CITY SIGNS: TOWARD A DEFINITION OF URBAN LITERATURE ——— rr Diane Wolfe Levy THE DEMAND FOR URBAN STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES peaked in the late sixties, But literary scholars who clambered aboard the express train to “relevance” may well have been taken for a ride. For although the city has become the focus and symbol of modem life, the study of urban literature may be premature. Indeed, “urban literature” may not yet exist. The study of urban literature seems natural at first. The city is the dominant ecological feature of modern western society; it is not unrea- sonable, then, to seek an expression and reflection of urbanism in literature. The very term, however, is treacherous. Its concision fosters a sense of concreteness. We have urban planning, urban transit, urban redevelopment—why not urban literature? Yet on close examination, this neat rubric becomes meaningless. What is urban literature after all? Literature read in ci or written in cities? Literature with an urban setting? If this is the case, we are dealing with a theme which dates back to classical literature, Yet there is something new in contemporary literature dealing with the investigation of the changing func- tion of the city in literature may help to clarify this change and con- tribute toward a definition of urban literature. 65The city/country polarization has long been used as a metaphor for extremes of good and evil; the exaggerated pitfalls of urban decadence contrasting with a nostalgically pastoral innocence. The prototypical Bildungsroman ot novel of experience traces the protagonist's progress from innocence to comprehension in a parallel movement from country to city. Attitudes toward the city have varied from optimism and enthu- siasm to despair. The city has come to be the measure of human strength and intelligence—and folly. Why this appeal of the urban set- ting? Is it merely a reflection of the increasingly obtrusive impact of the city on the human psyche? The forces of nature certainly offer as powerful 2 foil to human action, with extremes and variety of ex- perience not unlike those encountered in the city (hence, of course, the cliché of the city as “jungle”). ‘One explanation of the attraction of the urban background in literature is the notion of control. Nature is at best indifferent to man. The city, on the other hand, is his creation, and in it he must realize his own salvation or damnation. This translation of human destiny into purely human terms may account for the frequent presence of apocalyp- tic symbolism in literature set in the city: Zola’s La Débdcle, to name only one example. But again, the City of God and the Cities of the Plain are hardly innovations in literature. ‘What are some great “city novels"? Dickens’ Bleak House, Balzac’s Le Pére Goriot, Zola's L’Assommotr, Joyce's Ulysses. These novels pur- port to depict the realities of city life. But they are all primarily novels of character, of experience in the city rather than experience of the ci ty. In contrast, we could identify “urban” literature as that where the setting takes precedence over character; where, in fact, the setting rises to the level of protagonist." Such literature would be essentially ex- pericntial; it would translate the qualitative experience of the city as directly as possible, undistorted by moral judgments or comparisons with the natural world, This distinction, of course, sets up a sliding scale. Many intermediate stages are possible; for example, in Zola’s Une Page d'amour, the city of Paris functions as a kind of Greek chorus to the action, not quite a participant but more than a locale, In the past, the phenomena of urban life—concentrated and heterogeneous population, simultancity of action, anonymity, aliena- tion, and exhausting exhileration—have perhaps been better rendered in the condensed and connotative forms of poetry than in prose. One thinks of Baudelaire’s almost perverse love of the man-made, his fleeting "Michel tonite easy in ros LE mpl du remporary cto, iss sriking example ofthe peroniiction of the city as « 66 MODERN FICTION STUDIESand mysterious scenes of city life in Le Spleen de Paris: the passante glimp- sed in the crowd whose attraction lies precisely in her fugitive beauté, or the sinister figures in Les Petites Vieilles and Les Sept Vieillards. Inspired by Poe's story, “The Man of the Crowd,” Baudelaire cele- brated the city and relished the magical liberation and anonymity of the crowded streets: 11 nest pas donné a chacun de pendre un bain de makitude: jouir de la foule es un art fe celutla seul peut fete, aux depens du genre humaia, une ribote de vitait, a qui ane fee a insuMe dans son berecas Fe godt du traveatisement ot du manque, le haine du domicile et la pasion du voyage Multitude, solitude: termes égaux et convertibles par le poéte actif et flcond.* Even in poems which are not specifically about the city, we find striking urban images. In “‘Receuillement,” Baudelaire transforms the sunset into a seedy street-scene. ois se pencher les défuntes Antes, Sur les balcons du ciel, en robes suranntess Sargir du fond des eaux le Regret souriant Le Soleil moribond s'endormir sous une arche. Et comme un long linceul tralnant a FOrient Eniends, ma chére, entends la douce Nuit qui marche. (Baudelaire, p, 189) Here, the city is not compared to nature. Rather, natural phenomena take on the special character of city life: curious old women observing the action in the street, vagabonds seeking shelter under bridges, even a corpse floating in the river! But ultimately, Baudelaire's Paris remains a highly subjective and distilled vision. “Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de réves”—thete are the dreams of the poet, liberated and inspired by the urban cnvironment but imposing his own image on it according to his mood: a “décor semblable a T'ame de V'acteur” (Baudelaire, p. 159). Using a similar internal fikter, the Victorian poet James Thomson (B.Y.) reveals the secrets of the urban environment in “The City of Dreadful Night" (1874), one of the most perceptive poetic analyses of the quality of the industrial city. Although the poem tends to be somewhat tedious and didactic, there are many noteworthy passages which reflect the materialistic concept of alienation and adumbrate the notions of anomia and rationality which would be elaborated by social theorists such as Weber, Simmel, and Durkheim decades later. The patroness of Thomson's city is Melancholia; its inhabitants, like those of Engles' Manchester, are isolated atoms: Charles Baudelaire, "Les Fouls,” Le Spleen de Paris in Ler Fleurs du mai (Pars: Games, 1961), p. 295. Subsequent references to Baudelare's Ler Fleurs dx mal will be lied parenthetical In the tex, CITY SIGNS a7They often murmer to themuelves, they speak To one another seldom. for their woe Broods maddening inwardly and scorns to wreak elf abroad; and if at whiles it grow To frenzy which must rave, none heed: the clamour... This madness, however, docs not really offer an escape. The in- tellect is ever at work and, paradoxically, is the source of the insanity. “The City is of Night, but not of Sleep . . . This dreadful strain Of thought and consciousness which never ceases, (Or which some moments’ stupor but increases, ‘Thie, worse then woe, makes wretches there intane. (Thomson, p. 140) To protect themselves from the excessive physical and mental demands made upon them, city-dwellers affect a core of rational behavior. It is this dichotomy which Thomson finds characteristic of the urbanite: ‘They are most rational and yet insane: ‘An outward madness not to be controlled; + A perfect reason in the central brain, Which has no power, but sitteth wan and cold, ‘And set the madness, and foresees 25 plainly ‘The ruin in its path, and trieth vainly To cheat itself refusing wo behold. (Thomson, p. 151) This schizophrenic detachment can only ward off the ultimate con- sequences of the urban environment, The city is polluted not only with industrial wastes and human debris, but with a much more dangerous psychological poison: Infections of unutterable sednew, Infections of incalculable madness, Infections of incurable despair. (Thomson, p. 151) ‘Whitman and Sandburg. too, have expressed the unique qualities of the city. We find in Whitman the potential drama of the city’s physical forms: You flagg’d walls of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges! You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships! ‘You rows of howses! you window perc facades! you roof ‘James Thomson, “The City of Dreadful Night" in N.P. Messenger and J.R. Watson, es, ie {erin Pottry (London: Dent. 1978). p. 187, Subsequent references ro Thorson “The City of Dreadful [Night wil be lited parenthetical inthe ext 38 MODERN FICTION STUDIESYou porches and entrancei! you copings and iron guards! ‘You windows whose transparent shells might expose s0 much! You doors and ascending steps! you arches! You gray siones of interminable pavement you ‘wodden crossings! But Whitman's interest in these structures is clearly as 2 transmitter rather than a stimulus of human experience, for he continues: From all that has touch’d you 1 believe you have impareed to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me, From the living and the dead you have peopled your impasive surfaces, and the spoiu thereof would be evident an amicable with me. (Whitman, p. 506) The poet serves as interpreter; he steps between the city and the reader and divulges its secrets. Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago” provides a striking contrast with Thom- son's guided tour of the demonic city and Whitman's hypnotic medium- like message. The poet's ego is much less obtrusive in this work; Sand- burg personifies the brutal strength and vitality of the city in the figure of a workman: Bareheaded, Shoveling, ‘Wrecking, Planaing, Building, breaking, rebuilding... * But this lusty worker, like Baudclaire’s vagabond Sun, is a poetic far removed from a direct appreciation of the urban environment. In contemporary literature, the novel seems to be Teasserting its ability to articulate the polysemic voices of the city. What contemporary works have attempted to interiorize the impact of urbanism? Is there a contemporary urban novel, or rather, a novel of the city? Two French works, Raymond Queneau’s Zasi dans le Méiro and Alain Robbe- Grillet’s Project pour une révolution @ New York, offer intriguing Possibilities for investigating the “urban” elements of contemporary prose fiction £ jion “Wat Whitman, “Song cf the Open Road,” in Oscar Wiliams, ed, The New Pocket Anthology of American Vere, 2nd Ed. (New York Washington Squate Pres, 1973), p. 506. Subsequent references to Whisan’t poe willbe lated pareathetialy in the text. ‘Carl Sandburg, “Chicago,” in Oscar Willams, ed. The News Pocket Anthoingy of American Vene, p- 886. ‘Hn this exploratory article, Ihave chosen «limit my analyst thee two novels, which contain ‘many interesting parallels, One could eusly contrast therm with their many predecesors of with mace symbelic comtemporary works such as Italo Calvino’ Ineable Cites cr Michel Butors LEmple de temps CITY sIGNs 69These novels differ both structurally and functionally from more traditional novels, The mode of expression shifts from a more-or-less subjective first- or third-person narrative to a more objective nouveau- roman form; the role of the city shifis from that of a symbolic setting for the action to that of an active component of the action, The city ultimately imposes its shape on the fiction. While more traditional novels used the city as a metaphor in order to convey the realities of contemporary life, these works of Queneau and Robbe-Grillet transmit the psychological and perceptual realities of the city in order to con struct a contemporary ethos.? Each of these novels presents a view of the kaleidoscopic experiences of the city: one humorous and one somber. Certainly, the comic phonetic street slang of Queneau’s characters is very different in tone from Robbe-Grillet’s incantatory prose, But whether dream or sinister nightmare, both novels transmit the essence of city life: simultaneity and fragmentation of action, change of perspective, anonymity and multiplicity of character. Like the sewers of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables a century earlier, a labyrinthian subway system— infrastructure of the urban environment is the central image of both novels. The subway functions as a source of desire and fantasy. The Métro map and the MTA routes, both so easily visualized by anyone who has visited Paris or New York, set the parameters of real and imagined action. The subway is not merely a mode of transportation (on the contrary, in both novels it proves rather unsatisfactory in this respect); it becomes a vehicle for the projection of the litany of urban fantasies: murder, sexual assault, organized crime, bloody revolution. The final scencs of Zazi—a shoot-out and dramatic escape via the subway tunnels—may well be a projection of the heroine's active and somewhat sadistic imagination. In Robbe-Grillet’s novel, the notion of “projection” is exploited in two senses. The action is (perhaps) an ac- count of fantasies stimulated by the sight of posters on a construction site fence or the lurid covers of detective stories displayed in a subway arcade. Then again, the action may be a film—being made? being viewed? a film disquietingly cut (“coupure”) and rewound. These flashes of action correspond to the disjointed nature of secondary social con- Robbe-Grilet considers tbe ensemble of “sigan” perceived in the urban eavironment a8 @ con: emperary mythology or the “collective consciooneat" and rubconsciout~ of society "Lorsque ji lex fats diver sandaleur ov crimineb, lorgue je fegarde les vitrines et les aficbes qui comporent by aynde de toute grance ville, logue jarcomplis un parcours dans les couloir: du metropolitan. je me trouve asall par une multitude designs dont Versemble consitue lk mythologie du monde od je vs, iqueique chose comme Tinconscientcollecif de la socie, c'est dire 3 la fois Vmage qu'elle veut donner dUzle-mtine ec le fet dev troubles qui le hantent,” (Alin Rebbe Grille, Projet pour une réolution & New York. Paris: 1970, anpaginated introduction reprinted from an article in Le Nowoe! Obseroateur of June 26, 1070.) rT MODERN FICTION STUDIEStacts in the urban environment. The temporal disorientation of the action in Robbe-Grillet’s novel is paralleled in the décor. The elements of the setting (the grained oak door or the star-shaped crack in the window pane), all described in minute detail, share equal importance with the limited number of repeated actions which are highly descriptive in nature, Action and set- ting thus approach identity: the décor is animated and partakes of the simultaneous quality of the action. The door, for instance, is at once the door of the narrator's house, the door on the cover of a detective sory, the real door cut along the lines of the trompe-loeil door on a billboard poster. The glimpses of the setting are often brief and limited in perspective, as if they were seen through a camera's focus or the clos- ing doors of a subway train, Indeed, the book’s quickly changing scenes have the effect of a subway ride: one emerges from the reading disoriented, lacking a sense of spatial (or logical) progression. ‘This kind of disorientation can be seen in Zazi as well. Zazi’s uncle, Gabriel, and his friend, Charles (who is a taxi driver!) circulate through Paris like people who have traveled only on the Métro. Place names are familiar, but only as the mosaic signs that appear at each successive sta- tion, The linear progression of the rails from station to station gives no sense of the spatial disposition of buildings on the surface. Thus Charles and Gabriel match names and places arbitrarily. This kaleidoscopic décor and, in fact, the entire narrative threaten to dissolve as the nar- rator is carried away in a meditation which is Shakespearian in inspira- tion but comically urban in its language: Létre ole néant, voili Te probléme, Monter, descendre, aller, venir, tant fait "homme ‘qu’ a fin il disparat, Un taxi lemmtne, un métro Temporte, Ia tour n'y prend garde, ni le Pantheon, Paris nest qu'un songe, Gabriel nest quiun réve (charmang), Zazi le songe un réve (ou d'un cauchemar) et toute cette histoire le vonge d'un songe, le rtve d'un rive, 4 peine plus que le délire tapé A la machine par un romancier idiot (oh! pardon) * The elements of film and mystery story found in these two novels, T would contend, are key elements of the urban novel, Both narratives are distorted variations of the detective story, the urban form par ex- cellence.* The anonymity of the criminal and often of the victim, the multiple identities of both detective and criminal, and the camouflage offered by the street crowd are typically urban aspects of this form ‘As Raymond Williams has pointed out in his astute analysis of the "Raymond Queneau, Zan! deni le Métro, raconté em images par Jacques Carelman (Pati Gatimard, 1959), p. 45. Subsequent references to Queneau’ Zazt dans le Metre wil be lsted paren thetcally in the ext "The ovgins of the detecve story are dacuned in Walter Beajanin’s Charles Boudelare: 4 Lyric Poet ix the Esa of High Copizalisn (London: NLB. 1973), pp. 40 ff. as well as in Trvetan “Toderov's Posie dela prove (Paris: Editions da Seal, 1971). There are, in ation, many hiterie of the form, ITY SIGNS ncity and che country, the urban detective emerges in the twentieth cen tury as a “significant and ratifying figure.” The “opaque complexity of modern city life is represented by crime,” and the detective has the power to “find his way through the fog . . . (to) penetrate the intricacies of the streets." In short, the detective is the mind which imposes order on the chaos of modern life. ‘What is interesting in many contemporary literary rather than popular detective stories is the victory of the city over the detective. Roles are reversed or shared by @ single character; the nature of the ¢ is often as much a mystery as the identity of the criminal, and the investigation is most often a search for the narrator's crue identity. In a much more sophisticated way. then, the narrator-detective is trying to rationalize his universe. In Zazi and Projet, there is no satisfying denouement; nor, in fact, is there a satisfying point of departure. The crime is never truly established. Robbe-Grillet’s arson and assassinations may be nothing but paranoid fears; Zazi, after all, didn’t really steal her “bloudjinnzes,” and her uncle's “hormosestualité” is not against the law. Moreover, the roles of victim and victimizer, criminal and detective are hopelessly embroiled in both cases. “The characters of both novels possess multiple identities—or none at all, Robbe-Grillet's victims are interchangeable; his aggressors vary from the mirror-image “W" and “M” to more complicated masked figures His superimpoted levels of identity reach a horrifying climax when the so-called Ben-Said (the true or the false?), frantically peeling off his mask, strips off layers of his own flesh. The theme of fragmentation is further developed in the descriptions of the bizarre costume shop, with its grotesque and ever-changing display of disembodied hands, faces, and breasts. This kind of ambiguity is much lighter in tone in Zazi. Gender as well as identity are questioned, Gabriel/Gabriella and Marcel/Marceline live happily in their inverted universe—even day and night are inverted until they are troubled by an even more complex character: the police- man/pedarast Trouscaillon/Aroun-Arachide."' Zazi’s astute analysis of his “true” identity is clearly a satire of the intracacies of character: C'eait pas un satyr qui se donnait Vapparence dun faux fic, mais un vrai lie qui se don nit 'apparence d'un faux eatyr qui te donaait Vapparence d'un vrai fic. (Queneau, p- 30) "Raymond Wiliams, The Cay and the Country (New York: Oxford University Prat, 1978), p a, This “euote™ alae reminiscent of Rabe Crile’ seule of France’ Algerian experince 2 MODERN FICTION STUDIES en Said. The sinter Arab Figure may be aTrouscaillon obviously cannot cope with this regression and confesses that he has “lost himself.” His interlocutor significantly “misunder- stands” and directs him to the nearest subway entrance! But Trouscail- lon explains that it is not a question of location but of identity: “S'agit pas de ca. C'est moi, moi que j'ai perdu” (Queneau, p. 41). A lengthy analysis of these two novels would reveal even more elements of urbanism than simultaneity of action, fragmented perspec- tive, anonymity and multiplicity of character. But even after this limited discussion, we can conclude that both novels leave the reader not with a sense of character and plot, but rather with the brief and often contradictory impressions which shape the urban experience. The form of these novels also presents an important contrast with carlier “city novels.” The mode of expression contributes to the transfor- mation of the function of the city. Robbe-Grillet's work as a writer of film scenarios is a key factor in a discussion of urban exprestion. The film, “objective” eye of the unseen observer, may well be the contem- porary medium best suited to capture the urban experience. The cine- matographic features of the nouveau roman (made explicit, as we have seen, in Projet) and its suppression of character make it the ideal literary vehicle for such expression, The present tense action of the nar- Tative is not so blocked by character; the reader identifies less but ex- periences. more. The extreme limit of such a novel would be a theoretical (and exhaustive) narrative of “pure” sensation, completely devoid of character—and, perhaps, of interest. The realistic city of early nineteenth-century novels functioned either as a backdrop or an objective test to be passed or failed by the protagonist. It was presented in highly symbolic terms of success or failure. The city gradually became more autonomous. It was viewed more as man's creator than as his creation. It controlled his life: it generated his, realities and stimulated his unconscious fears and fan- tasies. Even in naturalistic novels, however, where the city was a for- mative agent, its influence was presented in terms of metaphor and con- tained a moral judgment. Many contemporary authors like Queneau and Robbe-Crillet are now exploring the experiential quality of the city rather than its moral ramifications. The city in their works is not a symbolic representation: it Tepresents itself, The analysis of these expressions of wrbanism—not as a metaphor but as substantive narrative in its own right—may be 2 fruit: ful line of study in the future, CITY SIGNS ih}