 1947 broadcastof the radio soap, OneMan'sFamily,a



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fathersaysto his son:"TheAmericanhome is the backbone of thisnation.The Amer-icanfamily is the lifeblood of the Americandemocracy,the seed of ourway of life. Ifwe let that seed die, if we kill the divine spark,then we've killed America"(qtd. inJ.Fred MacDonald 238). Such sentiments were activelynurturedat all levels of ColdWar culture and were actively displayedin mass media publications. For instance,WilliamLevitt, the great progenitorof suburbia,claimed n an interviewwithHarper'sin 1948 that "No man who owns his own house and lot can be a communist. He hastoo much to do"(qtd.in Larrabee84). And a 1953 edition of HouseBeautifulattackedthe austereforms of internationaldesigners as "expressing deas that fit the spirit ofsome Europeanswho arewearyof tryingfor freedom and are seducedby totalitariansimplicities"(qtd. in Marling 269).

Clearly,then, duringthe postwar period "culture"becamea highlyvisible topic.Coveredextensivelybythe media,the culture debateachievedahigh profilefor Amer-icans generally,who were encouragednot only to embracematerialconsumption asa patrioticendeavor,but also to see Americanpopularcultureas aweapon in the waragainst communism. But within this general politicization, an interesting polarityemerged. On the right was the State, which utilized all forms of popularculture topromote the Americanwayof life both athome and abroad.On the leftwere the NewYork ntellectualswho, reacting againstthe PopularFront'sdeploymentof kitsch, at-tackedpopularcultureas aperniciousforce thatwas destroyingindividualautonomyand paving the way for a totalitariansocial structure.This preoccupationwith politics and culture so dominated intellectual discus-sion of the late 1940s and early 1950s that in 1952 PartisanRevieworganized a sym-posium devoted solely to the topic "OurCountry and Our Culture"(laterprintedasAmericaand theIntellectuals). he editorial statement suggested that the traditionalinferiority complex experiencedby American artistsand intellectuals was no longerjustified, given that "The wheel has come full circle, and now America has becomethe protector of Western civilization, at least in a military and economic sense"(America3). No longer should Americanintellectuals feel displacedor disinherited.America, as the living embodiment of democratic ideals, had become the new cen-ter of the avant-garde,and according to the editors, most artists and intellectuals"now believe that their values, if they are to be realized at all, must be realized inAmerica and in relation to the actualityof American life" (America3). The daysofalienated ex-patriotism were over. Or almost. One significant problem remained:"The artist and intellectual who wants to be a part of American life is faced with amass culture which makes him feel that he is still outside looking in" (3). The rubwas that it was democracy itself that had created mass culture, a paradox thatprompted the editors to pose the following questions to its contributors:"MusttheAmerican intellectual and writer adapt himself to mass culture? If he must, whatforms can his adaptationtake?Or, do you believe that a democratic society neces-



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sarilyleads to a leveling of culture, to a mass culture which will overrunintellectualand aestheticvalues traditionalto Western civilization?"(5)Almost all the contributors,to a greateror lesser degree, agreedthat mass cul-ture was a threat-to individuals, o democracygenerally,and to the creativefreedomrepresented by the modernist avant-garde.For Irving Howe, "The vast culture in-dustries areparasiteson the body of art, letting it neither live nor die"(America 7);Jacques Barzun describedthe American artistbeing sucked into the "whirringma-chinery"of mass culture and addedfatalistically,"There is on the face of it nothingthat the single artistcan do to reverse so powerfulan engine of assimilation" Amer-ica 17). Philip Rahvrecommended that "if under present conditions we cannot stopthe ruthlessexpansionof mass-culture,the leastwe can do is to keep apartandrefuseits favors" America 4). Louis Kronenberger,however,saw the problemas

