E.L.Doctorow's Deconstruction Of The Exceptionalist American National Identity In His Historical Fiction

E.L.Doctorow(1931-2015)is a famous contemporary American writer.His historical fiction is particularly renowned for its bold artistic experiments and deliberate historical recreation.Presently,although some critics have realized his critique of the American myths in his historical writing,there has been a shortage of an inclusive and systematic study of his major novels in this regard.Still fewer critics have conducted an in-depth exploration of how he contradicts the American myths in his historical fiction.Furthermore,no scholar has established an association of Doctorow's historical recreation and myth-bunking with his deconstruction of the exceptionalist American national identity,which,to a certain degree,has weakened the political significance of his historical writingAs is well known,since the very beginning,America has always tried to construct an exceptionalist national identity,towards which Doctorow holds a critical attitude and endeavors to deconstruct it in his writing.It can be said that his historical fiction constitutes an important part of the unexceptionalist discourse which has gained its momentum since the 1960s.In order to fulfill this writing mission,he consistently tries to recreate the American history of different periods to undermine the American myths of various kinds because myth and history always undergird national identity and history,if left uninterrogated,would become a myth.In this way,he counteracts the official narrative of American history and myths on which the exceptionalist American national identity is constructed and discloses the social reality buried underneath it,hence bringing the validity of this grand national identity under problematization.It must be admitted that the American exceptionalism is a multi-faceted umbrella concept which may frustrate any attempt of an exhaustive study.However,with the sense of superiority and uniqueness of America as its basic presupposition,the American exceptionalism has over centuries embraced the myths of the American-style democracy,American scientific and technological advantages,and the American Dream among its core values and has come to establish itself as the foundation of the American national identity.Under the theoretical framework of postmodern historiography and taking into account the inseparable relationship between myths and history and national identity,this dissertation explores Doctorow's deconstruction of the exceptionalist American national identity from three major aspects:unmasking the myth of American democracy,unsettling the myth of American science and technology,and unraveling the myth of the American Dream.With Ragtime(1975),The Book of Daniel(1971),and Loon Lake(1980)as the objects of study,Chapter One explores how Doctorow pricks blown the beautiful bubble of American democracy which is claimed to have set America apart from the rest of the world.In Ragtime(1975),by artistically addressing the history of the Progressive Era,Doctorow reveals the violent racial discrimination in America and the dire consequences it has generated.In The Book of Daniel(1971),the author makes use of the Rosenberg Case of the McCarthy Era to interrogate the totalitarian politics of the American government towards the Communists.In Loon Lake(1980)as well as Ragtime,the author manipulates the American history of different periods to address the distinct class distinctions and conflicts in America.These three aspects as a whole disclose the illusive nature of American democracy and deprive the validity of it to construct the exceptionalist American national identity.The American science and technology is another important component that helps to construct the exceptionalist American national identity.Chapter Two of this dissertation is focused on how Doctorow undermines the myth of American science and technology through historical imagination.In The Waterworks(1994)and The March(2005),Doctorow criticizes the unethical tendency of contemporary American scientific researches.In these two novels set against the Gilded Age and the Civil War respectively,the author creatively represents a doctor with the name of Sartorius who is solely obsessed with his medical research and pays no heed to any ethical concerns related to his work.As a result,excellent as he is in the medical profession,he is without any human compassion,completely reduced to a dehumanized and desensitized scientisti "grotesque." In The Waterworks,Doctorow also discloses the phenomenon of the collusion of science,wealth,and power in contemporary America.By losing its autonomy,transparency,and disinterestedness,American science falls easily before wealth and power and has degenerated into a mere means by which the rich and the powerful try to garner insidious profits.From these two aspects,Doctorow unsettles the myth of American science and technology on which the exceptionalist American national identity is constructed.In Chapter Three,this dissertation shifts the focus of attention to demonstrate how Doctorow unravels the myth of the American Dream which comprises another influential buttress for the exceptionalist American national identity.In Welcome to Hard Times(1960),Doctorow fictionalizes a Western town of America during the latter half of the 19th century to display the harm of excessive individualism to community interests in the pursuit of the American Dream.In Billy Bathgate(1989),Doctorow makes use of the real story of the Schultz criminal gang in New York history to present the phenomenon within the slum teenagers to make their American Dream of upward mobility come true through illegal means.In Homer and Langley(2009),Doctorow rewrites the true story of the Collyer brothers to focus on how the emphasis on the spirit of self-reliance inherent in the American Dream has rendered the unfortunately poor citizens invisible and even rejected in contemporary America.These three novels,by way of artistically representing the American history of different periods,unravel the myth of the American Dream from three different aspects and therefore problematize its validity to constitute an important prop for the exceptionalist American national identity.With these myths undermined by Doctorow,the American exceptionalism is thus revealed as being ungrounded and the exceptionalist American national image is returned to its stark social reality.On this account,America has to realize its own failings and rethink about what Americanness is.All in all,Doctorow's fiction lays bare the fact that,equally plagued with many enduring common human ills,America has so far failed to fulfill its grand founding convictions and what it has to do is just re-identify itself and improve its failed politics.