I’ve always believed the only time the first person plural can be utilized in a sentence it would be the royal we, the papal we or the schizophrenic we. However some recent fiction has proved us wrong.
A new novel by Joshua Ferris, Then We Came To The End, is written in the first person plural and it’s a stunning debut. The novel is set in an ad agency creative department just as the dot.com economy is crashing at the end of the last century. As much as I laughed while reading this book, it also made me severely uncomfortable. It was as though the author had hidden in a corner at my agency and written down everything he saw and heard.
There are situations in this book that are so eerily similar to actual events I have lived through with my team that it was positively dizzying. I read the book with a friend, in a reading group of two, and because he isn’t in advertising he constantly asked if things in the book were not a wild exaggeration. Some things certainly. But many things were not in the least exaggerated. It may read like satire, however sometimes simply telling the truth can be the most effective satire. But we digress…
The book is written in the first person plural. Sometimes it seems like it’s a mystery and the reader is encouraged to track down who in the cast of characters is actually speaking. And there is a reason one wants to solve this mystery. There are some nasty pranks played in the office, and it’s clear the narrator is involved in them. By speaking in the first person plural he, and it seems clear it is a he, gets to avoid any real responsibility. He gets to hide his true feelings, which so many people do in an office. In fact, he gets to hide his true feelings from himself at times.
This is not to suggest that the entire book is devoid of other characters. In fact it is filled with the amazing diversity of characters you’ll find in a creative department, and agency wide. And the book shifts POV a couple of times — so that there is actually a novel within the novel — something that isn’t clear until almost the last few pages.
The book reminded me of the very first entry I uploaded to this blog — an entry which included a photograph of two objects on my desk: a begging bowl used by a Buddhist monk and the bowl that is the design of the Caples award trophy. The two together for me capture the odd contradictions of working in this field. Then We Came To The End is a must read for anyone who works in the ad biz.
This isn’t the only time the first person plural has appeared in recent literature. It was used in The Virgin Suicides. And I was lucky enough to be present at a recorded of NPR’s Selected Shorts last year when the first chapter of an upcoming novel, by the writer Julie Otsuka, was read by actress Dawn Akemi Saito. And as it turns out, this program is about to be rebroadcast this week, so if you are interested in a completely different approach to the use of the first person plural in fiction, you should definitely tune in.
The first chapter, “1919” follows the sea voyage of a group of Japanese picture brides on their way to the United States. Unlike Ferris’ novel, where the use of the POV hides the narrator and creates a sense of distance and alienation, Otsuka uses the first person plural to create a community, a symphony of individuals, each with an individual story that is also a communal story, so that the listener follows the many stories that reveal a larger story. Hearing it read aloud, with almost every sentence starting with the word “we” creates an incantatory effect, a hypnotic rhythm that draws the listener in ever deeper. When I first heard the chapter read I was excited and entranced. And curious to see how this voice could be sustained over the course of a novel. Otsuka is still at work refining the book and it will be a while before we get to see the result (though her interesting approach to voice can be experienced in a different way in her previous work, When The Emperor Was Divine) which is also a must read. Having already read Emperor, I for one (or we for two or more) can’t wait to read her new book when she’s done.
Meanwhile, if you want a taste of the first chapter of Otsuka's new novel, be sure to tune in to Selected Shorts this week. In NYC on AM820 it will be broadcast on Sunday, July 15 and Saturday, July 21 at 4pm. Or follow the link above to find out when you can hear it on the NPR station in your location.
Oh yes, there is one other we, besides royal, schizophrenic and papal (some might say these three are really one anyway): the Threebrain Weeeeee! For those of you who are waiting for a bizarre and tasteless link in this posting, your patience has been rewarded.
Two days to Bastille Day. The day when French means losing head instead of giving it. And when are we going to see a serious revival of Marat/Sade?
In the meantime, celebrate the political movement that gave the world the metric system with dinner at Restaurant Florent. Oh yes, and that fine film of Dickens' Tale of Two Cities starring heart throb Ronald Colman. "Tis a far, far better thing I do..." The frames by the way, are from the comic book that first taught me all about the French Revolution, a gem from Classics Illustrated. American manga lost to history.