how toavoid ontaminationithout voiding ontact.For fAmericanntellectualsreto be of use,theymust--withoutadaptinghemselveso massculture-yet associatethemselveswithAmericanife.The idealnational ultures surelyaway romdemoc-ratization,romlevelingoff, in favorof becomingas soundas possibleatvaryinglevels. .. The idealculturehasthe classicpyramidaltructure;he senseof creamatthetopbutyetof asinglesocialmilkbottle. America0)Kronenberger'selitist analogy is particularlynteresting, for its reference to "conta-mination" links the threat of mass culture to the threat of communism through theshared register of public health. As Andrew Ross has noted, this vocabularywas ameans of vividlydramatizingthe internal threatposed by communism;in the wordsof Attorney GeneralJ. Howard McGrath, communists were on every street cornerand "'each carrieswithin him the germs of death'"(qtd. in Ross 47). Of course, theNew Yorkintellectuals never endorsed the rabid hysteria of McCarthyism.None-theless, theirobservationson Americanculturefrequentlytook placewithin the con-text of abroaderanticommunistdiscourse.Accordingto WilliamPhillips,forinstance,"the Soviet threat has made the writeraware of his stakein the survivalof Americancivilization" America 5);similarly,Newton Arvinobserved that "theculturewe pro-foundly cherish is now disastrouslythreatenedfrom without, and the truer this be-comes, the intenser becomes the awareness of our necessaryidentification with it"(America6).This consciousidentificationwith Americanculture hadactuallybeen posed as aquestion by the editors:"Wherein American ife can artistsandintellectuals find thebasisof strength,renewal,andrecognition,now thatthey canno longer fully dependon Europe as a culturalexampleanda source of vitality?" America ). The responseswere mixed. Many contributors,such as Lionel Trillingand Delmore Schwartz,puttheir faithin the criticalnonconformismof aminority group.Othersevoked the moregeneraltraditionof democraticpluralism.SomeinsistedthatEuropeanculturewas notas obsolete as the editors suggested. William Phillips was skepticalabout a second



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American renaissance:"The presentrediscoveryof America s mainlypoliticalin ori-gin. Unless it is translated nto attitudespertinentto art,or to the more serious socialquestions, it is bound to be extreme and superficial" America 7).But what might attitudes"pertinent o art" ook like? For Phillipsthe answerlayin "the balanceof opposing forces," n asimultaneous Americanismandinternation-alism(America87). Elsewhere, there was talk of "unpredictablegenius"(America18)and "regionalromanticism"(America22). But aside from severalpassingreferencesto Thoreau and the spiritof nonconformity,nothing very specificwas said about ac-tual American culturaltraditions.Althoughone contributorsuggestedincreasedgov-ernmentfundingforthe artsgenerally,ncludingmotion pictures(whose"propagandafactor"was too importantto ignore [America 2]),the majorityof the contributorsstillseemed to view theirown cultureprimarily n terms of Coca-Cola, supermarkets,andMilton Berle. Leslie Fiedler was particularly cathing:

A hundred earsaftertheManifesto, he specter hatis hauntingEurope s-GaryCooper Vulgar,gross, sentimental, mpoverishedn style-our popularsub-artpresents dream fhumanpossibilitieso starvedmaginationsverywhere.tis awryjokethatwhat or us arethe mostembarrassingy-productsf a democraticulture,are n countriesikeItaly heonly democracyhere s. (34)Like Kronenberger'sreference to the cultural milk bottle, the elitism here hardlyneeds to be pointed out. For the New York ntellectuals,popularculture was eitheran embarrassingby-productthat could never be flushedaway,or it was a "spreadingooze" of political domination (D. Macdonald 65). For the Beats, on the other hand,popularculturerepresentedthe nationalheritagethat their literaryfatherscontinuedratherdesperatelyto seek.In the same year that PartisanReviewheld its "OurCountry and Our Culture"symposium,KerouacwasscribblingDoctorSaxin cheapnotebookswhilesittingstonedin a Mexican toilet. Although far from his boyhood town of Lowell, Massachusetts,Kerouac was deeply immersed in what he had alreadydescribed as "the AmericanMyth as we used to know it as kids"(Letters169). What was then titled DoctorSax:TheMythoftheRainyNightrevolvesaroundKerouac'sown versionof the 193Os uper-hero the Shadow,popularized first by Street and Smith'sDetectiveStoryMagazineradioshow, and then successfullycontinued in a biweeklypulp magazine(Tollin 4).Kerouac's uperheroDoctor Sax, ike the Shadow,movessilentlyandinvisiblythroughthe night streetsin acapeandslouchhat,scales sheerwalls with suctioncups,andnav-igatesriversin an inflatablerubberboat.All the action, however,takesplace in Low-ell ratherthanNew YorkCity,and Doctor Sax'sexploitsareinterspersedwith scenesof everydaylife in Lowell, as seen from the perspectiveof the young JackyDuluoz.The first-personnarrativevoice is a complex fusion of adult and child perspectives,and the action moves almost seamlesslyfrom vignettes ofJacky'sfamilyand friendsinto the inner world of his imagination,where Doctor Saxbattlesagainstthe Great



