The Death of the Self? Narrative Form, Intertextuality, and Autonomy in Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End

Abstract

• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from Discovery Research Portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain. • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 13. Sep. 2020 intertextual references into the novel, some more overt than others. Taken together, these features reveal the novel's wider ambition to explore the notion of subjectivity and the erosion of the self under capitalist structures. The frequent references to Emersonian selfreliance serve to position this exploration within the complex debate regarding Emerson's own views on capitalism and the individual. Ferris's novel is remarkable because he deals with these issues not only at the thematic level, but also by weaving through the structure of his narrative. Critics read the book as comic depiction of office life and politics, a critique of corporate America, and an attempt to capture both the exhilaration of the dotcom bubble and the gloom of its subsequent bursting. Reviewers did mention one of the novel's most prominent features, its use of the first person plural narrative voice, but on the whole they looked no further than asserting that it was an apt choice for the book's office setting. James Poniewozik, reviewing for the New York Times, described it as an "exotic trick play of a device," noting that it was appropriate for representing "groupthink." David Burr Gerrard thought it conveyed successfully the way that "the frustrated ambitions and petty resentments of office workers can coalesce into one giant, catty consciousness." Critics were also reluctant to consider the relationship between the book's comic nature and its preoccupation with unfunny issues such as the loss of a child, breast cancer, and redundancy. Poniewozik found the story "acidly funny," but didn't quite explain how the humor might sit with the more serious subject-matter. Carrie O'Grady, reviewing for the Guardian, concluded that it is "hard to work out, in the end, whether Ferris's novel is funny or sad."