Endgame (Derrick Jensen Books) - Style and Structure

Style and Structure

Jensen begins with a list of 20 premises, the most concise encapsulation of his ideas published to date (see them in their entirety below).

However, the bulk of the work is not written in such a highly structured, academic style. As in his previous books, A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe, Jensen uses the first-person, interweaving personal experiences with cited facts to construct his arguments. His books are written like narratives, lacking a linear, hierarchical structure. They are not divided into distinct sections devoted to an individual argument. Instead his writing is conversational, leaving one line of thought incomplete to move on to another and returning to it later on. Jensen uses this creative non-fiction style to combine his artistic voice with logical argument.

The books are addressed not to "fence-sitters," but to people who "already know how horrible civilization is, and who want to do something about it." The focus is on the urgency of action, not on convincing the audience of basic axioms like "natural processes are good." Nevertheless, Endgame includes many arguments for the validity of the book's premises.

The two volumes were not written as separate and distinct parts of a work, but were separated for practical reasons after the text was written. In Volume 1, Jensen argues for premises 1 through 17, and he argues for the remaining three premises and their variations in the first chapters of Volume 2.