William Gaddis’ “Little Novel”: A Microcosmic Exploration of Habermas’ “System” and “Lifeworld”
	— Ted Morrissey
1	Richard Eldridge and Paul Cohen, in their study of William Gaddis’ novels, titled “Art and the Transfiguration of Social Life,” assert that “[i]f artists and philosophers are to play their proper roles in modern life, transfiguring the self-understandings of an audience that has fallen into commitments to values they cannot endorse, then, we think, they must do so through writing or work that possess […] special difficulty and power of engagement […]” (50). Eldridge and Cohen are speaking specifically about the National Book Award-winning JR (1975), but their observation holds true for all five of Gaddis’ novels, including Carpenter’s Gothic (1985), which is diminutive by Gaddis standards and, many feel, the author’s most accessible work. The validity of Eldridge and Cohen’s statement is seen most vividly when Carpenter’s Gothic is read within the framework of Jürgen Habermas’ model of discourse that focuses on the phenomena of “system” and “lifeworld.” Elizabeth Booth, the novel’s central character, attempts to establish a meaningful existence via an engagement of lifeworld, but her efforts are thwarted at every turn by the United States’ aggressive brand of system, instruments of which in the novel tend to be Liz’s husband Paul, and her lover, McCandless.	This paper was presented at the Literature and Culture Since 1900 Conference, February 2007, University of Louisville. Gaddis’ novels are The Recognitions (1955), JR (1975), Carpenter’s Gothic (1985), A Frolic of His Own (1994), and Agapē Agape (2002), which was published posthumously as Gaddis died in 1998. Habermas (b. 1929) is Permanent Visiting Professor in Northwestern University’s Department of Philosophy. Best known for his theories regarding the “public sphere,” Habermas has authored copious books and articles. Link to Habermas’ faculty page.
2	David Ingram provides working definitions of system and lifeworld in Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason (1987): [S]ystem integrates diverse activities in accordance with the adaptive goals of economic and political survival by regulating the unintended consequences of strategic action through market or bureaucratic mechanisms that constrain the scope of voluntary decision. The lifeworld[, meanwhile,…] contributes to the maintenance of individual and social identity by organizing action around shared values, so as to reach agreement over criticizable validity claims. (115) Ingram notes that system and lifeworld, though at times discussed as if separate phenomenological entities, are inherently bound together; indeed, their functions and influence are consistently interwoven in daily living. “It might be best […],” writes Ingram, “to think of lifeworld and system as relating to logically distinct functions that overlap within institutions” (115-16). For the purposes of this paper, a necessarily superficial application of Habermasian philosophy, I will tend to speak of system and lifeworld as distinct entities. Paul Booth, Elizabeth’s Vietnam veteran husband, is an active agent (hyperactive, in fact) of capitalism, as he is constantly “trying to get something going here” (19, 39, et al.); that is, Paul has various schemes afoot in hopes of becoming wealthy. Elizabeth, an aspiring novelist, wants to achieve intellectual and emotional fulfillment, neither of which, for her, has much to do with the acquisition of wealth.	Habermas introduced the concept of “lifeworld” in On the Logic of the Social Sciences (1967), and linked it to “system” in Legitimation Crisis (1973); then fully developed the dual dynamic in The Theory of Communicative Action (1981). See his “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere” in Habermas and the Public Sphere (Calhoun, 1992).
