Walking Man

Joshua Ferris

by Brian K. Mahoney, January 27, 2010

Joshua Ferris’s first novel, Then We Came to the End (Little, Brown, 2007), is a laugh-out-loud dissection of early 21st-century cubicle culture at a Chicago advertising agency where rounds of layoffs are wreaking havoc on the psyches of the staff. Told in the first person plural, the tone of the book fits the collective consciousness of office life as snug as a cardboard sleeve on a paper coffee cup. Petty jealousy and fear are the ruling emotions. (Sample lines: “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.”) Critically acclaimed, Then We Came to the End was short-listed for the National Book Award.

Ferris, who worked at a Chicago ad agency (there’s an aspiring writer character in Then We Came to the End who talks of the novel he is working on that will catapult him from copywriting drone into literary stardom), has staked out unfamiliar territory in his second book, The Unnamed (Reagan Arthur, 2010). Unfamiliar to anyone, in fact. For the central conceit of the book is the bizarre illness that afflicts Tim Farnsworth, and forces him to walk against his will. Think of Tim’s disorder as a kind of restless leg syndrome on steroids. It  drags him out of bed, down the stairs and out the door, without a thought to put on a hat and coat. Tim’s fevered hikes last for hours and leave him so exhausted that he falls asleep on the spot when he stops walking. (One of the book’s funnier scenes has Tim, a partner at a prestigious Manhattan law firm, walking around his office in suit and tie and backpack stuffed with items his wife, Jane, thinks he might need on his walks. Tim’s also wearing a jury-rigged bike helmet that a neurologist has kitted out with sensors to try and find the cause of the disease. And Tim’s trying to keep his illness a secret from his partners.) Tim ultimately finds normal life untenable in the face of his walking disorder and sets off on a quest which ultimately leads him inward, to struggle with philosophical questions about the relationship between the mind and body, the notion of free will, and the existence of God.

Ferris, who splits his time between homes in Brooklyn and Columbia County, will be reading with Jami Attenberg, author of The Melting Season, at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck on February 17 at 7:30pm. (845) 876-0500; www.oblongbooks.com.


How did you come to have a place in Columbia County?

I knew that I needed a place to write that was secluded and quiet, in contrast to Brooklyn. It makes it easier to be entirely focused on the work. Brooklyn is very distracting. There’s something going on very late at night all the time. It feels like I’m either drunk or hungover when I’m in Brooklyn. I stay much more sober and efficient upstate. I’m being a little facetious. It’s really about the solitude and the pace of life, which is nurturing for a writer.