About

John Duvall is the Margaret Church Distinguished Professor of English and serves as the Interim Department Head at Purdue University's College of Liberal Arts. His research primarily focuses on 20th and 21st-century American fiction, with particular interests in modernism, postmodernism, and issues of racial and sexual identity within these contexts. Recently, Duvall has examined modernist print culture, leading to the publication of a scholarly edition of William Faulkner's 1949 collection of detective fiction, Knight's Gambit, which he restored to include more than 4,000 works cut by magazine editors. This edition was published in 2022 and released as a Vintage International trade paperback by Penguin Random House in 2024. Duvall has authored several influential books, including Race and White Identity in Southern Fiction, Don DeLillo's UNDERWORLD, The Identifying Fictions of Toni Morrison: Modernist Authenticity and Postmodern Blackness, and Faulkner's Marginal Couple: Invisible, Outlaw, and Unspeakable Communities. He has also edited seven essay collections on topics ranging from 9/11 narratives to modernist and postmodernist literary approaches. His scholarly work contributes significantly to the understanding of American fiction, modernist print culture, and issues of identity in literature.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• History
• Law
• Literature
• Simulation
• Economics
• Environmental protection
• Physics
• Engineering
• Philosophy
• Archaeology
• Environmental ethics
• Genealogy
• Finance
• Ethnology
• Ecology
• Anthropology
• Psychology
• Geography
• Art
• Biology

Selected publications

• The Fruits of the LOA

  American Literary History · 2024-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The marketing claims of the Library of America (LOA) reveal that this institution functions within the tradition of such middlebrow publishing ventures as The Harvard Classics and the Modern Library. All such ventures assure consumers that cultural cache can be theirs through brand loyalty. LOA’s brand identity, however, is fraught with contradictions. While claiming to continue the legacy of highbrow literary critic Edmund Wilson, LOA increasingly publishes volumes devoted to pulp genres that would have been anathema to Wilson. While English departments have been questioning notions of the canon throughout LOA’s history, the publisher, founded in 1980, insists that its books define the canon of US literature. The professoriate, however, has largely ignored LOA’s claims regarding great literature because the publisher also claims to uphold the standards of great scholarship. These brand contradictions serve as a context for assessing a recent addition to LOA’s core collection, William Faulkner: Stories, edited by Theresa M. Towner. I contrast Towner’s editorial methods with those of Joseph Blotner and Noel Polk, who edited LOA’s five volumes of Faulkner’s novels between 1985 and 2003, in order to address what we mean when we say a text is authoritative and corrected.

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• Beasts in the Mississippi Jungle:

  University Press of Mississippi eBooks · 2023-06-21

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Beasts in the Mississippi Jungle

  University Press of Mississippi eBooks · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Genealogy

  This essay argues that the blandishments of a fetishized whiteness ultimately override the painful racial knowledge Ike Mcaslin gleans from the family plantation ledgers and lead him to fashion a lineage founded in Indigenous and animal kinship and in the “nonbiological homosocial” bonds of the hunting camp—in effect closing rather than balancing the books on the Black McClaslins and ethnically cleansing his own ancestry. As the author goes on to show, however, the nominally all-male, non-Black world that Ike seeks in the Big Woods proves far too unstable to prop up his project. Instead, it teems with unpredictable, uncontrollable energies, particularly in the intimacy between Boon Hogganbeck and the great hunting dog Lion.

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• Editor’s Note

  Modern fiction studies · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Psychology

