Monday Interview: Joshua Ferris

Joshua Ferris seemed poised to take up the mantle as the best of the country’s young literary satirists. His debut novel, Then We Came to the End, was a critical hit and a National Book Award finalist. It was the rare modern novel that was funny and spot-on in its depictions of the workplace. It even took stylistic chances thanks to Ferris’ use of a first person plural narrator (the book opens with the wonderful lines, “We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise.”).

Instead of following that path, however, Ferris has gone in a completely different direction. His new book, The Unnamed, is a much darker tale. It tells of Tim Farnsworth, a successful, hard-charging New York attorney, who suffers a peculiar affliction: He is compelled to walk, with no seeming provocation, until he can walk no more. He will get up from a hearing, excuse himself if his body is pointed in the right direction, and head out of the courtroom and onto the street, stopping only when his body is no longer able to carry him. He’ll then drop and sleep, waking in any number of situations. A call placed to his wife, Jane, alerts her to his location, and she drives to retrieve him.

All of this has a predictably negative affect on everything in Tim’s life: his career, his marriage, his relationship with his daughter and his health, both mental and physical. Ferris offers a fascinating look at that impact, but that evidence doesn’t add up to a diagnosis. Ferris leaves much to the reader’s interpretation. Is Tim suffering from a mental illness? Some unknown physical ailment? The jury is still out (and a look at the many reviews of the book reveal an emerging spirited discussion on the topic as well as about whether the book is an allegory for something else).

If nothing else, the Unnamed shows that there is much more to Ferris than a gift for satire. He mentions below that he has no interest in repeating himself, which, based on his first two books, means we’re in for quite a ride. His third novel, he says, is well under way.

Ferris, who earned an undergrad degree from the University of Iowa and an MFA from the University of California at Irvine, reads from the Unnamed Tuesday at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City. I’ll be hosting the event, which will include ample time for a Q&A with the in-house audience. Ferris granted me the opportunity for a dry run below. To hear the reading live, Listen online at 7 p.m. CST.

TIRBD: There is a lot of speculation among reviewers and readers about whether Tim’s affliction is mental, physical or spiritual, and whether it is an allegory for something larger. Are you surprised by any interpretations, or has your own view of the work been altered by any of them?

JF: My view of the book hasn’t changed. “Interpreting” it, I think, is a generous way of describing what some reviewers do (I had one review, for instance, which read in its entirety: “Joshua Ferris’ WTF tale of a successful man who walks out on his wife, kid, and career.” Not a lot of care there). I didn’t write it as an allegory — allegories don’t interest me as a reader, far less as a writer. Speculation is certainly part of the book — a mental disease? or physical? and what might answers to those questions imply for what it means to be human? Reviewers kind to the book — those that have read it with sympathy and sophistication — have touched upon them.

I have seen mention of Emily Dickinson poems, a Poe short story, John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” Forrest Gump, White Noise and other works as being precedents/influences. Regardless of whether they’re right, it puts you in good company. Were you aware of similarities between these works and your own, and did that knowledge steer the story in any particular direction?

Never consciously aware. How what a writer reads and assimilates might affect what he or she writes is an alchemy no one will ever fully diagnose or understand. Cheever, Dickinson, DeLillo, Poe — these writers have all been important to me at various times.

The direction of the story, however, was always in my hands.

Was there any actual shoe leather research done on the book so you could bring some verisimilitude to the sections where you describe what happens to Tim on his long walks?

Yes, with a couple of trusting and intelligent doctors, as well as some old-fashioned reading. My conversations with friend/doctors were particularly helpful. They have all the hard facts about the body, about sickness, about death — and when I asked them to start dreaming, all that knowledge opened up into fantasy. It was a rewarding experience.

You were seen as daring with the publication is Then We Came to the End. Now, you’re seen as daring (or to some, foolhardy) for not following the path suggested by your debut. Was there a conscious decision on your part to not do the same thing twice?

No, not conscious, if you mean by conscious “calculating” or “shrewd” or “career-centric.” I’m not nearly as interested in how my books are received as I am in writing them. I write what’s next down a long line of preoccupations and obsessions. What might be seen as daring or foolhardy is a momentary referendum that quickly passes and luckily happens long after I’ve started on the next thing.

That said, I do think I’m constitutionally incapable of doing the same thing twice. Part of a writer’s thrill — and duty, too — is to throw the gauntlet down every time, and give yourself no excuse for phoned-in, half-hearted measures.

The Unnamed is one of the first books on your editor’s new imprint, Reagan Arthur Books. Does this put an added burden on your shoulders?

Oh no, no burden. Only pride, happiness, and hope for the beginning of a successful imprint for a loving and important editor.

You sold film rights to the book well before you were finished, after just 120 pages. The book takes some curious turns after that point. Did you worry about delivering on what was promised in those earlier pages when writing the rest? Did you think about the book cinematically as you were writing given the knowledge that it was destined for the screen someday?

If I don’t write for critics, or even those who might constitute a readership, I’m not going to w
rite for a producer whose desire for how the book concludes is out of my grasp. If I had, I would have certainly written a more straightforward story, to increase the odds of production, which is always a long shot. In fact, it’s part of the reason, that long shot, never to write with a film in mind.

You now have a young son, so I’ll ask a two part question: Are you at work on your third book, and has the writing life changed for you because of this new addition either in terms of your schedule or your worldview?

I’m at work, and — with the exception of promoting The Unnamed — pretty steadily, despite the little guy. The worldview changes, of course, but it’d take forever to describe all the ways. Perhaps it’s sufficient to say he’s lying on the bed right now making farting noises with his hand in his mouth. That’s a lot of fun.