Ferris' Then We Came to the End

Then We Came to the End was one of my favorite books this year, now it's been nominated for the National Book Award. It's a novel told in the rare first-person plural -- "we" -- about layoffs at a Chicago ad agency. It's funny and accessible, and I love how it gets at existential questions like: What does it mean to belong to a group? What do people have to sacrifice to fit into the group -- the freedom to do what they want, or to do what they think is right? And what do they gain from the group-- the top two contenders being the comfort of camaraderie and the increased power of group effort?

Ferris was interviewed by the National Book Foundation. He said a couple of things that I thought were really interesting. Read the whole interview here.

BAJ: In a country such as ours, where reading is in such a state of crisis, what is the role of the fiction writer? Does being a finalist for such a prestigious award affect how you view yourself in that role?

JF: I take a cue from Vladimir Nabokov on this question: the role of the fiction writer anywhere is to bring delight to the reader and nothing more. I can do as little—which is to say very, very little—about the country’s woeful state of reading as I can about the country’s woeful state of geopolitics. All I can do is try my best to provide the greatest amount of artistic delight for that reader or two who decides to follow me where my instinct and curiosity take me. I do right by that reader if I do right by myself, and I do that by being attentive to what’s interesting, peculiar, funny, eternal, and by being attentive to words.

I love this answer, and I think it's right on the money. It reminds me of what Flannery O'Connor used to say, that the job of the Catholic writer is to be a good writer. No one is going to attend to your writing if it isn't believable and moving in the first place, she said. (Nabokov is a hole in my literary resume; I haven't read him.) I also like that Ferris adds about doing right by the reader by doing right by himself -- kind of a literary Golden Rule -- so he's balancing the delight of the reader with his own intellectual/aesthetic engagement, which precludes writing in some kind of manipulative way to thrill the masses.

BAJ: What drew you to the story?

JF: Probably the challenge of it. Tell a story with countless characters from the point of view of a monolithic failing advertising agency—go! Also, the challenge of trying to turn an experience—I worked in advertising—into genuine fiction. Not veiled autobiography, but an honest sublimation of mundane experience into something deserving of a reader’s limited time on earth. And finally I was fascinated by the behemoth structure of a corporation—the hierarchies, the coded messages, the power struggles. I thought such a pervasive and inscrutable place merited the sustained attention a novelist has to give to his or her subject. The characters in Then We Came to the End are under the constant threat of layoffs, and that creates a specific group dynamic: the group’s unquenchable scrutiny of itself. I thought it would be fun to watch that group dynamic implode.

I love that he says "deserving of a rader's limited time on earth." I hate to sound like a snoot, but it's very depressing when I read a book and it's only marginally OK. I think, "There's two hours of my life I'll never get back." On the other hand, that doesn't mean I always want to read something ponderous and serious. I like funny books because life is funny.
I'm re-reading "Then We Came to the End" because I'm fascinated by how it handles the idea of community. I grew up in a small town in Louisiana, which I left behind many years ago, and sometimes that makes me sad and sometimes that makes me happy. I have real mixed feeling about small-town life, as a lot of people do. (My beloved Spoon River Anthology tackles the heart of this conflict; see my previous post on this topic here.) But in the modern world, the most pertinent community for educated professionals tends to be the work place, and a lot of literature either ignores that or minimizes it. I like Ferris' book because he takes on the workplace in all its weirdness.