3	The “market and bureaucratic mechanisms” integral to system dynamics are ubiquitous in the novel. Paul has established himself as a media consultant whose primary client is Reverend Elton Ude, a radio evangelist in the process of spreading his ministry throughout the U.S. and into Africa while branching out to television as well. But it is implied that Ude’s main interest in becoming an ordained preacher was for the tax-exempt status, and his projects of salvation generally involve the would-be saved sending his ministry money. Ude’s operation is in the process of unraveling throughout the novel, in spite of Paul’s frenzied efforts to put the proper spin on every development. In the Voice of Salvation’s final death throes, Paul melodramatically characterizes the U.S. as “a Marxist dictator state casting the shadow of the powers of darkness over the entire world” (204). He tells Liz that the combined bureaucratic forces of the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration are pouncing on Rev. Ude. “[T]hey all know each other,” says Paul of the perceived government conspiracy (206). Paul’s clearly unethical efforts at media consultation exemplify what Habermas views as the “struggle to make publicity a source of reasoned, progressive consensus formation rather than an occasion for the manipulation of popular opinion” (Calhoun 28).
4	However, media consultation is just one of Paul’s money-making schemes. Elizabeth had been in a plane crash four years earlier and her injuries have affected her performance in bed, claims Paul, so he plans to sue the airline for her injuries and the emotional damage done to him. He pressures Liz to see doctor after doctor in order to build their cases against the airline. Besides this psychological abuse, Paul is physically abusive to his wife, and, since she is an heiress with a healthy trust fund, it is implied that he is only interested in her money. He wants her family’s lawyer to release more money to her than the trust fund language allows: “I mean it’s yours it’s going to be yours, one word to Adolph [the fund’s attorney] to release a few thousand we’d be out of the hole, it’s just taking part of what’s ours out a little ahead of time […]” (17).	Gaddis’ naming of who is, in essence, the chief capitalist in the novel, Adolph is telling, as the reader must also think of Adolf Hitler. What must Gaddis be saying, then, by connecting, at least connotatively, the system of capitalism with that of Nazism? After reading my paper, Gaddis scholar Steven Moore has written via email, “In his interviews, Gaddis often insisted he wasn’t against capitalism per se (as Pynchon seems to be), only the ABUSES of capitalism, against those who take advantage of the system, note continued
5	The preceding was only a brief sketch of the system forces at work in the novel—forces that all intersect. For example, Paul apparently met Elizabeth because he worked for her business tycoon father negotiating unethical deals with corrupt African governments—like the one that controls the land where Ude’s mission is to be built, which is also where gold may have been discovered by the geologist McCandless, who happens to own the carpenter’s gothic style house that Paul and Liz rent—that’s Liz, whose brother Billy is killed in Africa when his plane is hit by a rocket fired by rebels because U.S. Senator Teakell is also onboard—the senator whom Paul has bribed because of his influence with the FCC in an attempt to iron out Rev. Ude’s media licensing problems, and on and on. This tangled web of interrelatedness works to undermine Liz’s (indeed, everyone’s) happiness in the novel, thus illustrating Habermas’ view that “[o]ur self-understanding is always refracted through the lens of an acquired role [… and] utopian self-realization is limited by economic and political constraints that condition the scope of communication from outside” (Ingram 110). Elizabeth’s varied roles, for example, as wife, sister, daughter, lover, litigant, patient, secretary, novelist … are constantly in conflict as she is buffeted by economic and bureaucratic forces, all of which are beyond her control. (More of Elizabeth in a moment when I examine her engagement of lifeworld.)	continued or those who, like young J R, put profit margins and shareholder earnings above human concerns for workers. If Gaddis had spelled the name Adolf, that would be one thing; by using Adolph, I think he was conjuring up an older, conservative figure—I think of the older actor Adolph Menjou, whom Gaddis would have grown up seeing in the movies, an aristocratic, politically conservative figure.” Also via email, Peter Dempsey has commented on “big business” and Nazism, writing, “A great deal of far-right rhetoric is often hostile to big business, but the Nazis had an ambivalent and complex relationship to corporate capitalism.” My thanks for their insightful remarks and permission to include them here.
