Part One
Vanishing Space
Journey to the space outside, which goes hand in hand with the discovery of authentic self, has occupied a crucial place in American imagination. As Alexandra Ganser aptly argues that âgeographical mobility, tied to social ascent, has always had a high symbolic value, shaping distinctly American idea(l) of freedom and national identity,â1 the road as the promise of new self appears repeatedly in American literature, from Walt Whitmanâs âSong of the Open Roadâ to Jack Kerouacâs On the Road.2 This basic idea of the westward movement as a quest for American identity also survives in contemporary literature, typically in the motif of the road.
Contemporary writers, on the other hand, share a critical attitude toward the traditional road motifs. Especially the 1990s saw a number of âanti-roadâ novels that subverted the conventions of the genre.3 Among them, Annie Proulxâs fist novel, Postcards, stands out with its relentless interrogation of American road experience in its central idea of space and freedom. The 1992 novel subverts the westward movement of American self by describing the lifelong journey of Loyal Blood, a Vermont-born farmer, who eventually turns into an aimless wanderer in the West. Through âa broad East-West survey of American life during the 20th century,â4 Proulxâs novel undermines the promise of individual freedom in open space.
In 1944, a Vermont farmer kills his girlfriend, hides her body, and runs away from his home. The opening lines of the novel depict the moment after the act of murder that launches Loyal Bloodâs lifelong journey:
Having impulsively killed Billy, Loyal realizes he cannot continue his life on the farm. The typical road motif of âstarting overâ is replaced by the sudden feeling that âthe route of his life veered away from the main line,â6 and the violent act would haunt him no matter how far he traveled.
After disposing off her body, Loyal returns to his house, where he tells his family he is going away to start a new life with Billy and simply drives away from his farm. Another reversal of the road narrative convention is seen here: the heroâs journey is not an autonomous decision of the individual but an unhoped-for reaction to the thoughtless act. While Billy used to insist that âIâm not getting caught. Iâm getting out of here and Iâm going to be somebody,â7 repeating the typical American faith in the future that lies ahead, now the farmer finds himself on the run. There is no individual choice in the novel; with the event that has already happened, the journey begins even before Loyal understands the reason: âBilly, always yapping about moving away, getting out, making a new start, was staying on the farm. He, whoâd never thought beyond the farm, never wanted anything but the farm, was on his way. Clenching the wheel.â8 Thus the reluctant traveler goes on the road in 1944.
The year 1944 is significant in the sociohistorical context of the state: World War II and the highway planning. ââThereâs a War on, in case you forget,ââ Mink tells his son; ââFarm work is essential work. Forget out west.ââ9 The descriptions of the Blood farm are consistently accompanied by references to the war. There is also a prospect of job at wartime factories, once Loyal leaves Vermontâthis is the promise of a new life Billy dreamed of. Moreover, the same year saw the announcement of the plans for Interregional Highways. According to David W. Jones, the 1944 plan âwas proposing an extraordinarily ambitious agenda for future highway construction both within and between U.S. metropolitan areas.â10 When Loyal declares his departure, the route to the West is not so much a figment as a concrete possibility that the national project has laid ground for.
The ex-farmer on the road thus drives westward, at first following Billyâs plan: âHeâd drive west, but keep to the border. Those cities sheâd named, South Bend, Detroit, Gary, Chicago, those were the places.â11 These cities form a straight westward line from Vermont, loyal to the promise of the road: âWest, that was the direction.â12 However, he gradually realizes the impossibility of shedding away his past self; glancing at the farmlands stretching beside the road, or looking down at the plain from a window, Loyal is reminded of his connection to the Vermont farm:
Kent C. Ryden is right in stating that in âLoyalâs remembering, the farm and he are one and the same.â14 This fact is further highlighted by the word âeffluvia,â which refers to Loyalâs bodily particles connected to the farmland. The use of the word demonstrates that the self, connected to the soil and the past in its molecular level, cannot be entirely free from the land; the essential components of Loyalâs subjectivity do not change even after getting away from his home. While movement in the road narrative is essentially an opportunity to rediscover oneself as a free individual, Loyal Blood, with his effluvia bound to the earth, finds himself in an opposite condition: loyal to his blood.
The narrative follows Loyalâs cross-continental journey and describes the sociopolitical forces in the post-World War II America, which denies his attempts to reach free, open space. Loyal goes through and glimpses every kind of space in the West, only to realize none of them provides him a possibility of freedomâit has already evaporated in the Cold War state. Four decades after he departs from Vermont, the traveler is left with a sense of exhaustion and aging.
In 1951, after being robbed of all the money he has earned in factories, he begins to work in a uranium mine called Mary Mugg. This downward movement logically follows his inability to escape from the haunting land-farm-self connection: when the space on the surface could not offer him any possibility of freedom, he goes underground. This space in the West, however, does not lead to any sense of autonomy. As Michael A. Amundson points out, âthe growing insecurity of the Cold War led the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to launch a massive uranium hunt to find domestic sources for atomic bombsâ15 after the legislation of the Atomic Energy Act in 1946, five years before Loyal comes to the mine. The space beneath the ground is thoroughly seized by the force of the state, now engaged in the Cold War.
Loyalâs days in Mary Mugg end with an abrupt collapse of the mine. He gives up mining and finds a new job as a fossil hunter in the West. But again, these open fields are not an untouched space; on the contrary, they are connected to the âarcheologists and paleontologists from museums and universities back eastâ16 as the end-buyer of his fossils. Loyal, the fossil hunter, becomes increasingly weary of this fact and finally quits the job.
With the open ground and underground space devoid of the possibility of freedom, Loyalâs eyes turn upward: he begins to work as assistant to an amateur astronomer in New Mexico in 1966; this time, too, it becomes clear that outer space is not a free area. ââI do not get time at a big telescope!ââ the astronomer complains to Loyal. ââMy amateur status bars me from the big ones! (The academics stand in line for years to use them.) . . . We are losing the sky, we have lost it.ââ17 Even though he claims that ââNothing is impossible in space,ââ18 the space is closed for amateurs like him; it was the late 1960s, in the middle of the development of the Apollo Program that has appropriated outer space as part of the national strategy. Space cannot be Loyalâs New Frontier.
Thus the possibility of freedom in every kind of space is exhausted; the promise of the roadâa fresh start in a no-manâs landâis completely removed from the protagonistâs meandering. Instead, the sense of being trapped and growing old begins to dominate the whole text: âHe had it straight now; there were special roads and paths across the country that he could travel,...