derosa, aaron - apocryphal trauma in el doctorow's book of daniel

8/13/2019 DeRosa, Aaron - Apocryphal Trauma in EL Doctorow's Book of Daniel

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Studies in the Novel , Volume 41, number 4 (Winter 2009). Copyright 2009 by theUniversity of North Texas. All rights to reproduction in any form reserved.

APOCRYPHAL TRAUMA IN E.L. DOCTOROWSTHE BOOK OF DANIEL

AARON DEROSA

They are changing our names in the sky,making their own insidious designs.I am one man with just the normal equipment,saying No, offering little essays to the wind.They are removing the vowels now.They are erasing the beginning and the end.

Stephen Dunn, The Bad Angels

Published in a time of bitter political upheaval, E.L. Doctorows 1971The Book of Daniel is a novel about the formation of communal narrativesand their traumatic implications. A historiographic meta ctional tale of the1951 Rosenberg trial and subsequent execution in 1953, Doctorows storyof the Isaacsons is told from the perspective of their surviving child Daniel.On the surface, Daniels rst person retrospective narrative of his parentsordeal seems like the traumatic repetition of what Cathy Caruth would callan unclaimed experience through a literal/literary mimetic performance. 1 Indeed much of the current criticism of the novel assumes the primacy ofthe parent-child relationship and, in turn, seizes the opportunity to discussthe signi cance of the Rosenberg trial (see Detweiler, Levine, Morgenstern,Pepper, and Tokarczyk). But this reading is complicated in that it is Susanssuicide attempt, not the death of his parents, that is the direct impetus forDaniels cathartic narrative. While the historical occasion of the Rosenberg-as-Isaacson execution is critical, its signi cance has obscured the more subtletrauma relations at stake in the novel and led to a misdiagnosis of Danielstrauma.


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has been almost entirely absent in the criticism. Unlike the BoD that posits itstitle character as an analyst of dreams, the BoS casts Daniel as a legal guardian

in a trial that reveals the threat of the collective construction of trauma andrecon gures Daniels relationship to his sister and her suicide along theselines. Recognizing this relationship reveals that Daniels narrative is not just aprocess of individual traumatic recovery from the death of his sister, but a moresweeping commentary on recovering personal trauma amidst the silencing oflarge, cultural narratives.

Trauma and Narrative At the heart of Doctorows novel rests a trauma. Who experiences that

trauma and what they experience, however, has not yet been fully explored.Perhaps the best place to start any discussion of trauma in contemporarydiscourse is with Cathy Caruths seminal work, Unclaimed Experience ,which has sparked a radical re-conception of trauma theory over the past twodecades. Extending Sigmund Freuds theories regarding war neuroses, Carutharticulates a de nition of trauma that acknowledges not only the risk of death,but more importantly the incomprehensibility of survival. Emphasizing theFreudian notion of a belated response, Caruth claims that a traumatic eventis never experienced directly; trauma is the very missing of the event. What

returns to haunt the victim, she tells us, is not only the reality of the violentevent but also the reality of the way that its violence has not yet been fullyknown (6). Because it cannot be fully known, it is unrepresentable and onlymanifests through literal, veridical repetition (in dreams, ashbacks, etc.).Caruths emphasis on the literal repetition has garnered signi cant resistanceparticularly from Ruth Leyswho rejects the notion that the experience oftrauma must be veridical. Insofar as every memory is subject to the effectsof distortion as it passes into narration (Leys 243), the insistence on a literal,

pure trauma seems untenable.

However, narration in whatever form, we are told, is crucial in traumaticcoping. Laurie Vickroy tells us that for healing to take place, survivors mustnd ways to tell their stories and to receive some social acknowledgment ifnot acceptance (19). Daniels survivor status has always been a subject ofcritical inquiry and the link to narration is made explicit in the title of PaulLevines article The Writer as Survivor. Michelle Tokarczyk follows suit,tracing Daniels behavior as indicative of survivor mentality, and more recentlyNaomi Morgenstern has attempted to resituate Daniels trauma through primalscene imagery. Daniels narrative has thus always had an historical association

with trauma studies. These studies have all opened up the text in a variety ofways, but do not go far enough in explaining the complex layers of trauma thatDoctorow weaves into his novel.

The assumed primacy of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson is understandable;Daniel uses their story to contextualize his life, he becomes obsessed with


