Down Syndrome Representation in Jesse Ball’s Novel Census (2018)

American author Jesse Ball places his relationship with Abram Ball, his brother with Down syndrome, at the center of his lightly dystopian narrative Census (2018). Though a work of fiction, the novel’s often subtle but still undeniable centering of a person with Down syndrome can also be seen as a kind of disability life writing. This article analyzes the aesthetics of disability representation in the 241-page prose novel in light of Ball’s preface and his decision to include fourteen black and white photographs at the end of the published book. Counterbalanced by these two components, which assert the lived context and material experience of disability, the prose itself remains comparatively underdetermined. The refusal to name or diagnose Down syndrome in the text is complemented by other significant narrative omissions and hints at the insufficiency of language to convey the significance of social bonds other than indirectly. In the end, what emerges from the novel’s largely negative form of composition is a relational understanding of human experience.