6	An opposing force to Paul and his capitalistic drives in the novel is Liz’s brother Billy, who has been heavily involved in counterculture movements. Early in the novel, before Billy’s rocket-propelled demise, Paul describes his brother-in-law’s lifestyle as “[r]ock bands, queers, spades out there dealing drugs and all this Buddhist crap […] giving him a chance to show his contempt for the money, show his contempt for the people he gives it to and the system it came out of […]” (18). Billy wants to take his sister out of her abusive marriage, but she feels unable to leave: “I can’t. I can’t, it’s not just Paul it’s, things I have to do, doctors, these lawsuits about the plane crash […]” (92). Later, Elizabeth has opportunities to leave with her lover, McCandless, but passes them up, too. In essence, Liz is held captive in the carpenter’s gothic house—held captive in the system. This sense of captivity is noteworthy in that Max Weber, a predecessor whose philosophy Habermas has at times worked upon and at times against, used the metaphor of an “iron cage” to refer to the twentieth-century capitalist culture (qtd. in Bernstein 47). Even Billy, who is an anticapitalist in the novel, is held captive by his need for money. Each time he visits his sister the appearance is predicated on a need (or unacknowledged desire?) for money, simply borrowing some at times, and on his final visit to obtain a copy of their “trust instrument [… to read] the exact wording” (175). Even if Billy wants to “do good” with the money, like going to Africa to help the oppressed, the capital is still what controls his actions—actions that ultimately lead to his violent death.	Gaddis’ choice to name his main characters Booth obviously is connected metaphorically with the confining nature of the carpenter’s gothic house. But more, I think, could be teased from the Booth metaphor in that the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln are among Gaddis’ favorite topics (in CG, see p. 224). It seems significant, then, that he uses the name of Lincoln’s notorious assassin for Paul and Elizabeth Booth.
7	While still on the topics of captivity and control, the carpenter’s gothic house is obviously an important metaphor for Gaddis (after all, it provided his novel’s title). Several critics have noted that the house stands for fakery—one of Gaddis’ favorite subjects (in fact, the central study in his leviathan debut novel, The Recognitions). McCandless, owner of the house, says, “That whole inspiration [is] of medieval Gothic but these poor fellows didn’t have it, the stonework and the wrought iron. [… It’s] a patchwork of conceits, borrowings, deceptions, the inside’s a hodgepodge of good intentions […]” (227-28). There is no question that Gaddis is using the house to operate in that way—as a metaphor for something that appears genuine and substantial, from a distance, but in reality is imitation and light of girth. However, the house is doing double metaphoric duty (at least double). Recall that system mechanics “constrain the scope of voluntary decision.” The only times in the novel that Liz leaves the confines of the house are when she goes to New York City to visit doctors in connection with the lawsuit Paul is forcing her to pursue. Importantly, Gaddis does not allow us to leave the house with Liz; the entire novel is set within the house. Notice that Liz, though absent from the house, is still constrained within the capitalist system. While in New York, she does treat herself to shopping at Saks, but the apparent diversion (though not a diversion from system) ends disastrously with her purse being stolen from the ladies room.	Google images: carpenters gothic. Link to original image page.
8	If Gaddis intended the house to stand only for fakery, then McCandless’ observations about its conceits would be sufficient. Earlier in the novel, however, in one of the few scenes that does not revolve around Elizabeth, McCandless’ former CIA contact, Lester, says of the architecture, “Interesting old house[. …] All designed from the outside, that tower there, the roof peaks, they drew a picture of it and squeezed the rooms in later …” (123-24). That is, the livable space is secondary to the structure of the house. Therefore, not only is the house/system inescapable, for Liz, its odd interior structure does not promote harmonious/lifeworld living. Habermas of course considers “households” within the realm of lifeworld, and “state agencies,” like the CIA, a part of system (Ingram 115). Lester, speaking on behalf of the most notorious (and perhaps most powerful) state agency, calls the house “interesting” and “classic”—but also notes that the roof is leaking. Habermas says that “individuals are […] formed primarily in the private realm, including the family. Moreover, the private realm is understood as one of freedom that has to be defended against the domination of the state” (Calhoun 7). In Carpenter’s Gothic, the state and other systemic forces have not just dominated Liz’s formation as an individual, but virtually crushed it.
