It seems that you can’t shake a stick at a Best Novels of 2007 list without smacking into Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came to the End. The fact that this book have such accolades heaped upon it puzzles me.
From my best guess, I started reading Then We Came to the End sometime in May. How do I know this? Because when I picked it up today to give it another shot, the bookmark was an Elvis Costello concert ticket from May 8. The first time around, I made it 77 pages. Today, I got to 112 before I fell dead asleep.
I don’t get it.
It’s the story of a Chicago ad agency told in first person plural. “We had coffee and then we went to meetings and sometimes we had bagels in the morning.” Seriously. I’m not seeing the magic. Maybe the magic happens after page 112. I’ll find out, because I’ve decided to eschew my “Life is too short for bad books” rule and finish this sucker.
I have a sneaking suspicion that all the magic isn’t packed into the book after page 112. In fact, I would venture to guess that the people who make these best of lists have never worked in corporate America and have no idea that this isn’t magic but rather business as usual.
I’ve got this one sitting on my nightstand. I was hoping it would be delightful, like watching “The Office”.
It might get delightful. I’ll keep you posted.
Amanda and I think it’s fucking fantastic. Both on a purely surface level and in a beautiful and profound literary way.
However, that said, if you don’t like it already you probably won’t like it. We loved it on the very first page, and then felt utterly justified after all those best of ’07 lists. So there.
Well you and Amanda both have the right to be totally wrong! But I am curious, what is it that you’re loved so much about it. What makes it so profoundly beautiful and literary? Because right now all I’m seeing is a bunch of boring office shenanigan bullshit that most everyone in corporate America has been party to.
*Because* everyone in corporate America, or a shitty temp job, has been party to it. That’s why.
I don’t think that makes it great, I think that makes it boring. Have you ever read “Orientation” by Daniel Orozoco? That’s what Then We Came to the End should be, could be if it were good.
You can listen to Orientation over at This American Life (fast forward to the last act).
You know, I’ve always wanted to find a novel written in the second person plural.
I think it’s first person plural. We did this. We thought that. But I could be wrong. We’ll have to get Peabo, the English teacher in here to make an official ruling.
Second person plural is the plural ‘you’ as in you all, or y’all (although my college roommate used y’all irrespective of the number of people he was speaking to which often caused me to look behind me to see if someone had just joined us mid-conversation)
Many children’s books are written in second person plural, for example, Dr Seuss’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”
I thought that book would be so awesome — I worked in corporate america, in an ad agency, no less. Yeah, well, either my life sucked incredibly badly or the only one who can do justice to cube-world is freakin’ Dilbert.
I brought it back to the library after two days (page 75-ish), because I couldn’t even stand to look at it. Let me know if you change your mind about it