New York City as Dwelling Place: Reinventing the American Dream in Steven Millhauser'sMartin Dressler, Joseph O'Neill'sNetherland, and Atticus Lish'sPreparation for the Next Life

Abstract

York City has long been emblematic of American dream, celebrated in historical and fictional accounts, photography, and film. In his founding narrative on American dream in The Epic of America (1931), James Truslow Adams points to York City as center of American economic prosperity, but he claims that in quest for material well-being Americans have forgotten how to live (56-57, 186-87, 40406). More recently Michel de Certeau, observing York City from atop (original) World Trade Center, sees himself as a voyeur, not a walker, remote from practices of everyday life {Practice 92-93). Certeau argues that a city is not just a place, a location on a map, but a space in which people read and talk and walk and dwell- a dwelling place (94-97, 117-18). This tension between vast reaches of city with its seemingly endless opportunities and realities of everyday life is captured in vivid images from early twentieth-century photography and film (Lindner, After-Images; Lindner, New York Vertical) and is explored in contemporary fictional accounts that seek to reinvent American dream not as a quest for economic and social status but as a way of life-the originary dream of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (Cullen 35-58). Steven Millhauser's Martin Dressier: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1996) portrays a character who achieves, and tragically exceeds, his dream of rebuilding York City but cannot experience a meaningful personal relationship, even with his wife. Joseph O'Neill's Netherland (2009) rewrites this version of American dream in two interwoven stories: narrator's tale of a character who is destroyed by his dream of limitless and saga of his own attempts to rebuild his fragile relationship with his wife and son, played out in post-9/11 London and York. Atticus Lish's Preparation for Next Life (2014) rethinks and questions even dream of personal freedom and happiness for a man and woman at margins of York City's economic life, whose highly emotional and ultimately tragic love story is shattered by War in Iraq and trauma and neglect experienced by returning soldiers; by violence, drugs, and alcohol; and by restrictions on employment opportunities and threat of arrest, deportation, or imprisonment of illegal immigrants.Historically, American dream has been most closely associated with success as measured by economic and social status (Cullen 3-10, 59102, 133-57; Samuel 1-11, 111-16, 144-47). Contemporary fictional accounts suggest, however, that for many Americans and indeed for many others old dream of success has become a quest for something much simpler and more fundamental: a new dream of meaningful personal relationships and honest work as a means of achieving a measure of human dignity and economic or even physical survival. In cultural history, essence of American dream has long been the notion of upward mobility, idea that one can, through dedication and with a can-do spirit, climb ladder of success and reach a higher social and economic position (Samuel 7). Its most tangible instantiation is ownership of an individual family home: No American Dream has broader appeal, and no American Dream has been quite so widely realized (Cullen 136). The dream persists, Lawrence R. Samuel believes, despite changing economic and social trends, and is enriched and revitalized by continual flow of immigrants into United States, their enthusiasm and energy to achieve great things rubbing off on all of us (202). Jim Cullen maintains, moreover, that dream has evolved in part due to this flow of immigrants, as the trend... toward greater acceptance and opportunity has gradually expanded from men to women, from Irish and German to Arab and Mexican populations, and from Jews to Muslims (188).In fiction, classic portrait of American dream is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), which captures this striving for economic and social status in narrator Nick Carraway's portrayal of nouveau riche Jay Gatsby and lavish home and extravagant parties that serve as emblems of his success. …