The Multiverse of Office Fiction

ISBN-13: 9783031126901 / Angielski / Miękka / 2023

Masaomi Kobayashi

Opis

The Multiverse of Office Fiction liberates Herman Melville’s 1853 classic, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” from a microcosm of Melville studies, namely the so-called Bartleby Industry. This book aims to illuminate office fiction—fiction featuring office workers such as clerks, civil servants, and company employees—as an underexplored genre of fiction, by addressing relevant issues such as evolution of office work, integration of work and life, exploitation of women office workers, and representation of the Post Office. In achieving this goal, Bartleby plays an essential role not as one of the most eccentric characters in literary fiction, but rather as one of the most generic characters in office fiction. Overall, this book demonstrates that Bartleby is a generative figure, by incorporating a wide diversity of his cousins as Bartlebys. It offers fresh contexts in which to place these characters so that it can ultimately contribute to an ever-evolving poetics of the office.

Spis treści

Prologue Edward Hopper, or Bartleby on Bartlebys.- Part I Reading Out.- Chapter One Advice Columnist, Auto-Recall Specialist, Cyber Capitalist: Bartleby and His Kinsmen.- Chapter Two At Work, At Home, At Life: Bartleby and His Kinswomen.- Part II Farther Along.- Chapter Three Poe, Kafka, and Far Beyond: Bartleby and His Contexts.- Chapter Four Post-9/11, Posthuman, Post Office: Between and Beyond Bartlebys.- Epilogue Every Office Tells a Story and So Does Every Bartleby.

O autorze

Masaomi Kobayashi is Associate Professor at the University of the Ryukyus, Japan.  He has coedited and coauthored books on literature and English. His articles have been published in a variety of academic journals, both national and international.

Blurb

The Multiverse of Office Fiction liberates Herman Melville’s 1853 classic, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” from a microcosm of Melville studies, namely the so-called Bartleby Industry. This book aims to illuminate office fiction—fiction featuring office workers such as clerks, civil servants, and company employees—as an underexplored genre of fiction, by addressing relevant issues such as evolution of office work, integration of work and life, exploitation of women office workers, and representation of the Post Office. In achieving this goal, Bartleby plays an essential role not as one of the most eccentric characters in literary fiction, but rather as one of the most generic characters in office fiction. Overall, this book demonstrates that Bartleby is a generative figure, by incorporating a wide diversity of his cousins as Bartlebys. It offers fresh contexts in which to place these characters so that it can ultimately contribute to an ever-evolving poetics of the office.

Masaomi Kobayashi is Associate Professor at the University of the Ryukyus, Japan.  He has coedited and coauthored books on literature and English. His articles have been published in a variety of academic journals, both national and international..