Joshua Ferris Overview

Two published novels and several short stories into his career, Joshua Ferris has staked a unique place in American literature as a writer whose works re-explore and dismantle otherwise familiar terrain – workplace politics, disease, family dynamics – through experimentation of form.  In his first novel, Then We Came to The End, he does this through a playful reorientation of narrative voice; in his second, The Unnamed, he achieves this in a subversively subtle manner, demanding that the reader search beneath a direct assault on the standard show-don't-tell rule and a consistent deviation from his previously set narrative rules.  These experimentations – coupled with his works' publication by a major publisher – are likely to be overlooked by many, either in the depth of their disfigurement of traditional narratives or in their entirety.  As his output grows and his interests become more apparent, it seems doubtless that he will establish himself as one of America's most unpretentiously experimental writers.