Weekly Reader: Then We Came To The End By Joshua Ferris; A Workplace Satire That Is Brilliant, Funny, and Surprisingly Moving

Weekly Reader: Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris; A Workplace Satire That Is Funny, Brilliant and Surprisingly Moving
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: We have all had workplaces that were like family. You may not have liked the job, thought the responsibilities were tedious and the boss a complete tyrant, but you liked or got along with your colleagues. These are people you may see more than your families and even though you long to get away from this dead end job, you have a lump in your throat finding it hard to say goodbye to a great team.
That is the situation faced by the characters in Joshua Ferris' National Book Award Finalist Novel, Then We Came To The End. Ferris' novel is a brilliant and sharply funny workplace satire that is filled with understandable characters that make the novel surprisingly warm and moving.

The characters work in a Chicago ad agency...well that is when they actually work. Most of the time, they mill around each other's offices, tell long funny stories, play pranks, gossip about each other, and gather a tenth cup of coffee before buckling down to work, usually the last hour or so.
"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." said the Narrator in first person plural. Ferris used this point of view as a "corporate we,"  the point of view of the entire office (similar to William Faulkner's short story, "A Rose For Emily" used "we" to tell the point of view from an entire small town.).

Despite the employees' inertia, they are aware of the function that they sell what people buy and tell them to buy it: "Using a wide variety of media, we could demonstrate for our fellow Americans their anxieties, desires, insufficiencies, and frustrations-and how to assuage them all. We informed you in six seconds that you needed something that you didn't know you lacked. We made you want anything that anyone willing to pay us wanted you to want. We were hired guns for the human soul. We pulled the strings on the people across the land and by God, they got to their feet and they danced for us."

However those days of pulling the strings while people danced may be coming to an end. This is the time of the early 2000's dot com bubble burst and everyone is terrified of being laid off, "going Spanish." (from either a Tom Waits song describing someone going to their execution or an older term in which pirates on the Spanish Main lifted victims by the scruff of the neck and made them walk as their toes barely touched the deck. For Our Heroes and Heroines, it means being let go.)
Now they have a pro bono assignment for a breast cancer awareness campaign that requests that they take "a light-hearted approach to cancer," which they can't even fathom how to begin. ("How do you say something funny about breast cancer?")

While waiting for the axe to fall, the office resorts to various means to break the tension, in almost farcical situations. (Similar to Joseph Heller's Catch-22 which also featured characters finding humor in a dark situation, in their case, war instead of eventual unemployment.) Characters steal chairs and supplies from the recently departed like vultures over a dying mammal. (Unfortunately forgetting that each supply and chair has separate serial numbers that can easily be inspected by the Supplies Manager.)
They play pranks on each other such as during a humorous but culturally insensitive moment when two office pranksters create a fake scalp from "The Yoppanwoo Tribe" (a play on the duo's names, Chris Yopp and Karen Woo.) to mock a co-worker's gift of a totem pole from a deceased colleague.

They  get involved in office gossip when two characters, Larry Novotny and Amber Ludwig engage in an affair resulting in Amber's pregnancy. They also live in fear of Tom Mota, a disgraced unstable former coworker who they dread will seek revenge.(Which he does in a way which may be highly inappropriate to modern Readers but fits the book's satiric almost insane tone perfectly.)

While the book is filled with humorous situations, the characters are almost believable because they are relatable. We worked with people like them or maybe are people like them. We know a Karen Woo, an office gossip who goes to great lengths to find an answer to a story including following a bereaved co-worker on her lunch. We may be a Marcia Dwyer, an acid-tongued wisecracker who is a source of derision because of her questionable taste in entertainment (in Marcia's case, '80's big hair band ballads). We may also recognize Benny Shassburger, a colleague with a big heart and even bigger mouth who gets attention (and kills time) by entertaining the masses with a story. There is also Jim Jackers, a character who while is not the sharpest knife in the drawer is able to come up with a great solution for the ad campaign.

Because  these characters are so understandable, the book has a lot of warmth underneath the chuckles. The characters worry about their boss, Lynn Mason when she goes under surgery and chemotherapy for cancer. They attend a book signing by Hank Nearly after he leaves the firm to become a novelist. When the characters leave the others have a moment of silence and regret (before they raid their chairs and supplies.).
The family atmosphere is so prominent that the characters feel the loss when they are removed from them. One character works in a larger office and misses the camaraderie that he had before. He misses his surrogate family.

Then We Came To The End is a book that makes you laugh but you may find yourself sniffling when the book is closed.