Title: Collage and Mobility: The Visual Writing in If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

Abstract: In If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, the rising British novelist Jon McGregor draws on the postmodern collage to delineate the daily trifles of the anonymous residents in an unnamed urban street over the course of one day. Instead of regurgitating the motif of interpersonal alienation in modern urban space, McGregor attempts to uncover the latent visual interactions and emotional bonds between individual residents who are otherwise strangers. He employs the technique of “repetitive collage,” which allows the residents to achieve a wordless, intersubjective interaction through their fragmented yet overlapping visual observations. The movement of the gaze, aligning with the individual mobility, reinforces the unity and connectivity of “the street neighbourhood as the nearby.” The residents’ visually experienced “coexistence” culminates in a traffic accident, directing towards an ideal mode of communication grounded in empathy. By structuring visual interaction on a framework of “static observation—flowing gaze—empathetic moment,” McGregor not only challenges the formulaic discursive function of postmodern collage narratives, but also profoundly depicts contemporary urban dwellers’ bonds beneath the ostensible alienation.

Keywords: Jon McGregor, collage, visuality, mobility, empathy

Author: Yingjie Duan, Assistant Professor, College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2026.01.003