National stories and narrative voice in the fiction of Joshua Ferris

In his début novel, Then We Came to the End (2007), Joshua Ferris narrates his story of a pre-9/11 Chicago advertising agency in the first-person plural. Such narrative experimentation recurs across his fiction and is often linked to national concerns. This essay analyzes narrative voice, personal p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Maxey, Ruth
Format: Article
Published: Taylor & Francis 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/36298/
Description
Summary:In his début novel, Then We Came to the End (2007), Joshua Ferris narrates his story of a pre-9/11 Chicago advertising agency in the first-person plural. Such narrative experimentation recurs across his fiction and is often linked to national concerns. This essay analyzes narrative voice, personal pro- nouns, and the state of the nation, investigating a writer whose work has received much popular attention but little academic interest to date.