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I Can't Trace Thematic Similarities Between Then We Came To The End And The Unnamed To A Life Event; I Think It's More Just A Natural Progression As A Writer. Everything Changes In The Second Book - Tonally, Character-wise, Situationally - And On Top Of That, I Think I Wanted A Challenge. I Wanted To See If I Could Do It.

-Joshua Ferris

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I Can't Trace Thematic

Joshua Ferris

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I Can't Trace Thematic Similarities Between Then We Came To The End And The Unnamed To A Life Event; I Think It's More Just A Natural Progression As A Writer. Everything Changes In The Second Book - Tonally, Character-wise, Situationally - And On Top Of That, I Think I Wanted A Challenge. I Wanted To See If I Could Do It.

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One Thing That I Discovered About Myself Is I Really Don't Like Traveling. I Feel Like It's A Terrible Personal Failing, But I Was So Satisfied To Arrive At The Conclusion.

I Have Never Stopped Considering Not Becoming A Writer.

Yet For All The Depression No One Ever Quit. When Someone Quit, We Couldn't Believe It. 'i'm Becoming A Rafting Instructor On The Colorado River,' They Said. 'i'm Touring College Towns With My Garage Band.' We Were Dumbfounded. It Was Like They Were From Another Planet. Where Had They Found The Derring-do? What Would They Do About Car Payments? We Got Together For Going Away Drinks On Their Final Day And Tried To Hide Our Envy While Reminding Ourselves That We Still Had The Freedom And Luxury To Shop Indiscriminately.

Baseball Is The Slow Creation Of Something Beautiful. It Is The Almost Boringly Paced Accumulation Of What Seems Slight Or Incidental Into An Opera Of Bracing Suspense. The Game Will Threaten Never To End, Until Suddenly It Forces You To Marvel At How It Came To Be Where It Is And To Wonder At How Far It Might Go. It’s The Drowsy Metamorphosis Of The Dull Into The Indescribable.

It Is Forgivable To Say Nothing Out Of Ignorance; It's Inexcusable To Remain Silent Once Awareness Dawns.

Sometimes You Have To Make Decisions That Necessarily Exclude The Collective. It's More Difficult To Be A Friend - Even Though They Know Each Other And They Treat Each Other Like Friends, It's More Of A Challenge For Them. It's Just Institutional Fact; The Two Characters That Are The Most Aloof Are The Ones Who Have The Most Responsibility.

I Come From A Very Illustrious Line Of Divorces. We Love To Get Divorced In My Family. My Mother And Father Have Been Married Four Times Each - Eight Ceremonies With The Best Of Intentions.

All Broken Hearts Are Circumstantial. Every Lovelorn Jerk Is The Victim Of Bad Timing, Good Intentions, And Someone Else’s Poor Decision Making.

Without Work, So Much Of One's Identity Just Evaporates.

Some Days Felt Longer Than Other Days. Some Days Felt Like Two Whole Days. Unfortunately Those Days Were Never Weekend Days. Our Saturdays And Sundays Passed In Half The Time Of A Normal Workday. In Other Words, Some Weeks It Felt Like We Worked Ten Straight Days And Had Only One Day Off.

I Know What To Do With My Life. I Just Don't Know What To Do With This One Night.

That's One Of The Things About Comedy - I Think It Works Best When It's Contextualized, As Opposed To Kind Of An Island Of Cleverness.

After I Left College I Thought, Very Naively, That Either You Became Someone Interesting - An Artist - Or You Went Into Academia. If You Ended Up In An Office You Were Dull And Lacking. And I Ended Up In An Office.

I'm Not Sure That All Books Aren't That Way. I Think That Might Apply To Any Book I Was Writing. The Book Was Kind Of The Product Of This Enormous Infatuation I Had, Not Only With The Office And Office Politics, But With Perspective, And Trying To Tell A Story From As Wide A Range Of Perspectives As You Possibly Can. I Tried To Capture It All With The First-person Plural, But Once I Settled On That, I Used It To Tell The Story From As Many Angles As I Could. I Guess, To Put It Romantically, It Was About A Love Affair With The Craft Of Perspective.

I Can't Trace Thematic Similarities Between Then We Came To The End And The Unnamed To A Life Event; I Think It's More Just A Natural Progression As A Writer. Everything Changes In The Second Book - Tonally, Character-wise, Situationally - And On Top Of That, I Think I Wanted A Challenge. I Wanted To See If I Could Do It.

We Loved Killing Time And Had Perfected Several Ways Of Doing So. We Wandered The Hallways Carrying Papers That Indicated Some Mission Of Business When In Reality We Were In Search Of Free Candy.

I Don't Actually Think Of The Internet As The Bad Guy. I Think Of The Internet As Doing A Hell Of A Lot Of Wonderful, Fascinating, Interesting Things. A Lot Of Information That's Exchanged On The Internet Is Extremely Useful, And Every Once In A While It Percolates Up To Knowledge. Wisdom Is Far Harder To Come By.

I Think It's A Very Bad Idea For Someone To Start Writing For A Readership.

I've Always Thought Things Were Absurd. It Would Take A Lot More Effort For Me To See Things As Reasonable.

A Dentist Is Only Half The Doctor He Claims To Be.

Every Time You Hear Someone Read Your Book And Liked Your Book, You're Never Sure Whether That's Going To Follow With A Similar Remark From Someone Else. Perhaps I Have Low Expectations, But Whenever I Hear Someone Say, 'i Liked Your Book,' I Don't Know If It's Going To Happen Again.

I Think A Fairly Common Behavior Among Fiction Writers Is That They Want To Help. They're Generally Charitable People. They're Interested In The World. They're Curious, They're Empathetic. They Understand Suffering. They Don't Turn Away From That. But What They Do Is Essentially Useless. Except For The Sake Of The Thing Itself.

A Child, Thought Carl, Is Not The Only Result Of Childbirth. A Mother, Too, Is Born. You See Them Every Day--nondescript Women With A Bulge Just Above The Groin, Slightly Double-chinned. Perpetually Forty. Someone's Mother, You Think. There Is A Child Somewhere Who Has Made This Woman Into A Mother, And For The Sake Of The Child She Has Altered Her Appearance To Better Play The Part.

There Were Times Where I Felt I Was Pressing A Little Bit Too Hard With The Humor, And I Had To Pull Back, Because The Overriding Concern Of The Book Was To Create This Disease That Had No Cure And Make You Pay Attention To Every Emotional Stage Of What Happens.

I Don't Write Directly On To The Computer Because I Don't Think Well Facing Forward With Fingers On A Keyboard. I Think Better Looking Down Holding A Pen. And The Concentration Quotient Of Pen And Paper Is Higher Than When I'm Moving Words Around On Screen.

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If Someone Were Plucked From The Group And Given Those Responsibilities, They Might Find Themselves Growing More Aloof, Just By Virtue Of That Promotion. Suddenly The Group Culture Excludes You. I Saw This In My Own Working Life, And I Don't Think It's A Coincidence - I Sensed A Kind Of Loneliness In Middle Managers Especially.

A Multifaceted Writer, Very Easy On The Surface To Pin Down But Incredibly Difficult Once You Actually Read Him With Any Depth.

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