Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

First there was Dilbert; then Office Space; then The Office. It seems that the recent boom in office-related entertainment has grown independently of (or perhaps inversely proportional to) the growth of the American economy. Early last year, Joshua Ferris claimed a place for himself in this niche with his debut novel, Then We Came to the End.

The book centers on the working lives of the employees at a Chicago advertising agency in the aftermath the dot-com bust. From what I can tell, Ferris has done a superb job portraying the modern American workplace, from the nitpicking over office furniture to the rumor mongering to the internecine feuds:

We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen. Most of us liked most everyone, a few of us hated specific individuals, one or two people loved everyone and everything. Those who loved everyone were unanimously reviled. We loved free bagels in the morning. They happened all too infrequently.

It is true, as my wife pointed out to me, that I have never experienced life in an office quite like this, having gone straight from college to law school. By contrast, she spent three years as a paralegal before going to law school. When I was briefly at a law firm, it was a feast year; and now that we have hit a relative famine year, I have the security of government employment. Still, Ferris' depiction just has the aura of truth.

Much has been made about the novel's point of view, as it is written in first person plural. Though it gets clunky a few times, I was surprised just how well Ferris pulled it off. It is perfectly suited to the setting of the book: the employees' collective fortunes rise and fall on the success of the firm, individual opinions and rumors quickly become shared wisdom. There is added irony in that this is an advertising agency, which ostensibly prides itself on the creativity of the individuals who work there. As the economic slump continues, even the termination of individuals is viewed through the collective lens:

On the drive home we puzzled over who was next. Scott McMichaels was next. His wife just had a baby. Sharon Turner was next. She and her husband had just purchased a house. Names -- just names to anyone else, but to us they were the individuals who generated our greatest sympathy. The ones who put their things in a box, shook a few hands, and left without complaint. They had no choice in the matter, and they possessed a quiet resignation to their ill-timed fates. As they departed, it almost felt to us like self-sacrifice. They left, so that we might stay. And stay we did, though our hearts went out to them. Then there was Tom Mota, who wanted to throw his computer against the window.

This is often a very funny book. There were at least three or four times I audibly laughed, a relatively rare feat for literary fiction. I could probably name on one hand the number of authors who've written a novel that made me laugh out loud. Let's see: Joseph Heller, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Russo, Michael Chabon, Nick Hornby... okay, two hands. There are also some touchingly poignant moments as well, mostly involving Lynn Morgan, the boss who may or may not have breast cancer, and Janine Gorjanc, whose young daughter was recently murdered:

It was obviously a tragic thing. We knew about it, but how could we possibly know the first thing about it? Some of us discussed the matter to break up the routine, but most of us used the information to explain why she was quiet at lunch. Then we filed the incident away. That is, until Janine started bringing pictures of Jessica into the office and placing them on the credenza and the bookshelves and hanging them from the walls. The pictures crowded in, elbowing each other for room. A hundred pictures of her dead daughter in the seventy-five square feet of her office. The three on the wall facing her were the most mournful things we'd ever seen. It was also downright creepy. It got to the point where we tried to avoid entering her office. When we were forced to, for some pressing item of business, we never knew where to rest our eyes.

But for all the poignant moments, all the comedy, all the success in conveying a slow burning existential despair, Ferris doesn't really go anywhere with it. And that is what delineates a good novel, which is this undoubtedly is, from a great novel, which it is not. Ferris has spend so much effort building his ship, but he doesn't seem to know where to sail it. At the end, when he flashes forward five years into the future, most of the subplots have been tied up with neat little bows. There's too much of a sense that Ferris is suggesting it was the office itself that was causing the existential crises, thus the happy endings for so many who have left. I suppose that is possible, but our collective frustration with work is more likely a symptom, not a cause, of systematic flaws in our societal values.