  Editor’s Note John N. Duvall This is my final issue as editor of MFS, and I’m pleased that my editor-ship ends with Paul B. Armstrong’s excellent special issue, “Cognitive Modernisms,” that follows. I began working as the associate editor of the journal in January 1999 and took over as editor in the summer of 2001. It’s been a privilege, a pleasure, and an education. Over the years, I’ve vetted more than 6,000 submissions and seen close to 600 essays (and twice as many book reviews) through production. I’ll miss reading those submissions that made me excited to turn the pages—even after the pages became virtual in our online submission system. I’ll miss the bonhomie of our little staff that always has taken pride in never missing a deadline for getting issues to Johns Hopkins University Press. I’ll even miss the impromptu meetings to discuss the minutia of a grammatical issue or to think through how we should cite some strange text not covered by the MLA Handbook. Much less will I miss asking for volunteer labor—readers for essays and book reviewers. I’ve made more than 20,000 such requests over the last two decades. I called not only on members of our splendid Editorial Board but also on hundreds of people with specialized knowledge related to various submissions. Thanks to each and every one of you who answered the call in the service of the profession. Without your intellectual input, MFS simply couldn’t operate. Beginning with Volume 69, Robert Marzec, my associate editor since fall 2007, will take over as editor. Bob took the lead in editing several special issues, most notably “Modern Fiction and the Ecological” (Fall 2009) and “Anthropocene Fictions” (Winter 2018). Joining [End Page 599] him as associate editor is our colleague, Maren Linett, who has twice guest-edited special issues—“Modernism’s Jews/Jewish Modernisms” (Summer 2005) and “Cripping Modernism” (Spring 2019). Without question, MFS will be in good hands for years to come. So many people have helped make MFS a crucial outlet for scholarship on modernist and contemporary fiction. Prior to Bob Marzec, Siobhan Sommerville and Nancy J. Peterson served as my associate editors. Over the years, I’ve relied on the dedicated labor of some of the very best of Purdue’s English doctoral students who have been my editorial assistants. More than simply correcting MLA citation and documentation, the editorial assistants wrote countless queries to authors so that the work appearing in our pages would be not only intellectually stimulating, but also clear, concise, and correct. Here’s a chronological list of the editorial assistants who worked for MFS during my editorship: Diana Gilroy, Celeste Hines, Angela Laflen, Geoffrey Stacks, Carol Fadda-Conrey, Martin Whitehead, Monica Osborne, Rebecca Nicholson-Weir, Michael Mauritzen, Jason Buchanan, Paul X. Rutz, Aaron DeRosa, Stella Setka, Jason Dodge, Rebekah Mitsein, Leah Pennywark, Shaun Clarkson, Marc Diefenderfer, Elizabeth Boyle, Daniel Froid, Alejandra Ortega, Narim Kim, Allyn Pearson, and Matt Morgenstern. “Thank you” doesn’t begin to express my gratitude. William Breichner, Director of the Journals Division at JHUP has always been great to work with. Thanks, Bill, for all you’ve done to support and promote MFS. And finally, kudos to our contributors. You made my job easy. I’ve always said that it would be hard to publish a bad issue because of the consistently high quality of the submissions that came across my desk. I’m not retiring and will remain a member of the Purdue Advisory Board of MFS. I may even read a submission now and then if Bob or Maren ask me. But for now, my work here is done. [End Page 600] Copyright © 2022 Purdue Research Foundation

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• Faulkner and Print Culture

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2022-06-23

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Immediately following World War II, none of the novels modernist scholars now consider to be William Faulkner’s major works were still in print.1 By 1950, however, paperback reissues of Faulkner’s novels were selling millions of copies. Understanding this sea change is the work of print culture studies, which focuses on all matters surrounding the appearance of an author’s work as a material artifact. Such studies examine not only the real capital generated by the publishing industry (from acquisition to marketing and distribution), but also the symbolic capital that accrues to the author, the publisher, and the consumer.

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• Research Methods in Psychology (PSYC 362) Posters: Manipulated Arousal and the Threat-Focus Effect on Memory

  2020-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Debts of Honor, Narrative Authority, and Southern Manhood in “Knight’s Gambit”

  ˜The œFaulkner journal · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Abstract: This essay considers how a particular trace of Faulkner’s 1942 short-story draft of “Knight’s Gambit,” which he failed to place in any mass-market magazine, clarifies the stakes of his final 1949 novella with the same title. In the draft, the key motive for Max Harriss’s attempted murder of Gualdes (Gualdres in the published version) involves the repayment of a gambling debt. In revising, Faulkner recognized the weakness of the original motive. But while the novella completely changes Max’s motive, it does not erase male gambling debts as much as it displaces them throughout the narrative. While chess is the central metaphor in “Knight’s Gambit,” poker is nevertheless a crucial element in Gavin Stevens’ mentoring of his nephew, Chick Mallison. Learning the complementary narrative structures of chess (gambits) and poker (gambling), Chick achieves something unusual in the Faulkner canon: a young white Southern male’s successful movement into manhood.

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• Beasts in the Mississippi Jungle: Ike McCaslin's Queer Animal Kinship

  2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• An Error in Chemistry

  ˜The œFaulkner journal · 2019-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  t was Joel Flint himself who telephoned the sheriff that he had killed his wife.And when the sheriff and his deputy reached the scene, drove the twenty-odd miles into the remote back-country region where old Wesley Pritchel lived, Joel Flint himself met them at the door and asked them in.He was the foreigner, the outlander, the Yankee who had come into our county two years ago as the operator of a pitch-a lighted booth where a roulette wheel spun against a bank of nickel-plated pistols and razors and watches and harmonicas-in a travelling street carnival and who when the carnival departed had remained, and two months later was married to Pritchel's only living child: the dim-witted spinster of almost forty, who until then had shared her irascible and violent-tempered father's almost hermit-existence on the good though small farm which he owned.But even after the marriage, old Pritchel still seemed to draw the line against his son-in-law.He built a new small house for them two miles from his own, where the daughter was presently raising chickens for the market.According to rumor old Pritchel, who hardly ever went anywhere anyway, had never once entered the new house, so that he saw even this last remaining child only once a week.This would be when she and her husband would drive each Sunday in the second-hand truck in which the son-in-law marketed the chickens, to take Sunday dinner with old Pritchel in the old house where Pritchel now did his [end ts 1] own cooking and housework.In fact, the neighbors said the only reason he allowed the sonin-law to enter his house even then was so that his daughter could prepare him a decent hot meal once a week.So for the next two years, occasionally in Jefferson, the county seat, but more frequently in the little cross-roads hamlet near his home, the sonin-law would be seen and heard too.He 1 was a man in the middle forties, 1 Possibly Faulkner intended "Here." The typescript reads "Her" and Dannay strikes the "r." "He" makes sense, but "Here" would make the narrator's voice more conversational.