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proving their innocence, and in general the story is about the Isaacson legacy.But curiously Daniels tale neither begins nor ends with the tragic execution

of his parents. Instead, fourteen years removed from their deaths, the narrativebegins with Susans suicide attempt and concludes with her funeral. Thecomplexly interwoven ashbacks and historical diatribes always come back tothe present-day plot where Daniel attempts to write his doctoral dissertation,ostensibly the text of the novel. Through the writing process, Daniel is forcedto confront the story of his parents execution, which he had tried to leavebehind. His narrative enacts a traumatic recovery process where Daniel placeshimself as both patient and analyst. The latter is an association he maintainswith his biblical counterpart from the BoD in which the title character interprets

the dreams, visions or apparitions of Babylonian kings (11). In many ways,this association is accurate: Doctorows Daniel (D-Daniel) 2 analyzes historicalgures for his dissertation, psychoanalyzes his sisters condition, and legallyanalyzes his parents case. Such has been the accepted critical reading ofDaniel (see Detweiler 76, Morgenstern 69, and Pepper 486). However, Caruth tells us that trauma is never simply ones own and thatwe are implicated in each others traumas (24). She connects individualsthrough a contagion model that suggests trauma can be passed on like aninfection from narrator to listener. But this construction relies on metaphor

and falls short of helping us examine intricate trauma relations with anyveracity. Yet, as Roger Luckhurst points out, Caruths work is still the placewhere the lines feeding notions of cultural trauma converge (13). Morepractical headway was made by Dominic LaCapra in Writing History, WritingTrauma where he analyzed public discourse as a manifestation of a repetitioncompulsion within a traumatized community. This is precisely JeffreyAlexanders project in the edited collection Cultural Trauma and Collective

Identity. Though he dismisses the work of Caruth and LaCapra as lay traumatheory for its lack of sociological rigor, he, along with the other contributors,

establish a methodology for analyzing the trauma process whereby carriergroups lay claim to a particular event as traumatic, initiating a negotiationprocess to determine the ideal and material consequences of that event forthe community (22). The resulting collective narrative can be said to be thedominant social interpretation of an event. (I use the term collective narrativehere because this process need not necessarily be traumatic. As Alexander tellsus, trauma is a socially mediated attribution, and as such, a community mayengage in the trauma process without becoming traumatized [8].)

Alexanders model is useful but also reveals the potential for such narratives

to repeat the original trauma or generate new ones. This is the subject ofShoshana Felmans work with the legal system in The Juridical Unconscious .On the one hand, Felman argues, trials can form a bene cial collectivenarrative of a trauma as in the 1961 Eichmann trial, in which the previouslysilenced and disparate voices of Shoah survivors were given a platform to


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voice their pain in the public sphere. The trial succeeded in creating a storyof the victims suffering and of the victims recovery of language outside

of the political and military story of the Second World War, establishing acollective trauma from the voices of the individual victims (128). Conversely,trials can repeat a private trauma as was the case in the 1995 O.J. Simpson case,where a murder trial was lost in the competing collective narratives that viedfor dominance. What was at stake was the historical (collective) trauma of thepersecutions, the abuses, the discrimination, [and] the murderssuffered byAfrican Americans, along with and in confrontation withthe persecutions,the abuses, the humiliations, and the murders suffered by women (and bybattered wives) (6). This con ict had the deleterious effect of repeating the

trauma: To the extent that the verdict erases Simpsons murdered wife, ormakes the murderand the murdered womantotally irrelevantto themessage, the trial in effect repeats the murder (77). The important distinctionto draw between these two examples is that the Eichmann trial established acollective trauma to foster communal healing whereas the Simpson trial wassubject to a collective narrative that erased the victim and repeated a privatetrauma. Felman would have us believe, then, that the challenge of the legalsystem in cases of trauma is maintaining objectivity in the face of collectivenarratives that seek to silence dissent, either overtly or covertly.

Americas cultural climate in the 1950s did not offer much room forresisting dominant narratives and very few assumed the innocence of theRosenbergs who were accused of being both Communists (which they neveradmitted to) and nuclear spies (which was never proven). Historian EllenSchrecker tells us that in the 50s, trials were the most powerful weapon inthe construction of the anti-Communist consensus and even before they hadtaken the stand, a verdict was fairly clear (22).

The weakness of the governments case did not preclude a conviction, for inthe superheated atmosphere of the trial in the spring of 1951, it was not hardfor the prosecutors to convince a jury of the Rosenbergs guilt. Nor, givenhis own conviction that the case was of earthshaking importance, did thetrial judge, Irving Kaufmanseriously hesitate about sentencing the two todeath. (34)

The Cold War fervor effectively erased the Rosenbergs from the trial, whichmay account, in part, for Ethels conviction for which, evidence has shown,there was never a case. Unlike Felmans summation of the Simpson trial thatsupposedly repeated the murders, the Rosenberg trial generated them. But the

executions of Julius and Ethel would only register as traumatic insofar as therewere those psychologically affected by the verdict; such was not the case inthe Rosenberg trial. 3

Doctorows reimagining of the trial through the eyes of their childrenposits the reverse. From the beginning, both Daniel and Susan struggle


