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Sixta Quassdorf
Title
Dr.
Last Name
Quassdorf
First name
Sixta
Email
sixta.quassdorf@unisg.ch
Phone
+41712242402
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Publication“I would prefer not to take a clerkship” – The Office Novel( 2018-11-02)The sub-genre of office novel leads a niche existence (a surprising fact considering the ubiquity of offices). Nevertheless, some of the most intriguing narratives, like Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Heller’s Something Happened and Foster Wallace’s The Pale King are set in the office. Furthermore, as Mulhull (2016) has observed, in the last 20 years “the office novel has become a genre in its own right.” Kiesling (2016) concurs but notices that many of the new office novels are hidden behind labels like “‘chick lit,’ ‘girlfriend literature,’ or even ‘erotica’” because their authors are female. Two aspects of this contested genre invite attention. On the one hand, since “Bartleby,” the office narrative has marked a painful counterpoint to the Western myth: Instead of self-reliant virility, independence and an exploratory spirit, there is submission to ‘unmanly’, dull work and to the power of bureaucracy. On the other hand, the office has become an important place for women to search for independence and self-affirmation. However, this office freedom proves to be ambivalent and turns out to be just as mythical as the old promise of freedom in the West: The work regularly collides with the biological needs, social relationships and/or values of the female protagonists. Although the specific anxieties represented in office literature differ, in part according to period and perspective, these narratives nevertheless share a further common element, beyond the office setting: a critical stance towards the status quo, in combination with an exploration of choices. Choices arise when the pressure for conformity ceases to be accepted, be it out of necessity or by conscious decision. The protagonists start to take their own values, dreams and desires seriously, which leads them to acts of refusal, sabotage and other forms of non-conformity. Thus, readers are again and again reminded of “Bartleby,” who keeps providing the subtext of the genre with his famous formula “I would prefer not to.” Melville, Herman (1984 [1853]). “Bartleby, the Scrivener. A Story of Wall-Street.” Melville, Herman, 1819-1891. Pierre, or, The Ambiguities; Israel Potter; The Piazza tales; The confidence-man; Uncollected prose; Billy Budd, sailor. Ed. Harrison Hayford. New York, NY : Library of America, 667. Mulhall, Anne (2016). “Resistance and Refusal in the New Literature of the Office: Reading Lydie Salvayre's La Vie commune and Delphine de Vigan's Les Heures souterraines.” Conference Paper at Work Stories: Documenting, Narrating and Representing the French Workplace, 15 and 16 April 2016, Institute of Modern Languages Research, Senate House, University of London. http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/6418/1/Mulhall%20-%20conference%20paper2.pdf Kiesling, Lydia (2016). “The Office Politics of Workplace Fiction by Women.” The New Yorker. July 27, 2016. www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-office-politics-of-workplace-fiction-by-women. Saval, Nikil (2014). “Bartlebys All!”Dissent (61.4): 22–26. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/bartlebys-all.Type: conference paper
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