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World Snakeof Evil. This snake is being eased from the bowels of the earth by theevil wizard Faustus and his crew of vampires, gnomes, and monsters who live in theCastle Transcendenta.Kerouac'sdescriptionsof these grotesquebeings shamelesslyburlesquethe pulphorror magazinessuch as WeirdTales hat he readin his youth. But there is a serioussubtext to this parodictribute. Cold War anxietyis refractedthrough the medium of

pulp fiction: the scheming of different factionswithin the castle represent both thepoliticalmachinationsof the superpowersandMcCarthyism,and the snake,when itfinallyemerges, does so in aconflagrationthatclearlyresemblesthe mushroom cloudof an atomic explosion.Hence, DoctorSax is a culturalas much as a personalmemoir,embodying in a highly idiosyncraticand comic form the generational angst that be-came the Beat Generation and doing so in a narrativevoice that directlychallengesthe rigid literarynorms of the time.Severalyears after the publicationof OntheRoad,Kerouac would reflect on theorigins of the Beat Generation,saying,"Beingbeat goes back to my ancestors,to therebellious, the hungry,the weird, and the mad. To Laurel and Hardy,to Popeye, toWimpy looking wild-eyed overhamburgers, he size of which they make no more;toLamont Cranston,the Shadow,with his mad heh-heh-heh knowing laugh" (qtd. inWhite 25). For Kerouac,popularculture,far from eatingawayatAmerica'sdemocra-tic foundations,actuallyconstituted those foundations.For Kerouac,popularculturecaptured"theglee of America,the honesty of America,the funny spitelessnessof bigfisted America"-finally, an America "investedwith wild selfbelieving individuality"(GoodBlonde 9).This Americawas "theAmericanMyth as we usedto know it askids,"and Kerouac'sartisticvision was to a greatextent shapedby the desire to re-infuse amilitaristicpost-atomicculturewith the samejoy,energy,andspontaneity.DoctorSax is very much concerned with the construction of myth on all levels,andKerouacweaves referencesfrom Christian,Mexican,andclassicalreligion into afabricthat is densely patternedwith pop cultureicons, folk heroes, and literaryfig-ures.W. C. Fields rubsshoulderswith the VirginMary,HumphreyBogartwith Pop-eye, Tom Sawyerwith Billy the Kid. Meanwhile, Kerouac directly salutes his ownliteraryheroes like Goethe andBlake,or obliquelyacknowledgesparticularworks,asin this nod towardsFinnegansWake:"pleaseknockmy coffin over in a fist fight beerdancebust, God-" (127). These different levels of myth intersect so constantlythatany preconceived hierarchyis effectively dissolved.And all these levels bring theirown voices or registersinto the novel, creatingthe stylisticstratification hat Bakhtinreferred to asheteroglossia.In the examplesthat follow,I will applyBakhtin'sdialogicterminology in orderto illustrate he waysinwhich DoctorSaxengageswith the intellectualdebate overcul-ture while articulating ts own vision of literaryand national identity. My argumentis thatthe novel both critiquesand affirmspopularcultureby internalizingcertainof



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its thematic and formal elements in a deliberatedeconstruction of the literaryestab-lishment'srigid high-low binary.Through a dialogic play between registers, the lit-eraryand the popularcollide in the text, but with neither canceling the other out.Instead,Kerouacexploitsthe heteroglossic potential of the novel form throughwhatBakhtin calls "incorporatedgenres"and so destabilizesconceptions of both the liter-ary and the popular.Bakhtin associates "incorporatedgenres"specificallywith thenovel genre and indeed sees their use as perhapsits defining characteristic.The useof insertedtexts suchaspoems, letters, sermons,songs, dramatic cenes, and so on hasconsiderableimpacton the worldview embodiedby the novel. As Bakthinexplainsit,"Allthese forms permit languages to be used in ways that are indirect, conditional,distanced.They all signify a relativizingof linguisticconsciousnessin the perceptionof language borders-borders created by history and society. . .-and permit ex-pressionof a feeling forthe materialityof languagethatdefines such arelativizedcon-sciousness" ("Discourse" 323). However, in order to grasp the "materiality oflanguage"we need to concretely identify the social and historical boundariesthat thenovel is negotiatingand show thatthis continual doublevoicing hasideologicalaswellas literarysignificance.It is this ideological dimension thatI hope my contextualiza-tion of DoctorSaxwill reveal.I will begin my stylisticanalysiswith relatively straight-forwardexamplesof parodyand then move to more complexinstancesof stylizationand hybridization.5