9	In fact, Liz only escapes the house when she dies at the end of the novel, and from one perspective it is the poorly designed interior of the house that kills her as she trips in the dark and her temple strikes the corner of a table. As John Beer notes, Liz’s death “remains fundamentally ambiguous. Much critical ink has been spilled speculating on the cause of that death. Some writers have suggested that Paul has arranged to have Liz killed[. …]” Perhaps the death isn’t as ambiguous as it appears, as both the interior design and Paul are agents of system in the novel; system dynamics, then, kill Elizabeth, and the details are irrelevant.
10	Thus far I’ve concentrated on system in Carpenter’s Gothic; now I want to shift my gaze to lifeworld. Returning to Ingram’s definition, lifeworld “contributes to the maintenance of individual and social identity.” Elizabeth desperately wants to establish a meaningful life for herself. One path toward fulfillment is writing her novel, which she attempts to work on periodically but with little success. Liz tells her childhood friend Edie over the telephone, “[I]t was going to be a short novel but I haven’t worked on it since we got here I haven’t written a word I haven’t even looked at it, I’ve been so busy […]” (35). Of course what Liz has been busy about is system, especially answering the telephone, which rings incessantly in the novel due to Paul’s numerous schemes—that, and visiting various doctors in connection with Paul’s lawsuits. Paul has no interest in his wife’s writing aspirations. The only time he credits her abilities at all is when he wants her to write a letter in connection with his media spin. He says, “Told me once you’d started a novel didn’t you? long time ago? […] Write a novel you make up these different characters? […] Same God damn thing Liz, sit down for ten minutes pretend you’re this good loving Christian mother Sally Joe writing a nice letter […]” (112). Otherwise, Paul harps on her to take proper phone messages. When she declines to write the letter and when her message taking is confused and incomplete, he accuses her of not being supportive of him and his projects—in other words, from a Habermasian perspective, Liz’s transgression is being a reluctant and half-hearted participant in system dynamics.
11	While the exchange regarding the letter writing is unpleasant, it is one of the few conversations that Liz and Paul have in which they stay focused on the same topic. Most often in the novel, their dialogue bounces between unrelated subject matter because Paul doesn’t listen to his wife. According to Richard J. Bernstein, Habermas believes in “the primacy of communicative action—the type of action manifested most clearly in speech that is oriented not to success, but to mutual understanding” (46). Herein lies a central problem with Liz and Paul’s relationship: The vast preponderance of Paul’s communicative efforts is success-oriented—that is, the success of his money-making enterprises. Meanwhile, Liz wants to discuss, what she considers, more meaningful topics. She is drawn to McCandless not because he is physically attractive, but because he talks to her about history, politics, science and literature. Besides geologist, textbook author, schoolteacher, and art collector, McCandless is a published novelist. In short, McCandless engages in an examination of culture—one of the “spheres of public access […] belonging to” lifeworld, according to Habermas, the other two spheres being social and political (Ingram 115). Calhoun, moreover, writes, “The lifeworld is the realm of personal relationships [… and] the locus for basic human values […]” (30-31).
12	But like the other feeble rays of lifeworld that penetrate the carpenter’s gothic house, McCandless proves a disappointment as he is more interested in talking to Elizabeth than listening to her, and he is much more focused on her body than her mind. After sleeping with her, he keeps her at an emotional distance by calling her Mrs. Booth. McCandless’ behavior is a good illustration of what Habermas describes as the “tendency in the modern world toward the deformation of the life-world […] by the distorting pressures of systems of purposive rationality” (Bernstein 47). McCandless has the wherewithal to be an agent of lifeworld, and while he is not driven by materialistic purposes, McCandless does have a purposeful agenda when he returns each time to the carpenter’s gothic house; the spiritual enrichment of Elizabeth Booth’s life is not part of that agenda, however.
