Metatextuality in Jonathan Coe’s novel The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim

The article explores some intertextual and metatextual practices while analyzing the structure and the content of the literary text as a whole. The study of The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim (2010) by contemporary British writer Jonathan Coe has outlined the role of contemporary culture in the generation and interpretation of implications evoked by the interplay of these practices. It also emphasizes the function of symbols and mathematical numbers in the structural and semantic organization of the text as well as the influence of modern technologies and associative, historical, cultural and typological modes of thinking on personality psychology. The authors specify the most salient allusions and cultural codes determining the non-linear perception of the novel due to interaction on principles of correspondence, congruence, conflict, and confrontation. The central theme of the novel appears to be the loneliness of a modern man caused by the impact of globalization and new technologies. The protagonist Maxwell Sim fails to overcome the identity crisis, being entangled in the labyrinths of his own reasoning and thereby losing his personal identity. The absence of meaningful social connections triggers the erosion of his inner self and a gradual replacement of his individuality with mass behavioral patterns and stereotypes. The text subtly incorporates modern communication technologies (Facebook), real historical characters (Donald Crowhurst), allusions to Eliot, Thurber, and Dante. The structure of the novel is also found to acquire certain significance, referring either to Eliot’s Four Quartets, or to Beethoven’s five-part quartets, or to Euler’s identity of five constants. The philosophical interpretation of the novel strands in their correlation with archetypes of the historical and cultural matrix offers a comprehensive coverage of internal and external processes determining personality formation and development. The complex analysis of intertextual and metatextual links along with the structural and journalistic components, game techniques employed in the title and the finale has suggested the implementation of value- and personality-forming strategies adopted to motivate the reader to ask questions, contemplate, and search for the answers. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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