DoctorSax contains one of the standarddevices of mystery fiction-the shortnarrativeostensiblywritten by one of the charactersand used to revealinformationnecessaryto the plot. Here we see an exampleof what Bakhtin calls"Acomic playingwith languages,a story 'not fromthe author'"("Discourse"323) thatcreates the con-ditional tone essential to dialogism.In this case, the narrative s supposedly by Doc-tor Saxhimself, but since we know that he exists only in the narrator'smagination,the effect is immediatelycomic. The title of this mini-narrative s itself deliberatelyparodic:"DOCTOR SAX,AN ACCOUNT OF HIS ADVENTURE WITH THEHUMAN INHABITANTS OF SNAKE CASTLE-Written andarrang'dbyAdol-phusAsher Ghoulens, With a Hint Contain'dof Things Which Have Not YetSeenTheir End"(117). The following excerptdescribesSax's ight of the lasciviousPolly:

DoctorSaxwasatthewindow.His eyeswere emerald reen,andtheyflashedatthesightof her.Theylitwithdelightat her scream.Whenshe fainted o thefloor,Doc-tor Saxhurledhiscapearound is shoulder ndglided wiftlyothefrontentrance.Heworea largeslouchhattheverycolorof thenight.In an instanthe wasringing uri-ouslyatthedoor,rappinghe oakpanelswithhisknottycane. 121)Kerouac'sparodyof the pulpfiction genredependson the successful nternalizationofcertain stylistic characteristics.As Carter and Nash have explained,popular fictiontendsto avoid corevocabularyverbssuch as"look,""walk," nd "stand." nstead,char-acterstend to "gaze,""stroll,"or "lounge."Or,when core vocabularyverbs areused,



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theyareusuallycombined with adverbialntensifiers 104).We get a taste of thishere-Saxhurlshis cape aroundhis shouldersandglides wiftly o the door, ringinguriouslyandrappinghe oakpanels.Pulpfictionis also fondof adjectivesof sensory perception;hence, Saxhas "emeraldgreen eyes"thatnot only flash but alsolightup (adeliberatelygrotesqueimage),and he is equippedwith a "knottycane" and a "largeslouch hat."Bakhtin defines parodyas the use of anotherlanguageor genre with hostile in-tent, so that the author'svoice, "havingmade its home in the other'sdiscourse,clasheshostilely with its primordialhost and forces him to serve directly opposing aims"(Problems 93).Here, Kerouacappropriates he languageof pulp fiction, and does somost adeptly,but the phrase"theverycolor of the night"also collides with the genreby foregroundingits linguistic limitations.The earnestbanalityof "thevery color ofthe night"is a directdig at the strainedeffortsof the real ShadowMagazine o findnewwaysof describingits protagonist.I offer a few samplesfromthe originalfor illustra-tion:"likeaphantomof darkness""TheKey"9);"likeacreature orn from darkness"("Towerof Death" 28); "apassing blotch of blackness"("The Green Box"42); "athing of blackness" "Circleof Death" 12);"amoving massof blackness" "ShadowedMillions"35). Kerouac'sparodyof such figurativecliches continuesthroughoutSax'stale: we are told, for instance, that Sax "glidedforth from Transcendentamergingwith the night like night" (122) ("glides," ncidentally, is the most frequentlyusedverb in TheShadowMagazine).Elsewhere, Kerouac'soveruse of exclamationpointsadds to the satiric effect: "Theunusual Ha Doctor Sax would certainly provideherwith that "(119). Returning againto Bakhtin,such overuse "introduces nto that dis-course a semantic intention that is directly opposed to the original one" (Problems193).In other words, these rhetoricaldevices areused not to heighten the story'sre-alism, but to foregroundits artifice. But the novel'sdialogism is more complex thansimple satire,for Kerouacalso weaves the languageof pulp fiction into his own nar-rativevoice, stylizingratherthanparodyingthe genre.The importantdistinction between stylizationandparodyis that stylizationin-volves "an ntention on the partof the authorto makeuse of someone else'sdiscoursein the direction of its own particularaspirations"Problems 93).In the following ex-ample, there is no hostile collision between pulp fiction and the narrativevoice; in-stead,both work together in the creation of atmosphereand dramaticeffect:

The doorof thegreatCastle s closedonthenight.Only supernaturalyescannowseethefigurentherainy apespaddling cross heriver(reconnoiteringhoseblownshroudsof fogs,-so sincere).The leavesof the shrubsand trees n theyardof theCastleglint nthe rain.Theleaves fPawtucketvillelint nthe rainatnight-the ironpicketencesofTextile,hepostsofMoody,allglint-the thickets fMerrimac,ebblyshores,reesandbushesnmywetand ragrantandbankslint ntherainy ight-. (29)The firstsentence stylizes the pulpfiction genre:the opening descriptionis intendedto set the scene and establish the appropriately sinister atmosphere but without



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drawingattention to itself. This stylizing is continued by the formulaic,"Only su-pernaturaleyes cannow see the figure. .. ." Here, another voice intrudes,firstin theodd collocation "rainycapes"and then in the quirkyparenthesisthat poetically de-scribesDoctor Sax,again pluralizinganoun that we would expectto be singular(i.e.,"fogs").The parenthesisends with an authorial ntrusion that mayreferironicallytoSax,but that could also be commenting on its own lackof sincerity.In the next sen-tence the languagestabilizesinto anotherstylization:"The leaves of the shrubs andtrees in the yardof the Castle glint in the rain."But again the narrativevoice shifts,responding with a more poetic series of repetitions and variations on "glint"and"rain."Here alsowe see the influence of jazzimprovisationon Kerouac'sstyle, a sub-ject too complex to engage with here.) Within these shifts of register,neither voicedominates; rather,there is a dialogue between them: "The author'sthought, oncehavingpenetratedsomeone else's discourse and made its home in it, does not collidewith the other'sthought, but rather follows after it in the same direction"(Problems193). The pulp fiction genre is objectified(made conditional) through this dialogu-ing, but is not forced into ludicrousself-exposure.More complex examplesof dialogizationoccur when registersorgenresaremoreintegrally fused. Part of the inventiveness of Kerouac'sprose style comes from thefreedomwith which he utilizes the formal devicesof popularcultureand makesthempart of the narrativeaction. In the following, the action is presented in a series ofsharplydelineatedframes,like the sequentialnarrativepanelsof a comic strip:

He tookthe glassballwithits terrible nnocent ookingmorphine-powder-likespoonful, nd hrustt intohisholyheart's ocket.He raisedhis faceto thedark eiling."-" His mouthwaswideopenforagreatcryandhe onlyawpedwith hisneckmusclesupstrainedo theceiling-in blueishglowsoffire.He duckedlightly,hecatstiffened,he roomshook,agreatcranging oiserangacross heskytowardsheCastle-. (185)In comic strips, the sequencing of panels representsthe passingof time, allow-

ing the paceof actionto be controlled.Literaryprosecontrolsduration, oo, of course,but comic stripscan use picturesto slow down the action, often freeze-framinga se-riesof moments to suspendthe "normal"passingof time (Harvey8). Kerouac'spara-graphingand sentence structureachievesthis effect here, with parataxis the absenceof subordinatingconnectors between clauses)adding to the sense of self-containedmoments.The representationof Sax's ilentcryas"-" visuallymimicsthe speechbal-loon, while the onomatopoeic "awped"adds the final cartoonishtouch.Comic stripshavelong been celebratedfor their linguisticinventiveness,for thenew words they have introducedas well as their onomatopoeic tendencies. This in-ventiveness is something Kerouacrevels in throughoutDoctorSax, fusing the popu-lar with the literary n the narrativevoice itself:"wherethe river eft its shaleshelf that



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has served it since before Nashua and now drops blonk into the worn awayrock"(114). I read such fusions as instancesof hybridization,"anutterancethatbelongs, byits grammatical syntactic)andcompositionalmarkers, o asingle speaker,but thatac-tually contains mixed within it two utterances,two speech manners,two styles, two'languages,'two semanticandaxiologicalbelief systems"(Bakhtin,"Discourse"304).It is significantthat these hybridfusions of the literaryand the popularare not con-fined to passagesin which Kerouacis describingDoctor Saxor any of the pulp cari-catures that inhabit the Castle. The clash of different semanticsystemsis integraltothe worldviewthat the novel embodies, ratherthanjust an entertainingstylisticem-bellishment. Here is a more extendedexample:

Scene 5 Lookup,thehugetreeof SarahAvenue,belonged o MrsFlooflapwhosename forgetbutsprungGod-likeEmerHammerthongrom heblueearthof hergi-ganticgrassy ard itranclear o longwhite concretegarage) ndmushroomedntotheskywith imb-spreadshato'ertoppedmanyroofs ntheneighborhoodnddid sowithoutparticularlyouchinganyof em,nowhugeandgrooking egetablepeotlna-ture nthegray lash ainofNewEnglandmid-April-thetreedripsdownhugedrops,it rearsupandawayn aneternity f trees, n its ownflambasticky. 76)This passageis from Book Two, "AGloomy Bookmovie." Each of the "sketches" nthis book is presented as a separatescene, andwhile there is no attempthere to rep-resent the formalcharacteristicsof the traditional motion picture (i.e., objectivede-scriptionandlinearprogression),the narrativevoice nonetheless focuses our gaze asa camera ens might (i.e., "Lookup .. .").As Kerouacstatedin "BeliefandTechniquefor Modern Prose," "Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form"(GoodBlonde73). Again, Kerouac is interested in appropriatingdifferent culturalforms, not asan act of passiveimitation but asthe active creation of anew style. Andthe implicationsof this new style canonly be understood in relationto the social dis-courses with which it interacts. As Bakhtinhimself has pointed out, whatmatters "isnot the mere presenceof specific linguisticstyles, social dialects,and so forth,apres-ence established by purely linguistic criteria;what matters is the dialogical ngleatwhich these styles and dialects are juxtaposedor counterposed in the work" (Prob-lems182, emphasisin original). My general argumentin this essayis that we need torecover the social context of the novel in order to graspthe ideological dimensionsof these dialogicalangles.Kerouac'sanswer to the PartisanReviewquestion, "Where in Americanlife canartistsandintellectuals find the basisof strength,renewal,andrecognition, now thatthey can no longer fully depend on Europe as a culturalexampleand a source of vi-tality?"was DoctorSax,which dialogically used streetvernacularandpopularart withliterarymodernism,and so created a literaryaesthetic that wastrulyrooted in nativesoil. For Kerouac,being Beat meant "prophesyinga new style forAmericanculture,a new style (we thought) completely free from Europeaninfluences (unlikethe Lost



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Generation), a new incantation"(GoodBlonde47). DoctorSax directly challenges theelitism of the New Yorkintellectuals by upholding popular culture as an essentialcharacteristic,perhapseven the definingcharacteristic,of America's ulturalheritage.In its internalizingof popularartforms, the novel overall can be read as an embodi-ment of what Bakhtincalled "hiddenpolemic,"languagethat is shapedby animplicitantagonism owardsanother'swordor beliefsystem,so that "apolemicalblowis struckat the other'sdiscourse on the same theme" (Problems 95). Reading the novel as arhetoricalexchangewith the literaryestablishmentallows us to reconnect its domi-nant stylistic featuresto "thesocial life of discourse outside the artist'sstudy"("Dis-course"259). Its verbal art then becomes, as Bakhtininsisted, "socialthroughout itsentire rangeandin each and everyof its factors"("Discourse"259).But this literarydebate wastakingplacewithin the broadersocio-politicalsphereof the Cold War,andsome consideration of the novel's relation to this sphere is nec-essaryin a culturalstylistics approach.Afterall, Doctor Sax is explicitlyidentified asan American superhero;he was born on SnakeHill in Lowell, where the Castle it-self stands, and lived much of his life in Butte, Montana, where he is known as Ray-mond the miner and earnsa living as a pool shark.Opposed to Sax are the denizensof the Castle, mostly decadentEuropeanssuch as Faustusthe Wizard,Count Conduand La Contessa (both vampires),and AmadeusBaroque,Ambassadorto the BlackCardinal.In the novel's climacticscenes, Doctor Sax hurlshis magicpowderinto thePit. The powder fails, and the Snakeemerges in an apocalypticconflagration:"Intothe beautifulglarypale of giant masscloudsthat had come to cover the sun, leavinga snow White hole, rose the mighty venom headed Serpent of Eternity--cloudsformed at his slowly emerging base"(204). If this description conjuresup images ofa mushroom cloud, it may be because on April 22, 1952, the United States had ex-ploded the largestatom bombyet developed, an event not only coveredby the news-papersbut also televised (Schwartz,Cold WarReferenceGuide86). Sax,it seems, hasbeen defeated, and he stands now in ordinaryclothes in the daylight, looking likeGary Cooper with eyes "blueand like big sunflowersin Kansas" 203).Has the Spiritof Americabeen overcome by the Powers of Darkness?Thank-fully,there arestill a few framesleft to run, and salvationappears,not in the form ofthe cavalry,but in the form of the Great BlackBird,who "blackasJonah,"and "goneAll-HosannahGolden fowl-flesh curly-ongsin his vastassembledflight"(205) comesas an agent of God's mercy to sparenot just Ninevah but the world: "That bloodyworm was ousted from his hole, the neck of the world was free"(207). The Birdcar-ries off the Snake,and Sax,soundingmore likeJohn Wayne thanGaryCooper, says,"I'llbe damned. ... The Universe disposes of its own evil "(207). Now, given thatthe ideological war between America and the Soviet Union was cast very much intermsof Christian aithagainstatheism,one cannothelpbut wonderwhether this easycapitulationto aHigher Power isn't abit of a cop-out by a novel that otherwiseseems