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it as the last of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament (712). While theBoD is generally considered canonical, the Dartmouth Bible s placement of

the text as the last book of the Old Testament calls this choice into question inits headnotes as well as visually: the last page of Daniel faces the title pagefor The Apocrypha. D-Daniels references to the Dartmouth Bible s editorialnotes that directly link the BoD with the Apocrypha, and his awareness of themultiple Daniels, point to his familiarity with the BoS. In brief, the apocryphal tale tells of the beautiful Susanna who bathes inher garden while two elders lust after her from afar. Cornering her, they demandshe submit to them lest they tell the community she had done so anyway. Sherefuses and is brought to trial. The elders make their case, are taken at their

word, and Susanna would have been put to death if not for her prayers andthe subsequent intervention of Daniel, who questions the elders individually,unearths their lie, and puts them to death for their deception. Responding toGods summons, Daniel is asked to protect Susanna by taking on the role oflawyer, a very different responsibility from B-Daniel who is described as aninterpret[er] of dreams (11). While the analyst descriptor is not lost onA-Daniel, it is subordinate to the larger role of legal guardian. Perhaps one ofthe most troubling characteristics of A-Daniels legal representation is thesilence of the one he represents. Although he succeeds in protecting Susanna

from execution, he seemingly does so at her expense. Dillon acknowledges thisin his brief discussion of the apocryphal text:

No one asks Susanna if she has anything to saynot her husband, herparents, not even Daniel. Even though the narrators very rst sentenceasserted she maintained a blameless reputation, Susanna is not allowed tospeak. Furthermore, the narrator fails to note her response following therevised verdict; the whole focus shifts to Daniels triumph. To top off theneglect and abuse of Susanna, her story gets shoved out of the main body ofOld Testament works. (373)

Akin to the collective narratives that overwrite private trauma in Felmans Juridical Unconscious , Susannas adultery trial and near-execution are erasedin light of the pro-Daniel collective narrative that arises out of it. While Danielis held in great reputation in the sight of the people (Chamberlin and Feldman804), Susanna is silenced, her private trauma rewritten and repeated.

The relationship with Felman compels us to address to what degree thistrial might be a necessary failure. Today we might consider that the silenceitself is the trials speaking power. Written in the 1970s, the novel bears with it

a de nite understanding of the 50s as a rigidly conformist era characterized byloyalty oaths, blacklists, and suppressed dissent. This is evident in yet anotherintertextual reference that was sure to have crossed D-Daniels eye: CarlisleFloyds 1956 opera Susannah . Based loosely on the apocryphal story, Floydsversion is a McCarthy-era meditation on how people like to believe whats


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bad (Estren). Floyds retelling takes place in a small Tennessee town whereSusannahs dancing draws the ire of women and her bathing the lust of men.

After being raped by her pastor, she becomes the whore that the communityaccuses her of being. While Susannah lives, she does so at the expense ofher reputation and virtue, severing all ties with the community. Ultimately,all that is heard of Susannah by the community is the report of her shotgunscaring away would-be aggressors from her home. For Floyd it is hearsay,rumor, and social pressure that condemn Susannah and force her into isolationand silence, not the law. Contrary to the apocryphal tale, Susannah is allowedto speak but is never heard. Wildly popular, winner of numerous awards, andone of the most performed American operas in history, the image of Susannah/

Susanna/Susyanna would have most likely been familiar to Daniel.Though its potential repercussions for the novel abound, the apocryphaltext reveals two things at its core: the threat of the collective narrative anda fundamental change in Daniels perceived relationship to his sister fromanalyst to legal guardian. Daniel certainly recognizes both roles, evident inhis encounter with Susan at the sanitarium. The two barely communicate untilDaniel sighs and Susan is roused to speak. Patting him on the back, she states:Theyre still fucking us. Goodbye, Daniel. You get the picture (9). It is theonly time we hear her voice in the present of the novel (although the novels

ashbacks give her voice elsewhere) and the interaction acts as both summonsand condemnation. In terms of the latter, Susans physical contact echoes thereligiously symbolic laying on of hands, a ritual act of condemnation that hasits roots in Leviticus, where witnesses lay their hands on the accused beforehe or she is stoned (24:14). Such imagery is echoed in the BoS where the twoelders stood up in the midst of the people, and laid their hands upon [Susannas]head (Chamberlin and Feldman 804). Daniel acknowledges this transference,stating that Susan could restore in him the old cloying sense of family, thepsychological and legal guilt Daniel associates with the family name (9). The

religious undertones of the moment are brought to the fore as, immediatelyafter Daniels encounter with Susan, the narrative ashes back to Susans rstdeclaration of religious faith: a faith predicated on justice and condemnation.Hell get them all, she whispered. Hell get every one of them (10). Thenarratives return to the present is still marked by the language of the sacredprecursor text as Daniel manipulates Susans name, calling her Susy, mySusyanna (10).

