I read Joshua Ferris' first novel, Then We Came to the End, directly after e Squared - Okay, there was the minor speedbump of David Sedaris' Holidays on Ice but let's be honest, it was a literary catnap. So back to the twin sides of the literary ad agency. Where Matt Beaumont's novel is a farcical, satirical visit to an ad agency that is so ridiculous it feels fictional even while you're identifying with its form, Ferris' story is bitterly familiar.
I've read a number of reviews that have called Then We Came to the End "funny", "hilarious", and even "laugh out loud" (Reading Local: Baltimore AND Flourish & Blott's Book News) - and I suppose it is funny, in a way - but I have to be honest with you here; what has stayed with me from this week (yes, yes; I'm late in writing my review by about 2 weeks) wasn't the humor or comedy it was the painful vulnerability of the people around you.
The book is written in the first-person plural (we) - most likely a technique meant to give the reader an extra connection to the story - but I'm not entirely sure the book needed that ploy to get me to feel connected. Of course I understand working in an office. Of course I've had coworkers I've liked and disliked (you have been reading this blog right?). I'm even reticent to say but of course I identified with the idealistic yet somehow jaded yuppies that pervaded Ferris' fictional Chicago agency. But, really, for me, that wasn't where the connection was.
Most of us are familiar with the intimate, yet removed relationship that we have with our coworkers - people that spend as much (if not more) time with us than our families, people that see us in a place that does (even if we don't want it to) partially define who we are, people who share our daily moods and functions. Ferris does an amazing job of outlining these people in a way that is both deliberate and vague enough for you to see them and know them - and with the added layer of texture that gives them a vulnerability that can be difficult to attribute to our own coworkers. I found myself cringing for these people, cheering for them and rooting for them even in moments that I knew were fruitless. I identified with each of them in turn, with the different aspects of their personality that made them like me... but different. Like you... but different.
I've heard some grumbles from the literary blogosphere that Ferris' second book (The Unnamed) did not live up to the expectations that Then We Came to the End built up but I'm going to give it a shot. Ferris' book got to me in a way I didn't even know about when I was reading it. His writing is clever and accessible as well as personal. I often have trouble fitting my reviews into this blog length format (I talk a lot - ok?) but this one is extra hard.
And I have to admit, I'm still not sure who the narrator was. (Should I admit this to you?!)
As usual, some other thoughts:
- A fabulous round up of opinions from A.V. Club
- An interview with Joshua Ferris from Read Roll Club
- If you've read the book, check out Ferris' website - there's an AMAZING map of the floor on which most of the action happens (also click on a nav item and just see what happens!)
And a quote, just because there were quite a few good ones:
"We loved killing time and had perfected several ways of doing so. We wandered the hallways carrying papers that indicated some mission of business when in reality we were in search of free candy. We refilled our coffee mugs on floors we didn’t belong on. Hank Neary was an avid reader. He arrived early in his brown corduroy coat with a book taken from the library, copied all its pages on the Xerox machine, and sat in his desk reading what looked to passersby like the honest pages of business." - Thanks Adventures in Coffee Sipping
P.S. Word on the street is that Kathryn Bigelow (you remember her right?) is working on an adaptation of the book.
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