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so radical.The narrator,we are told, blithely puts a rose in his hair and goes home.The finalwords of the novel are:"Ipassedthe Grotto againandsaw the cross on thetop of thathump of rocks,sawsome old French Canadian adiesprayingstep by stepon their knees. I found anotherrose, andput anotherrose in my hair,and went home.By God" (207).However, there area few framesleft to run of this essay,too, andI would like tosuggest a different interpretation,one that takes into account the style of the noveland the worldview it projects.The finalpagesof DoctorSax exhibit the same stylisticfeatures as the restof the novel, the samevigorousstratificationof differentregisters.These include archaisms,Biblicalpatterns,invented words and comic-strip onoma-topoeia, nursery rhymephrasings,and oralspeech characteristics.The descriptionofthe Bird carryingoff the Snake again suggests the influence of comic strips in thefreeze-framingof the action:

The sailingobjectsn thatdistantUp areverypeaceful ndvery ar-they areleavingthe earth-and going into the etherealblue-aerial heavenswait for them-theyspecken ndgrowdotty-calmas ron, heyseem ohaveanairoffunninesshesmallerthey get-. (207)"Speckenand grow dotty" suggests very strongly the often crudevisualrepresenta-tion of distantbirds n comic strips,while "anairof funniness" eemshardlyaccidentalin a novel which talksrepeatedlyof "antiqueSaturdaynights of funnies still smellingof ink"(100). Needless to say,this foregroundingof popularculturethat forms in adescription of divine intervention has a significant distancing effect on the reader.Throughout the novel, Kerouac'sprosehas worked to defamiliarizeallformsof myth-makingthroughunexpectedshiftsin register.The Christianmythitselfhas been bur-lesquedin lines suchas"The horridstenchof the ancientSnake thathas beengrowingin the world-balllike a worm in the applesinceAdamand Eve brokedown andcried"(195). But this burlesquingdoes not mean that the book lacks seriousness. On thecontrary,I would arguethat DoctorSax, for all its high jinksandword play,is a seri-ous explorationof the constructedness of all myth in a time of vociferouspropagan-dizing on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The Great Black Birdmay be describedinpredominantlyChristianterms; however,the eagle devouringthe serpent is also thecentralsymbolof Aztecmyth, representingthe triumphof light overdarknessandthepromised land of the wandering Mexica (Graulich 242). This fusing of differentmythological systemsin aprosestyle thatconstantlydialogizesdifferentregistersandgenres challenges the reductive perspectivesengendered by the Cold War. In thissense DoctorSax can be saidto resist the pull towardssocio-political andculturalcen-tralizationthat Bakhtinclaims is the underlyingimpulse of all nationallanguages.Kerouac once claimedthat"The BeatGenerationhas no interestin politics,onlyin mysticism,that's heirreligion. It'skidsstandingon the streetandtalkingabout theend of the world"(qtd.in White 12).But talkingabout the end of the world is always