Simultaneously, Susans call for divine intervention echoes Susannas cry:O everlasting Godthou knowest they have borne false witness against me,

and, behold, I must die (Chamberlin and Feldman 804). God does not directlyintervene, instead rais[ing] up the holy spirit of a young youth whose namewas Daniel (804). Doctorows text posits a similar situation where a trappedand helpless Susan calls for protection, her last utterance function[ing] asan enigmatic summons that Daniel cannot refuse (Morgenstern 69). Like


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Caruths voice of the other through which we bear witness to our trauma,Susans summons articulates a traumatic inheritance Daniel has heretofore

not acknowledged, one reinforced by the BoS. As we have seen, the BoS isostensibly a story about how a collective narrative erased the veridical event ofSusannas innocence. The verdict itself rests on a refusal to listen to the victimand A-Daniel is called on to expose the falsehood of the collective narrativethat has threatened Susannas life and honor. Similarly, D-Daniels visit tothe sanitarium and Susans summons is a call to recover the impetus for hersuicide attempt. What he comes to realize is that he had long since given uprights in Susans welfare (13). Indeed he goes so far as to acknowledge thatsome of the force that propelled her razor was supplied by [him] (29). Thus

Daniels traumatic inheritance moves beyond his survivor status in relationto his parents to include his sister. The fact that he may have been complicit inher suicide attemptas we will see in more depth, Daniel contributes to thecollective narrativemeans that any attempt to work through the trauma ofhis sisters death will require him to recover her narrative, even if that requirespointing the blame at himself or rehashing his traumatic past.

Daniels Traumatic Inheritance Having married, had a child, and taken the name of his adoptive parents,

Daniel has, to some degree, distanced himself from the legacy of his biologicalparents. This is not to suggest that Daniel does not suffer from the trauma ofhis parents execution. Certainly his abusive relationship towards his wife andchild, his manic disposition, and even the willful repression of his past all pointto the lingering damage the Isaacson executions have caused. At the very least,Daniel has gained critical distance from his past borne out in the alternatingnarrative styles. When Daniel narrates the biographical stories of his parents, hisprose is uid, elaborate, and meticulously self-conscious. The clarity of thesemoments starkly contrasts with the disparate, desperate narrative of the present

day, which is a raw jumble of biographical information, historical referents,and self-accusations. 5 The distinction is that Daniel has had time to articulatethe trauma of his parents execution over fourteen years, a privilege he does nothave in relating Susans story. Vickroy tells us that trauma writers tend to placetheir readers in disoriented positionsthrough shifts in time, memory, affect,and consciousness (28). Similarly, Daniels narrative in regards to his sisteris marked by detachment from others (as in Daniels blow up at the HowardJohnson), fragmentary asides (as in his references to Bukharin), dissociation(wavering between rst and third person), and ashbacks (the entire Isaacson

narrative). Traumatized by his sisters suicide attempt, Daniel must get the picture ofSusans tragedy in order to nd solace for himself. Apart from leaving Danielin a state of unresolved grief, Detweiler tells us that Susans suicide attemptleaves open the question of just why she took her life (70). Daniel indicates


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as much when he acknowledges that Susan has died of a failure of analysis(302), an accusation that implies that his health reveals success where she has

failed. To play the part of analyst he returns to the stacks, the derisive locusof inaction about which Susan harangued Daniel in the Christmas episode, inorder to nd Susans unrepresentable (Caruthian) trauma. He nds solacein the BoDs justi cation of his analyst status, but this is quickly temperedby the implications of the BoS that recon gure this dynamic. We might saythat Daniels analysis of the BoS leads him to reconsider his relationship tohis sister. Of course, Daniels position as analyst is problematized early onwhen he misremembers the few words that Susan offers in the sanitarium,confusing goodbye for good boy. But as Daniel narrates their relationship

he compulsively returns to the imagery of protectionism that culminates ina move to become Susans legal guardian, a realignment of his previouslyassumed role.

In the rst extended image of Daniel and Susans childhood, the childrenare led by the vice-like grip of Jacob Ascher to a rally for their parents. Thecore of this scene, however, is not Paul and Rochellethe images on theplacards are referred to as their parents whom Daniel has thus far in the textidenti ed as the Lewinsit is the relationship between Daniel and Susan thatdominates the scene. As Aschers violent speed and grip begin to hurt Susan

more and more, Daniel is the one to intervene, commenting Youre hurtingher arm, Mr. Ascher (18). When she complains of having something in hereye, it is Daniel that took his sister by the hand and led her into the doorwayof a shoe store where they were protected from the wind (19). The scenethen features two moments of separation: rst when Susan stops to rescueDaniels hat and next when the crowd hoists them over their heads and propelsthem towards the stage. In both instances, Daniel ghts to regain some type ofreassuring physical contact with Susan. To Daniel, she is only a little girl anddespite the unmistakable authority of the speaker who separates them on the

stage, still they held hands (22).This role is not necessarily self-assigned either. Rochelle praises him fortak[ing] such good care of [his] baby sister after Pauls arrest (124). Similarly,Ascher confronts the two after Rochelle is jailed, telling them they must go livewith their Aunt Frieda. Susan, assuming her mother has died, begins to grillAscher, but Ascher looks to Daniel to keep her in line: Daniel, I cannot goon explaining these things to her he snaps (146). Aschers curtness promptsSusan to cry and Daniel consoles her, calmly explaining to Ascher that shemisses our mother and father (146). When the children are eventually sent to

the shelter, a move that Susan resists vehemently, the shelters psychologistseeks out Daniel to nd ways to calm her. This is echoed in Daniels title to theepisode: Alone in the Cold War with Franny and Zooey (161), a referenceto J.D. Salingers novel in which the older brother (Zooey) must come to therescue of the younger sister (Franny). In all three of these episodes, Daniel


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casts himself in the role of protector (a role, it should be added, that requiresspeaking on Susans behalf).