13	Before drawing to a close, some time must be spent with narrative and media in the novel. It is significant that each of the substantive characters—Elizabeth, Paul, and McCandless—is a storyteller of a kind. The function of narrative is among Habermas’ chief concerns. Ingram writes, “Narratives—including the most primitive myths—unify personal life histories around shared events, thereby contributing to the maintenance of social and individual identity. They are therefore integral to the communicative functions of cultural reproduction, action coordination, and socialization” (117). Narratives, then, should function as a sort of buffer between system and lifeworld, deflecting (if only temporarily) economic and bureaucratic encroachments on individuals as they pursue activities that give life meaning—meaning, that is, beyond being a functioning cog in the machinery of system. Habermas notes, however, that “[u]nder advanced capitalism [what Weber terms “high capitalism” (qtd. in Bernstein 36-37)] the lifeworld is gradually reduced to a satellite of the system” (Ingram 127). So instead of being equally dynamic forces that alternately push against each other, system has gotten the upper-position in high capitalistic cultures like the U.S.’s. To extrapolate, then, the buffer of narrative must have broken down (or have been in the process of breaking down) in the twentieth century.	The image of lifeworld’s being reduced to a satellite of system is especially provocative for me as I’ve been visualizing the lifeworld-system dynamic in terms of the ancient Chinese metaphysical yin and yang—with lifeworld associated with the yin/black/night/moon, and system the yang/white/day/sun. Ideally, these forces are perfectly balanced, but in the twentieth century yang (white/system) overpowered yin (black/lifeworld). Furthermore, I see narrative as the serpentine border between yin and yang.
14	This vision of deteriorating narrative seems to be the one Gaddis offers in Carpenter’s Gothic. Elizabeth is unable to generate any interest in her novel whatsoever, even her own interest. McCandless’ novel, which tells the autobiographical tale of a geologist working for the CIA in Africa, is called “rotten” and “cheap” by Lester (124, 129). McCandless doesn’t bother to defend his book. He claims he wrote it because he was bored. He says, “I told you why I wrote it, it’s just an afterthought why are you so damned put out by it. This novel’s just a footnote, a postscript […]” (139). Later, McCandless (Gaddis’ familiar perhaps) expounds on the sorts of novels being produced: Get the inside story, explore the dark passions hidden in the human heart and the greater the invasion of privacy the better, that’s what wins prizes. […] That’s what gets the Pulitzer Prize it’s not about art, it’s not about literature, about anything lasting, it’s the newspaper mind, what’s here today and you wrap the fish in tomorrow[. …] (221) The depth of the futility is further illuminated by a radio commentator who reports, shortly after the first reference to Liz’s novel-writing ambitions, that “thirty five million Americans were functionally illiterate and another twenty five million couldn’t read at all” (37). Habermas says that the twentieth century was marked by people’s “abstinence from literary and political debate [… and, what is more,] the world fashioned by the mass media is a public sphere in appearance only” (qtd. in Calhoun 23).	Among the narratives that Gaddis plays with in the novel are both the book and movie Jane Eyre (starring Orson Welles, 1944). The captivity motif of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel—for Jane, first, in the Reed home, then Lowood Academy, and finally Thornfield Hall—reflects Elizabeth’s confinement in the carpenter’s gothic house. But Jane Eyre, a penniless orphan, is also a captive of system—until fire destroys the hall (a remnant of the Rochester family’s feudal past) and kills Bertha (Rochester’s legal wife). Only then can Jane and Rochester engage lifeworld through family, reading, and stimulating conversation. Near the end of CG, a neighbor’s house burns down, too (see pp. 216-17).
