Dec/Jan 2010
Perils of Perambulation
In Joshua Ferris's novel, the protagonist can't stop himself from walking
Sarah Kerr
Whatever the proximate cause, we all will die in the end, probably with pain, possibly with some alteration of self before it is over. This is no revelation. Yet depictions of the body in an off-kilter condition have been a mainstay recently, not just of the hospital dramas that dominate TV but of much fiction. The fascination is in tune with a culture that knows exponentially more about the workings of the body than has any in history but that remains, even with the technical know-how, unable to meet many challenges to it. We know so much that, it seems, we are surprised there could be still be mystery and distressed we still need to grieve. With its focus on an out-of-control human body and on how the mind makes sense of suffering, Joshua Ferris's new novel, The Unnamed, feels different from his genial-on-the-surface
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