This relationship changes after their parents are executed as they bothcope in mutually exclusive ways. Vickroy suggests that trauma narrativesthat show multiple accounts sometimes reinforce and sometimes challengeone another, illustrating...the potential for sharing and healing but also missedconnections, as when traumatic reactions isolate individuals with similarexperiences from one another (27). Studying families who have lost (orwill lose) family members to the death penalty, Susan Sharp states that it iscommon for the family members of someone accused of a capital crime [to]become vicarious offenders who nd themselves publicly shunned (7).

Sharp goes on to suggest that in order to deal with their public shunning as wellas the trauma of losing a family member to state-sponsored execution, familymembers respond in one of three ways: withdrawal from the community, angertowards it (speci cally the government), or by joining support networks(25). As noted, Daniel has certainly withdrawn from the Isaacson familyname and thus circumvented the vicarious offender label. Susan, on the otherhand, ercely attaches herself to her heritage. Im not ashamed of the name,she barks at Daniel. Im proud of who I am (80). Joining the New Leftsrevolutionary af liates such as the Students for a Democratic Society and the

Boston Resistance, Susan advocates tirelessly in the name of her parents in amanner she feels is the proper assumption of their legacy (79). Yet in spiteof her advocacy, she is not heard, least of all by Daniel who felt she had growntoo bright, too loud, too hysterically self-occupied (64).

This disparity in responses is evident at the Lewins Christmas dinner vemonths prior to Susans suicide attempt, where she seeks Daniels support forthe Isaacson Foundation, a brainchild of hers that would help support courtcosts for arrested revolutionaries. Daniel balks over the use of the Isaacsonname, complaining if you want to give your money away why not just do it,

why do you have to put a family tag on it? Why do you have to advertise?(80). Susan, conversely, wants Daniels participation because it would show aunanimity of family feeling, a proper assumption of their legacy by the Isaacsonchildren (10). But Daniel cannot accept this legacy as she does and haranguesSusan for call[ing] her own mother and father the Isaacsons! instead of theLewins (79). Susan directs her response at her foster father: My mother andfather were murderedwhy do you let [Daniel] sit here and do it again! (82).Susan reads Daniels disavowal of the Isaacson name as a betrayal, a betrayalthat she associates with those who condemned their parents. Susan says as

much in her letter, which Daniel receives after returning to the Lewins homefrom the sanitarium:

I have been thinking about last Christmas. Of course Im going aheadwith my plans but thats not the point. You couldnt have come on that


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way unless you believe the Isaacsons are guilty. Thats what I didnt wantto understand at the time. You think they are guilty. Its enough to takesomeones life away.

Someday, Daniel, following your pathetic demons, you are going todisappear up your own asshole. To cover the time until then, Im writing youout of my mind. You no longer exist. (77)

Susans note makes her own feelings on the matter abundantly clear, associatingDaniel with those who have condemned their parents if not of espionage thenof the collective narrative that has taken shape around the Isaacson name.Curiously, Susan does not refer to their parents as mom or dad or evenby their rst names: they are the Isaacsons. In light of her personal feelings

towards her parents, it reads as a jab at Daniel; Susan is acknowledging thatDaniel has accepted the collective narrative and only sees their parents as animpersonal image of the Isaacsons.

But if Susans actions here are condemnatory rather than conciliatory,then we must rethink the intent of her summons: Theyre still fucking us.Goodbye, Daniel. You get the picture. While most critics (and Daniel himself)assume the us refers to Daniel and Susan as the last surviving Isaacsons, thisdoes not seem entirely accurate in light of the fact that Daniel has been writtenout of her mind and so recently associated with the they who fuck. It seems

more likely that the us Susan mentions is the Isaacsons excluding Danielwho has renounced his family name as of their last encounter. Of course, Susandoes not write off Daniel completely. As the letter indicates, there is a delaybefore Daniel disappears up his own asshole: Someday is not today (77).The vague pronouns afford exibility: Daniel can choose they or us. Tochoose they is to go back to New York with his wife and son and withdrawfrom the family again. To become an us is to reassume the Isaacson monikerand give voice to Susans trauma by clearing her (and the familys) name. Suchis the charge of the apocryphal Daniel, but more speci cally for Doctorows

Daniel, the demand of his grandmother who prophesied that Daniel wouldreclaim [the Isaacsons] from defeat and exonerate [their] having lived and

justify [their] suffering (70). Tokarczyk rightly identi es this as a survivormission, but it is his survival in light of Susans suicide attempt, not his statusas a surviving Isaacson (7). Thus, Daniels inquiry into his parents story isless about determining their guilt or innocence per se than about ful lling hisApocryphal role by protecting Susan. To do this, Daniel must challenge thecollective narrative that has ostensibly appropriated the traumatic moment oftheir parents execution and must give voice to his sister.