15	“News” media, meanwhile, is as ubiquitous in the novel as system. Radio, television, and newspaper headlines are continuously excerpted. Mass media, says Habermas, “reliev[es] us of the need to negotiate certain items of our cultural lifeworld ourselves. Instead, we simply take it for granted that certain problems have already been resolved by leaders, specialists, and others who are in a position to know [… but this aspect] harbors the potential for manipulative abuse” (Ingram 128, 129). Since the sole representative of mass media in the novel is Paul, it is reasonable to assume that Gaddis believes “manipulative abuse” occurs without cessation. Indeed, Paul is manipulative and abusive from start to finish. As mentioned earlier, some readers believe that Paul is directly responsible for Elizabeth’s death. The final image in the novel is Paul making a pass at Edie, Elizabeth’s best friend—a wealthy married woman whom he has been bad-mouthing throughout the novel—in the back of a limousine on their way to his wife’s funeral. Paul has the final word, telling Edie, “I’ve always been crazy about the back of your neck” (262). Gaddis provides no end punctuation for the sentence (therefore, for his novel), implying perhaps that Paul’s deplorable behavior (Paul, who is system’s agent) will continue indefinitely in moral free-fall.
16	Finally, Bernstein remarks that philosophers are in reality storytellers: “They tell stories of anticipations, setbacks, and trials, but they culminate with the progressive realization of truth and reason, which is normally identified with what the philosopher/storyteller now sees clearly—a ‘truth’ which his or her predecessors saw only through a glass darkly” (31-32). Habermas is just such a philosopher/storyteller, and, if so, then Gaddis was surely a storyteller/philosopher. Eldridge and Cohen ask, How […] can writing or artistic activity concretely transfigure our self-understandings and lead us to new activities, especially against the grain of public culture?—Not […] by being purely general and philosophical, and not by being purely particular and literary, but only by being both at once[. …] Gaddis’ particular kind of difficulty and intelligibility [… are] all at once a necessity, a problem, and a resource in the work of transfiguration. (43) Of Habermas, Bernstein tells us, “With a stubborn persistence, he seeks to keep alive the memory/promise and hope of [a] world in which justice, equality and dialogical rationality are concretely realized in our everyday practices. He staunchly resists all those who claim this hope must be abandoned” (218). Meanwhile, Steven Best and Douglas Kellner “call for critical articulations of modern and postmodern theory which map the broader features of social organization and various microdomains” (259). Perhaps, then, Gaddis’ oeuvre, especially Carpenter’s Gothic with its microcosmic exploration of system and lifeworld, can be an instrument in support of Habermasian optimism for the future.
	Works Cited Beer, John. “William Gaddis.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 21.3 (fall 2001): 69-110. PerAbs. FirstSearch. Sherman Public Lib., Sherman, Ill. 15 Jan. 2003 <http://firstsearch.oclc.org>. Bernstein, Richard J. The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1992. Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner. Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations. New York: Guilford P, 1991. Calhoun, Craig, ed. Introduction. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1992. 1-48. Eldridge, Richard, and Paul Cohen. “Art and the Transformation of Social Life: Gaddis on Art and Society.” Powerless Fictions?: Ethics, Cultural Critique, and American Fiction in the Age of Postmodernism. Ed. Ricardo Miguel Alfonso. Postmodern Studies 17. Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, 1996. 41-51. Gaddis, William. Carpenter’s Gothic. 1985. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986. Ingram, David. Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason. New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 1987.
	Ted Morrissey teaches literature and writing courses at Springfield College in Illinois, and is a Ph.D. candidate in English studies at Illinois State University. His main interest is American Postmodernism, especially William Gaddis and Thomas Pynchon. He presented papers at the Louisville Conference on Gaddis’ The Recognitions in 2004, and on Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow in 2006. The Gaddis presentation is available at williamgaddis.org. The Pynchon paper is also online. Among his recent publications is an article on Wyatt Gwyon, the main character in The Recognitions, in The Student Companion to American Literary Characters. Contact Ted Morrissey.
	Text © 2007 Ted Morrissey