Then We Came to the End

Seven down, three to go as I read my way through the New York Times Book Review ten best of 2007. This time it's a novel by Joshua Ferriss called Then We Came to the End.

We spend so much of our time at work; it really dominates our lives. I spend far too much time thinking about it, especially those moments before I get up in the morning, when I try to banish those thoughts from my head. There really hasn't been a great novel about the contemporary office, instead it is the dominion of TV sit-coms. Ferris hasn't necessarily written such a novel, but it is a keenly observed, wildly funny examination of how we act when we're at work.

I'm not the first to make this comparison, but it's really the Catch-22 of the modern workplace, with memorable characters who each are identified by particular quirks, whether it's being obsessed with getting an ex-colleague's chair, or another who has inherited a totem pole and keeps it in storage, or a laid-off employee who after being let go still shows up at meetings. And like Catch-22, where the hijinks were overshadowed by tragedy, whether it was the death of Snowden or the murder of a prostitute in Rome, Then We Came to the End has the pall of a boss who may or may not have breast cancer and a fired employee who everyone worries may go postal.

The best thing about this book is the droll description of the daily existence of the workers at an advertising agency in Chicago. They are copywriters and art directors, or creatives (a word that can be used as a noun, verb and adjective, sometimes all in the same sentence). They drink their coffee, get excited by free doughnuts, are obsessed with their tchotchkes, and enjoy killing time by gossiping. Ferris writes the book (except for one chapter) in the first-person plural, sort of a "corporate we." A lot of this is very familiar, such as the instance when a woman's nasty email ends up getting sent to the entire company, or the almost daily realization that "it's only 3:15." The "we" of the story are for the most part cynics, with built-in tautologies that are reminiscent of Catch-22, such as a character who is liked by everyone, therefore everybody hates his guts.

Where the book is less successful is balancing the comedy and tragedy. The intimidating boss is rumored to have breast cancer, and in a mysterious coincidence, the team is assigned the task of coming up with an ad that would make someone with breast cancer laugh. In a sense, the book Ferris has written is the answer to that assignment.

Also, the office depicted in this book isn't all that terrible. The worst part of it is the constant threat of layoffs, or as they describe it, being "walked Spanish," an old pirate term. Pranks are played, and a few of the characters are in desperate need of therapy, but I've been in places that are far more soul-crushing than this one. But as I read the last chapter, I realized that Ferris wasn't trying to dazzle me with horror stories, he seems to believe that real bonds can be made between co-workers, and nostalgia about former jobs can exist. I suppose that can be true, or as Hemingway once wrote, "it's pretty to think so."