The silence of the star sh Susans trauma seems much clearer to establish: she still has yet to workthrough the trauma of her parents execution. But more than this, Susanstruggles to work past the collective narrative codi ed in the legal verdict


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and perpetuated by Daniel. Her effort to create the Isaacson Foundation isindicative of this desire to subvert the dominant historical account that repeats

the trauma by erasing radicals from the record. Robert Lewin, her adoptivefather, appropriately links the Foundation to both Susans physical andpsychological health (155), reminding us of the traumatic repercussions thesenarratives have had over Susan. Dillon con rms this reading, suggesting thatlike the Apocryphal Daniel and Susanna, Doctorows novel indicts the failureof laws, prejudice that overwhelms laws, and the irreparable in uence of falseauthorities (374). However, these narratives are not con ned to the of ciallegal record that deprived Susan of her parents; she comes across alternateversions of the collective narrative that are complicit in the erasure of her

private trauma. This is evident in Susans relationship with the New Left andits most prominent member, Artie Sternlicht. While Sternlicht does not believein the Isaacsons guilt, he certainly does not support the methodology of theirlegal defense. Your folks didnt know shit, he tells Daniel. The way theyhandled themselves at their trial was pathetic. I mean they played it by theirrules. The governments rules.They blew the whole goddamn thing! (151).For Sternlicht, the Isaacsons were simply a part of the established system, andSusan has dif culty convincing Sternlicht otherwise.

Beyond Sternlicht, though, it is clear that Susans political resistance

can never speak her trauma. Vickroy reminds us that the social support ofgroups or movements that encourage bearing witness is essential for individualand group survival of trauma (19), the absence of which can be caustic. Danieldescribes the repercussions of the of cial institutional narrative for himself:I live in constant and degrading relationship to the society that destroyedmy mother and father.Nothing I do will result in anything but an additionalline in my le.I am deprived of the chance of resisting my government(72). Daniel goes on: If I were to assassinate the President, the criminalityof my family, its genetic criminality, would be established. There is nothing

I can do, mild or extreme, that they cannot have planned for (72). Danielunderstands that he has been deprived of the right to be dangerous preciselybecause anything and everything is expected of him and if he were to becomepublically militant Daniel Isaacson all their precautions would have been

justi ed (72). He can neither erase the government dossier, nor speak beyondthe limits of the established narrative. But whereas Daniel withdrew from hisfamily name and circumvented this issue up until Susans suicide attempt,Susan joined the New Left to nd her voice and combat these narratives. Butthe Left, like Daniel, nds Susan to be too bright, too loud, too hysterically

self-occupied to be heard.Susans silence in the public sphere is inscribed in the private sphere afterher suicide attempt in the image of the star sh position that Susan stages onher bed in the sanitarium. Her body expands outward, demanding attention, yetremains utterly silent. There are few silences deeper than the silence of thestar sh (207), Daniel tells us. But this has always been the problem:


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You dont talk, you dont reinforce their sense of you. All they have is myword. I remember your voice, but how can I expect them to remember yourvoice. You cant write out voice. All I can say about your voice is that it isso familiar to me that I cannot perceive the world except with your voiceframing the edges of my vision. It is on the horizon and under my feet. Theworld has always been washed in Susans voice.It lies at the heart of thematter. (209)

According to Daniel, Susans failure is her inability to speak. We may read hisblaming of Susan for her silence as the callous words of a brother who admitsshortly thereafter that he would not be sad if she died, but the novel resists thisreading. Daniel is principally concerned with Susans well-being and indeed

his own. Daniels blame is directed at Susan, but the indictment is of Danielsown failure to protect her.Daniel links the realization of this blame through the image of the

heart, a symbol of inheritance. Earlier, he imagines tracing an arrow in amedical textbook between pictures of his grandmother, mother, and Susanthat describes the progress of madness inherited through the heart (71). Ifvoice is the heart of the matter, and the heart is the locus of inheritance, thenDaniel is on his way to solving his earlier question: WHAT IS THE MATTERWITH MY HEART? (17). The answer is that, like Susan, Daniel has also

been silenced by the collective narrative, a silence that repeats a trauma he hadassumed he was over. Thus when Daniel spies on Susan in the star sh position,Daniel nally understands his mission: to speak the private trauma of their parents deaths to exonerate their family name. Daniels reanalysis of Susanssummons is revealing:

THEYRE STILL FUCKING US. She didnt mean Paul and Rochelle. Thatswhat I would have meant. What she meant was rst everyone else and nowthe Left. The Isaacsons are nothing to the New Left. And if they cant makeit with them who else is there? YOU GET THE PICTURE. GOODBYE,

DANIEL. (153)

