Precarious Labour and the Contemporary Novel

Description

This book is a major study of the presentation of work and workers in contemporary novels from India, North America and the UK. Drawing on lively recent theories about work, it shows how the novel is a crucial form for helping us to understand what work means in contemporary society. It tackles some of the most urgent questions of contemporary life by examining the stories about work that novels produce. Including detailed readings of authors such as Douglas Coupland, David Foster Wallace, Joshua Ferris, Arivand Adiga, Chetan Bhagat and Monica Ali it explores how the presentation of fictional characters lays open the experience of insecure and precarious existence in the contemporary era. This study illustrates that novels provide an essential tool for understanding what work is and how we feel when we do it. Front Matter ....Pages i-x Precarious Labour and the Contemporary Novel (Liam Connell)....Pages 1-11 Front Matter ....Pages 13-13 Reading Coupland Backwards: Time, Generationality and Work in Generation X, Microserfs and JPod (Liam Connell)....Pages 15-56 Precarity and Subjective Life: Matt Thorne’s Eight Minutes Idle and David Szalay’s London and the South East (Liam Connell)....Pages 57-89 Front Matter ....Pages 91-91 Dying to Work: American Nationalism and the End of Productive Labour (Liam Connell)....Pages 93-144 Working Women and the Welfare State: Jenny Turner’s The Brainstorm (Liam Connell)....Pages 145-187 Indian Call Centres and the National Idea (Liam Connell)....Pages 189-232 Conclusion (Liam Connell)....Pages 233-240 Back Matter ....Pages 241-246