The Capital of Elsewhere: Places, Fictions, Houstons
Abstract
This study examines the manner in which fictional works illuminate the complex identity
of place by investigating authors associated with a single American city, Houston, Texas,
focusing chapter length studies on four: Donald Barthelme, Rick Bass, Farnoosh Moshiri, and
Tony Diaz. Its methodological framework is the “geocritical” approach, wherein, as stated by
Bertrand Westphal, “[t]he study of the viewpoint of an author or of a series of authors . . . will be
superseded in favor of examining a multiplicity of heterogeneous points of view, which all
converge in a given place, the primum mobile of the analysis.”
This multifocal approach reveals Houston as a place of unusual juxtapositions formed by
freeway culture, fluidity of categories due to a lack of zoning regulations, a “timelessness”
resulting from constant bulldozing of the past, and a powerful concern for market forces owing
to a laissez-faire attitude towards business and regulation, brought together in what architect
Peter Rowe labels the city’s “ever-present and unvarnished capacity for destabilization and
shape-shifting.” Variations of the place-experience of Houston based on the four authors’
heterogeneous viewpoints are examined, and potential drawbacks of the geocritical model in
identifying the nature of place through the lens of literature are explored.
Subject
Houstongeocriticism
Westphal, Bertrand
Barthelme, Donald
Bass, Rick
Moshiri, Farnoosh
Diaz, Tony
zoning
feeder roads
Citation
Hudder, Clifford Wallace (2018). The Capital of Elsewhere: Places, Fictions, Houstons. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A & M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /173449.