While Daniel focuses on the question of who is fucking them, Danielsreordering of Susans summons is problematic because it is a mishearing ofSusans nal words. He reorders sentences two and three to create a morecoherent, uid line: Theyre still fucking us. You get the picture. Goodbye,Daniel. In doing so, however, Daniel irrevocably changes the meaning ofthe phrase. Read in Daniels language, Susan recognizes her own frailty andasks for Daniel to ll in the gaps of her language. She says that theyre still

fucking us, but the vague pronouns provide no clues. In Daniels gurationof the phrase, this is the picture that he must get. In other words, Daniel isempowered with the knowledge to identify the pronouns. As such, Susaninnocuously dismisses Daniel with a goodbye. However, read in Susanslanguage (Theyre still fucking us. Goodbye, Daniel. You get the picture),


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and Susans correlative summons: Hell get them all. At the same time,Daniel states, I initiated discussions with the Lewins with the end in mind

of becoming Susans sole legal guardian (207). Just as A-Daniel launchesa cross-examination of the two elder judges, D-Daniel also launches hisown legal investigation to determine Susans innocence. That the subject ofthe investigation is his parents is not important since proving them innocentwould free Susan from the collective narrative that asserts their guilt. Theswitch to the legal posture coincides with a more formal, journalistic tone tothe narrative, taking a different angle in the traumatic coping than the failedstrategy of nostalgia and anger. I have put down everything I can rememberof their actions and conversations in this period prior to their arrests Daniel

laments. Or I think I have. Sifted it through my hands. I nd no clues eitherto their guilt or innocence. Perhaps they are neither guilty nor innocent (130).The uncertainty propels Daniel into reinvestigating his parents case but hisinvestigation meets the same resistance as Susan faced: alternate versions ofthe same collective narrative that speaks the guilt of his parents. Few people Daniel encounters believe in his parents guilt as de ned bythe court, but they maintain that the Isaacsons were guilty nonetheless. JackFein, the New York Times reporter, agreed that the Isaacsons were framed, butthat doesnt mean they were innocent babes. If nothing else, Fein suggests,

They acted guilty (214). When Daniel approaches Jacob Aschers wife withthe question of their innocence, she responds They were not innocent ofpermitting themselves to be used. And of using other people in their fanaticism.Innocent. The case ruined Jacobs health (216). Amidst this tumult of voices,Daniel nds himself in the same isolated position he felt in his jail cell andfeeling similar to Susan whose support networkSternlicht and the NewLeftalso asserted the dominant collective narrative. Daniel recognizes thiswhen he goes to speak with Fein. Im laying the Foundation on him and hewants to talk to the responsible adults. It occurs to me that I am dealing with

a professional. The son of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson, who were executed adozen years ago for crimes against the nation, has established a Foundationto clear their name (213). Daniel realizes that the story is being written tot a particular mold. He recalls a moment from his childhood when Susanand I held candles in our hands and rested our foreheads on the White Housefence. That is a famous news picture. It appears as if were looking throughprison bars (253). Here too the image is decontextualized and co-opted to t. The rally scene discussed earlier reduces Paul and Rochelle to postersand Daniel and Susan to generalized victims of political persecution: images

of suffering, individuals without stories.Geoffrey Harpham tells us that such images are delicate andmurderous, that they are modes of liberation and torture (83). Any narratorconcerned to write a factual account would worry about them becausethey have an uncertain relationship to the narrative that binds them (83).


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Harphams images resonate with Felmans trials, suggesting that they bothdecontextualize narrative and thus [repeat] the trauma (Felman 5). Meeting

with Robert, Daniel realizes that Ascher himself recognized the potentialtraumatizing repercussions of such collective narratives. In a letter to Robert,Ascher described the logic of the state that ties the Isaacsons to the Kremlin.They are held to account for the Soviet Union. They are held to account forthe condition of the world today. And all the indictment states is that they metwith Mindish in the kitchen of their own house (205). He insists on focusingon the speci cs of the Isaacson trial despite his own clients attention to thecollective narratives taking shape. (Paul views it as a Jewish lynching [197] andRochelle describes it as a collective ritual [202].) Similarly, Robert tells Daniel

that [l]ong before their trial the Isaacsons were tried and found guilty in thenewspapers (221). Roberts solution was to to prove the Isaacsons innocentby proving Mindish innocent (224). Rather than discrediting the principlewitness against the Isaacsons (Mindish), Roberts strategy was to challenge thecollective narrative that associated all foreigners with communism.

Daniel ies out to confront Mindish in the hopes of nding a nalexoneration, but he only nds guilt. The now-senile old man spends his daysriding the Mad Hatters Teacup ride in Disneyland. When he nally approachesthe one man he blamed for his parents plight, Daniel identi es himself as an

Isaacson: Hello, Mr. Mindish. Im Daniel Isaacson. Im Paul and Rochellesson (293). Daniel watches as Mindish is restored to life (293). In wonderhe raised his large, clumsy hand and touched the side of my face. He found theback of my neck and pulled me forward and leaned toward me and touchedthe top of my head with his palsied lips (293). Detweiler associates this witha biblical patriarchal kiss that is also a Judas kiss, the kiss of the betrayer(75). But the apocryphal text suggests that Mindish stands in not for Judas, butthe condemnatory elders, dramatizing a laying on of hands that interminablymark Daniel to his namesake. In this moment, Daniel does not just hear Susan,

he metaphorically becomes her. Daniel implies as much in the paragraphimmediately following as he describes a series of failed heart transplants. Aswe have seen, for Daniel the heart is symbolic of inheritance and voice, bothof which Daniel assumes in his confrontation with Mindish. But Daniel alsoacknowledges that heart rejection is a problem. The body attacks its ownnew heart as it would any foreign object. The heart is attacked by the bodysantibodies. It is destroyed (293). The transplant imagery suggests a visceralpassing on of Susans heart, even if there is the risk that he, too, will die as aresult.

