I’ve always been interested in work, and astonished at the systematic degradation of work by corporate America in my lifetime. My first book, a novel called “Sign Off” was inspired by the destruction of CBS News after one of the first big media takeovers that ended up demolishing the mainstream news media and replacing it with a nightmarish hodge podge of hate radio, information blogs and cable scream-a-thons. I am not one for romanticizing the old days, but the country suffers from having little credible media left.
The media is only one small part of the corporate takeover phenomena which replaced individuals who (sometimes) cared about the companies they ran and the employees they hired with boards of directors answerable to stockholders who cared only about profits. This happened across the spectrum of American work, from publishing to medicine to airlines to law firms and manufacturing – well, you know the story. Soon there will be one giant Wal-Mart running from coast to coast and we will all be working part time and wearing those blue vests and telling ourselves that life is good because we are saving more. We will all have come from someplace and be heading someplace else.
Work has been degraded. The notion of a secure job has just about vanished. People, loyalty and security are no longer considered nearly as important as maximum profits.
Joshua Ferris has captured some of this brilliantly in his novel “When We Came To The End,” now out in paperback (I also loved his new book “The Unnamed.”). He is turning out to be on of those astute chroniclers of the times. “When We Came to The End” is a poignant, heartbreaking, bitter and even chilling account of a a Chicago ad agency which goes from being a good place to work to a place obsessed with layoffs, fear, gossip and the grinding down of spirits. The employees, creative, neurotic kids are initially enthralled at the prospect of being creative. Then the layoffs start and being creative is something you fake to pad your time sheet.
It is difficult to find people who love their work, or who feel they are treated well. Our economic system seems to have accepted the idea that worker are unimportant and disposable. That good jobs can be poured so easily out of the country, and so many Americans live in perpetual fear and uncertainty about their work and income. It astounds me that this is not a political issue until you see where political contributions come from, and then it isn’t so much of a mystery.
Ferris captures this transition with great dialogue, distinctive characters and an ingenious narrative that zips back and forth and paints a portrait not only of one place, but of our place. The loss of good work is, from my remote perspective on this farm, a national tragedy. And an outrageous one. I think the politician who gets this will do well. He can’t do much better than read Ferris’s book. The new book “Unnamed” is just as powerful, although in a different way. Ferris understands relationships and connections and the trauma of losing either.
It isn’t often I come across a writer who I am sure will be a major force in books in the years ahead, and I betcha Joshua Ferris will be. His stories mirror our time a lot better than any media or most writers I know.
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P.S. I am now reading “Country Driving: A Journey Through China from farm to factory,” by Peter Hessler, and “Summertime,” novel by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee.