Loose Ends

In this study of American cultural production from the colonial era to the present, Russell Reising takes up the loose ends of popular American narratives to craft a new theory of narrative closure. In the range of works examined herefrom Phillis Wheatleys poetry to Herman Melvilles Israel Potter , from Henry Jamess "The Jolly Corner" to the Disney Studios DumboReising finds endings that violate all existing theories of closure and narratives that expose the the often unarticulated issues that inspired these texts. Reising suggests that these "non-endings" entirely refocus the narrative structures they appear to conclude, accentuate the narrative stresses and ideological fissures that the texts seem to suppress, and reveal "shadow narratives" that trail alongside the dominant story line. He argues that unless the reader notices the ruptures in the closing moments of these works, the social and historical moments in which the narrative and the reader are embedded will be missed. This reading not only offers new interpretive possibilities, but also uncovers startling affinities between the poetry of Phillis Wheatley and the fiction of Henry James, between Charles Brockden Browns Wieland and Melvilles least-studied novel, and between Emily Dickinsons poem "I Started EarlyTook My Dog" and Disneys animated classic. Pursuing the implications of these failed moments of closure, Reising elaborates on topics ranging from the roots of domestic violence and mass murder in early American religious texts to the pornographic imperative of mid-century nature writing, and from Jamess "descent" into naturalist and feminist fiction to Dumbos explosive projection of commercial, racial, and political agendas for postwar U. S. culture.