158 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel
Of course, Thoreau and Emerson are patently wrong in this
last assertion, as the landscape of what is now the United States of
America was inhabited by a number of civilizations that are now
all but destroyed. What remains of these civilizations, which were
swept into small enclosures (Zuckerman mentions “reservations”),
are, as Levov illustrates, stealthily “leapfrogged” over in America’s
pastoral narrative. The sanitized quality of this narrative is further
illustrated in the scene in which Orcutt takes Levov on a “histor-
ically edifying” tour of Old Rimrock and its environs, taking in
dilapidated mines and railroads and the cemetery in which the
former’s relatives are buried (p. 303). Levov marvels at the range of
local history that Orcutt is able to recount, commenting self-dep-
recatingly that “his family couldn’t compete with Orcutt’s when it
came to ancestors—they would have run out of ancestors in about
two minutes” (p. 306). This moment perhaps best reveals Levov’s
na ï ve attempts to make his sense of cultural belonging and iden-
tity conform to a rigid historical narrative that suppresses its violent
“birth”—a move that puts him on a path toward tragic ruin. In this
sense, the “tragic silence” observable in Levov’s character is some-
thing he directly inherits from the mythical, historically sanitized
narrative of the American pastoral dream. It is for this reason that
I describe the text as an antipastoral satire of American neoliberal
capitalism, rather than a “postpastoral” novel.
What bears further analysis at this stage is the manner in which
Levov’s blindness to the social significance of his industrial work,
and a conviction that it is beneficial to all, appears to play a role in
the character’s tragic demise. By employing low-skilled black labor-
ers, Levov believes he is simply “spreading wealth around” and pro-
viding decent livelihoods to other, socially disadvantaged, groups.
L i ke Joh n ny A pple seed, he bel ie ve s h i m sel f to be nu r t u ri ng t he socia l
fabric of America by spreading the seed of industrial employment
and consumer capitalism in the deprived city. He takes pride in the
large portion of black operators employed in the factory, particularly
Vicky, the “black forelady [... who has worked for] thirty years with
Newark Maid,” and exults in the fact that through his employment
she has been able to raise two “twin sons, Newark Rutgers graduates,
Donny and Blaine, both of them now in medical school” (p. 161).