Sunday! Books! Sloth!

The most jarring shock of coming to Europe is something intended not to be jarring: the descent into leisure that greets Sunday. Few businesses are open and the ones that are typically intend to close soon. People mill about purposelessly. Ironically, England, a much less religious nation than the US, observes the Sabbath much more rigorously. Bully for them. I need little to no invitation to enter a state of torpor, especially after that gruelling week of exercising, so I spent the day doing very little that was productive. I read, watched movies and ate.

On Reading:

Book Review of Then We Came to the End:

The first three hundred pages of Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came To The End are as brilliant as any book I’ve read for a while. Let’s focus on them for a while. The book is concerned with an advertising agency in Chicago just before and during the dot-com bust. Ferris’ book will remind many of The Office, and justly so: it deploys the quotidian of the advertising agency to great humorous effect, like how a fired character comes back, saying, “I’ve had this meeting on my calendar.” The book is full with farcical anecdotes like that. At the same time, however, out of the farce of the quotidian grows a narrative asking questions about work (if advertising doesn’t benefit anyone directly, like, say, doctoring does, why is it worth doing?) and our lives in general. One subplot, about whether or not the managing partner, Lynn Mason, has cancer, is particularly moving, especially in a chapter in her voice. The great stylistic move of the book that supplements the book’s deftness wit the quotidian is the use of the first-person plural as the narrator. I’ll quote a couple of long passages from the book to give a flavor. The first is the first paragraph of the book:

“We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward 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. Our benefits were astonishing in comprehensiveness and quality of care. Sometimes we questioned whether they were worth it. We thought moving to India might be better, or going to nursing school. Doing something with the handicapped or working with our hands. No one ever acted on these impulses, despite their daily, sometimes hourly contractions. Instead we met in conference rooms to discuss the issues of the day.”

The narrator argues with itself and with specific characters, as one can expect any large group to. Sometimes it becomes overburdened with anecdote and is insufficiently unconcerned with the demands of the larger narrative. But who can expect such a large and diverse group to agree on anything, from a small details to overarching narrative? This is more a strength than a weakness. Here’s another paragraph from the chapter from the end of the book (it’s not a spoiler, really):

“Where had we located the energy? Updating our resumes, interviewing again, learning a new commute route…The floor plans, the shapes of the desk, the names of the people and the colors of the corporate logos were all new and different, but the song and dance remained the same. We were delighted to have jobs. We bitched about them constantly. We walked around our new offices with our two minds. All those new faces and names to memorize, the strange coffee pots and unfamiliar toilet seats. We had new W-4s to fill out and never knew if it was zero or one that would give us more money back. HR was there to assist, but they were never as good as our old HR…”

It’s a testament to Ferris’ talent that so good a paragraph, with its finely observed detail, exists in so unnecessary a chapter. Suffice it to say that the final 80 pages does not resolve the promise of the first 300. There is a fantastical plot that is out-of-tune with the focus on the quotidian of the previous 300. Then the author explains what he was thinking, and I saw what he was trying to do, but I found it unsatisfactory. I won’t say what it is, because it totally destroys one of the funny jokes early in the book, but it’s utterly unexpected. Then he ends a chapter on a beautiful humanistic note, and I thought it was the end. Then comes an epilogue chapter, from which I have quoted, which has an aggravating postmodern jag, and finishes less confidently and conclusively.

Overall, however, I would rate Then We Came To The End as more than worth your time and money. Especially if it’s 60% off, which is what I got it for.

More Books:

The most famous bookstore in Oxford, I gather, is Blackwell’s. Looking at it from the outside, I couldn’t tell why. It appears utterly unremarkable; it is the size of a pub and the building is not particularly old. Then I entered and discovered why. Due to the old age of Oxford, almost every building is of historical significance cannot be touched. Hence, instead of expanding up, Blackwell’s burrowed down. It is labyrinthine and gigantic. To get further, one goes up and to the side, unless one must go down instead. It claims three miles of stacks of books. This is believable. It seems that every famous book in the Western tradition is there, and then some. The used books section is unusually well-organized and is perched on a creaking wooden floor, giving it a captain’s cabin aspect. I picked up The Master and Margarita. Looks exciting.

On Watching:

I saw 39 Steps, the early Hitchcock, for class today. It was excellent. I’m a big Hitchcock fan. Like Ferris, Hitchcock uses the quotidian to great effect. Unlike Ferris, who uses the quotidian for comic or humanistic effect, Hitchcock lends the quotidian a sinister or inventive aspect. Think of the birds in The Birds, or the crop duster scene in North By Northwest. A similar thing happens in the 39 Steps with carnivals and trains. Unfortunately, 39 Steps is hindered by its age. It was made when films were young and were still taking their baby steps. So having silhouettes of dead characters speaking to remind the main character of something she said minutes before is the kind of mistake that would never happen unironically today, and for good reason. Still, Hitchcock’s a master and so the film is great fun.