Seal the book That Daniel understands this moment, indeed his whole survivor mission,as a religious journey is evident in the narration of his parents execution.Daniel states that, after dismissing the rabbi from the execution room, Rochelle


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a point of convergence between trauma and collective narrative and one ofthose places seems to be the criminal justice system. The ability for trials to

repeat and generate trauma, but also af rm and salve, points to trial as a criticalcrossroads in trauma theory. Roger Luckhurst has shown how trauma theoryhas always been intimately tied to the courts, primarily for insurance purposes(23). But underlying the nancial importance is the importance of communityfor healing. Courts do not administer justice, they codify narratives that canbe detrimental to our psychological and social health. In the early history oftrauma studies, trauma victims were publically ostracized when the conditionwas associated with hysteria, which equated it with a shameful, effeminatedisorder, often dismissed as a form of disease imitationor malingering (23).

This type of resistance exists today in those who would deny the existenceof PTSD to returning soldiers or victims of Hurricane Katrina in spite of itscodi cation in the DSM-IV. Vickroy warns us of such dismissal: collectiverepression and suppression may bring temporary comfort but carry theirown destructive costs: further victimization, lost human connections, andunresolved anguish (4). Traumatic healing always inheres some form ofsocial recognition, and the sweeping cultural narratives that discredit victimsas crazy operate in opposition to this healing process.

Trials, Felman tells us, offer hope in that they can also successfully fail

insofar as they generate their own speaking power. If this is the case, we mustconsider that it is always mediated. Just as Daniel lters Susans narrativeorA-Daniel speaks for Susannathe courts are a further remove. Particularlyin trauma cases, very little can be generalized. This is why the DSM-IVsentry for PTSD describes a syndrome, a loose constellation of symptoms thatmay or may not be indicative of a trauma; in other words, the devil is in thedetails. This is precisely the lesson of the BoS where Daniel indicts the elderson a technicalitya minor inconsistency in their narratives. Such minutiaeinevitably fail to thrive in collective narratives that are conformist in nature.

This is particularly true of the stultifying cultural condition of the 1950s aswell as the counter-cultural revolutions of the 1960s. This is evident whenthe protestors liberate Daniel by force in the Columbia library, implying thethreat of collective narratives even within counter-culture. The threat to theindividual is evident in Daniels last biblical invocation to Go thy way Daniel:

for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end, a decree thatseems to close down narrative and, in turn, healing (303). But we might alsoread this ending as a call away from analysis, towards action. The BoS provideshope in that the necessary failure of the trial has granted A-Daniel speaking

power and great reputation. In turn, if Doctorows novel is to providespeaking power to the Isaacson/Rosenberg trial, it is a call to understand thesetrials as failures and explore precisely what that might mean.

PURDUE UNIVERSITY


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Estren, Mark J. Susannah, Timeless and Tantalizing. The Washington Post 15 November2006: C05.

Felman, Shoshana. The Juridicial Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century .

Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002.Fiedler, Leslie A. Afterthoughts on the Rosenbergs. The Collected Essays of Leslie Fiedler .

Vol. 1. New York: Stein and Day, 1971: 25-45.Harpham, Geoffrey Galt. E.L. Doctorow and the Technology of Narrative. PMLA 100.1

(1985): 81-95.LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2001.Levine, Paul. E.L. Doctorow: The Writer as Survivor. E.L. Doctorow: A Democracy of

Perception . Ed. Herwig Friedl and Dieter Schulz. Essen: Blaue Eule, 1988. 61-73.Leys, Ruth. Trauma: A Geneaology . Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000.Luckhurst, Roger. The Trauma Question . London: Routledge, 2008.Morgenstern, Naomi. The Primal Scene in the Public Domain: E.L. Doctorows The Book of

Daniel . Studies in the Novel 35.1 (2003): 68-88.

Pepper, Andrew. State Power Matters: Power, the State and Political Struggle in the Post-WarAmerican Novel. Textual Practice 19.4 (2005): 467-91.

Schrecker, Ellen. The Age of McCarthyism . New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2002.Sharp, Susan F. Hidden Victims: The Effects of the Death Penalty on Families of the Accused .

New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2005.Tokarczyk, Michelle. From the Lions Den: Survivors in E.L. Doctorows The Book of Daniel .

Critique 29.1(1987): 3-15.Vickroy, Laurie. Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction . Charlottesville: U of Virginia

P, 2002.

derosa, aaron - apocryphal trauma in el doctorow's book of daniel

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