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• "An Error in Chemistry": The Final Typescript

  ˜The œFaulkner journal · 2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  "An Error in Chemistry":The Final Typescript John N. Duvall (bio) The version of "An Error in Chemistry" we read today in the Vintage International edition of Knight's Gambit is the same one readers of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (EQMM) encountered in the June 1946 issue. In setting the type for the first edition of Knight's Gambit in 1949, Random House simply used tearsheets from EQMM, and every subsequent edition of this collection, featuring Gavin Stevens's detective work, uses the text as copyedited by Frederic Dannay. Along with his cousin Manfred Bennington Lee, Dannay began writing popular detective fiction in 1928 under the pen name Ellery Queen. However, Dannay alone edited EQMM, which was established in 1941. I present here an edition of "An Error in Chemistry," based on the copyedited typescript, that restores, as nearly as possible, Faulkner's final prepublication intentions for this story. Although Dannay was an important advocate for Faulkner's fiction and introduced Yoknapatawpha County to a large postwar audience, the changes he made to "An Error in Chemistry" during copyediting point to why a scholarly edition of Knight's Gambit would sharpen our understanding of a key moment in Faulkner's career (following World War II but before Faulkner wins the Nobel Prize) when his critical reputation had ebbed. The story of Faulkner's connection to EQMM, as well as a fuller textual history of "An Error in Chemistry," form part of the larger narrative of how Faulkner entered the canon of American literature. In the third week of September 1945, Faulkner sent his agent, Harold Ober, a revised 28-page typescript of "An Error in Chemistry" for publication in EQMM. This final typescript of the story, part of the Frederic Dannay Papers at Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library, [End Page 1] has been largely unknown to Faulkner scholars for the last 73 years.1 The only typescript of "An Error in Chemistry" that has been readily available is the one Faulkner had originally sent to Ober in November 1940, but this version of the story had been rejected by all of Faulkner's preferred higher-paying venues, such as the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's. In briefly describing this earlier 22-page typescript, James B. Meriwether notes, "This carbon typescript differs from the published version" (77).2 When Dannay offered to buy "An Error in Chemistry," he asked "if [Faulkner] would clear up an ambiguity in the story" (Blotner 1189). The most substantive addition Faulkner made to the 1940 typescript likely explains why other magazines had rejected the story as originally written. The key plot moment simply did not explain. Faulkner assumed that everyone knew how to make a cold toddy. As a result, Joel Flint's fatal error—putting a spoonful of sugar directly into the whiskey—does not account for Stevens's response. In the revised version of the climax, Faulkner spells it out with 19 additional typed lines of text—one must mix the sugar with water first because sugar will not dissolve in whiskey, knowledge passed down from father to son. The addition clarifies what the error in chemistry actually is so that the reader better understands why Stevens immediately leaps on Flint, the imposter, for his failure to make the toddy as Wes Pritchel surely would have. But this is not the only change Faulkner makes in revising the story. While much of the difference in page length of the two typescripts can be accounted for by the fact that Faulkner uses smaller right-hand margins in the original typescript, he introduces several new paragraph breaks and also divides certain longer sentences into smaller units. At the same time, Faulkner, prior to reaching the major addition noted above, becomes more effusive as he retypes the story, often adding new embedded phrases in his final revision. Despite these differences, around three-fourths of the sentences in the two typescripts (particularly those involving dialogue) are identical. Why did Faulkner, who wrote disparagingly of pulp magazines in Light in August and If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, submit his story to a mass-market genre magazine? Family responsibilities and a contract dispute with Warner...

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Frequent coauthors

• Paul Sheehan

  Macquarie University

  1 shared

• Philip Weinstein

  University of Adelaide

  1 shared

• Alexander Lee

  University of Pennsylvania

  1 shared

• Keith Byerman

  1 shared

• Laura E. Tanner

  1 shared

• Rita Felski

  University of Virginia

  1 shared

• Marjorie Perloff

  Stanford University

  1 shared

• Keston Sutherland

  1 shared