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political, especially in the atomic age, and DoctorSax is no exception. On the onehand, the novel refuses to enact the simplisticoppositions of the Cold War; instead,it suggests that any identity,whether personalor national, is the complex and oftencontradictorysum of multiple belief systems that intersect in the human conscious-ness. And Kerouac'sprosestyle is integralto thisvision, forin its fluidsynthesisof dif-ferent linguistic forms it embodies a worldviewthat denies simple oppositions of anysort, whether East-West or high-low. Yet,on the other hand, popularculture is cer-tainlychampionedboth throughthe thematicsignificanceof Doctor Sax as acharac-ter and through the baroque iconoclasm of the prose. By employing distinctivelyAmerican formsof popularculture--comic strips,movies,andpulpfiction-Kerouacalso participates n the powerful socio-political impulse towards the affirmationof anationalidentity thatwasvigorouslyand proudlyAmerican.In fact, Kerouac'sspon-taneousprose method itself can be seen as partof that same impulse in that it cham-pions individualfreedom and spontaneityat a time when these values were believedto be genuinely threatenedby the rapid expansionof Soviet socialism.Contradictionssuch as that just described need not be explained awayor artifi-ciallyresolvedin a culturalstylisticsapproach,because the point is not necessarilytocategorizeeither a particularauthoror a certaintext in terms of a single political po-sition.The ideologicaldimensionsof literary anguageare far less clear-cutthan thoseof, say,newspaperarticles,because the connections to the social context are aesthet-ically refractedrather than explicitlyannounced.But close attention to stylisticpat-terns and their social origins can nevertheless reveal a great deal about the ways inwhich a literarytext dialogueswith its culturalmoment and articulatesa worldviewthat is rhetorical for the text as well as the reader.I hope that my reading of DoctorSax has demonstratedthat stylisticsstill has importantcontributionsto make to lit-erarycriticism and that by adopting a more culturalapproachto linguistic analysis,we might move towardsa fullerrealizationof what Bakhtin calleda sociological styl-istics. In doing so, we might also achieve a richer conceptualizationof the material-ity of the literarytext andwhatit might mean to call a literarytext "socialthroughoutits entire range andin each and everyof its factors."

NOTES1. V.N. Volosinov also wrote extensivelyon the subjectof literarystyle, for instanceinMarxismandthePhilosophyfLanguage,"Discoursein Life and Discourse in Poetry,"and "LiteraryStylistics."Debatestill continues as to whether Bakhtinwas the real authorof these texts. I take the position laid out by GarySaulMorson and CarylEmerson in their introductionto RethinkingBakhtin:Extensionsnd Challenges. s

they point out, while Bakhtinand Volosinov clearlyworked closely together, the "evidence" hat Bakhtinauthored the texts signed by Volosinov is far from conclusive. Furthermore, Volosinov demonstrates amore committed Marxism than Bakhtin,which is reason enough to be cautious about conflating the two.In terms of the present discussion,I find Volosinov'streatmentof literarystyle to be even less developedthan Bakhtin's,and hence I have not included a summaryof his ideas in this essay.



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Beyond Bakhtin:Towardsa CulturalStylistics 191

2. In order to keep my argument moving forward,I have excluded Problems f Dostoevsky'soeticsfrom the abovediscussion.However, the same criticismscan be made: that Bakhtin'sanalysisof dialogismremainstextualrather than contextual,and on a level of generalitythat offers little in the way of a modelfor future scholars to follow. I offer one passageas an example: "Dostoevskycould hear dialogic relation-shipseverywhere, n all manifestationsof conscious andintelligent humanlife;where consciousnessbegan,there dialogue began for him as well. Only purelymechanisticrelationshipsare not dialogic, and Dosto-evsky categoricallydenied theirimportanceforunderstandingandinterpreting ife and the actsof man (hisstruggle againstmechanisticmaterialism,fashionable'physiologism,'ClaudeBernard, he theory of envi-ronmental causality,etc.). Thus all relationshipsamong external and internal parts and elements of hisnovel aredialogic in character,and he structuredthe novel as a whole as a 'greatdialogue' (41, emphasisin original).

3. Unfortunately the same criticism has to be made of Fowler's otherwise excellent book, TheLan-guageofGeorgeOrwell,which Fowlerintroduceswith the caveat hat,as far ashistoricalcontextgoes, "spacepermits far less of this than I would have liked"(viii).

4. One of the most interestingessays n thiscollectionis "Two-WayPragmatics:FromWorld to Textand Back"by Ziva Ben-Porat,who discusses the presenceof EasternEuropeanJewishtraditions n IsraeliHebrew literatureand arguesthat these old world paradigmshave profoundly shaped the contemporaryIsraeliworldview. Ben-Porat defines literary pragmaticsas "[t]hestudy of literatureas it is

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