"One way of looking at it": Positive Thinking and Precarious Labor in Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods

Abstract: In Helen DeWitt's novel Lightning Rods , the free-indirect discourse that narrativizes protagonist Joe and two of his more successful employees is characterized primarily by markers of the American self-help technique positive thinking. Positive thinking, I argue, has entered into an interrelationship with the neoliberal form of capitalism and is key to understanding political subjectivity in the 21st century. This essay examines the layers of complicity that positive thinking allows and encourages in DeWitt's so-far critically neglected workplace satire.