I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah's Witness

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Ferris tells this story using with an omniscient narrator using the pronoun "we" rather than the customary "I." I’ve read an author interview explaining that this was meant to mimic the corporate-speak you might find in a glossy prospectus given to investors. Whatever the reason, it is an oddly effective technique, placing you in the office's best cubicle to observe the goings-on. It makes you part of the team; as part of the team, you feel it when people start getting fired – forced to “walk Spanish” – one by one, victims of economic attrition.

Because so many of the GoodReads folks are participants or graduates of MFA programs, and because Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris is so obviously the product of an MFA program, I thought to hedge and give this book three stars. But that would be dishonest. Characters may come across as callous, which may turn some readers off, while others may wonder what the point of this little exercise is (clearly, they’ve missed it completely), but I for one thoroughly enjoyed this book and have been feverishly recommending it since I finished it yesterday. And I can’t wait to see what the promising Ferris comes up with next. As an ardent fan of Catch-22, I initially scoffed at the comparisons of this novel to Joseph Heller's masterpiece, but I'll be damned if I didn't come to agree with them: Then We Came to the End has the same large cast of characters, the nonlinear timeline, the smarts, the absurdity--plus, most importantly, the ability to wring both humor and compassion from such a grim scenario. In his tenacious and sharply written memoir-in-essays… Cox ruminates with wit and insight on the universal themes of shame, identity, censorship, control, and emotional manipulation, while telling the story of his ongoing attempt to define his life outside of the church’s dogmatism. His meticulous approach to dismantling and overcoming methods of control and manipulation will feel cathartic to many readers.” At first, the first person plural seemed fine with me, but ultimately I think what it did was, instead of involving me as a participant, as part of the “we,” it distanced me from the book. On reflection, I think it was because we are never given a glimpse of who the “I” is behind the “we.” When someone says “we,” it is an individual speaking even if in so doing they represent the collective “we.” I never had a feeling that things were different here, that “we” was a true collective voice, yet I was never given the slightest glimpse of who this representative of the collective “we” is. Instead, for me, the voice of “we” became an impersonal outside observer instead of a participant in the story.

We are a Social Purpose Corporation

Greg Marshall (Rail): Let’s start with the title of the memoir, I Felt the End Before It Came. You’re referencing the fact that Jehovah’s Witnesses expect the apocalypse, the literal end of the world, but the memoir also feels interested in other endings: the end of childhood innocence, the end of the planet as we know it through climate change, the end of a particular moment in gay culture. Could you talk about some of those literal and figurative endings? And about how you landed on your evocative and intriguing title?

Oh wow, it hit too close to home. Although the corporate office setting in the story is quite different from mine, it still feels like Joshua Ferris has mind reading abilities because this is extremely relatable which only goes to show that our work experiences whether good or bad as employees working behind the desk five days a week is a universal truth, something so many of us can relate to. It fails for the reason so many MFA-workshopped novels fail: It's a technically proficient piece of writing about unserious folks discovering truths that serious persons generally know long before their 30th birthdays. Instead on bad days I passive-aggressively sip out of my favorite Office Space mug in hopes that my co-workers will get the point that I’m this close to pulling a Milton . . . . Cox's early life was punctuated by rules and prophesies—those of the Jehovah's Witnesses. When he was expelled as a young adult, it was partly devastating and partly a relief; outside the realm of the Witnesses, he was free to fly gay into the world.

In this breathtaking spiritual, sexual, and artistic coming-of-age, Daniel Allen Cox troubles and subverts what it means to seek salvation . . . he takes us on a probing and candid journey to find a new language to think with, and into a new definition of paradise.” Cox: Friends have helped me get and stay sober. They understand that sobriety, alcoholism, and recovery are all words that have to be defined individually, since substance addiction is complex, and different for everybody it affects. What has also helped is when writers and other artists are open about the role of substances in their lives and bust the myth that they need some kind of holy ambrosia to sustain creativity.We’ve spent decades or centuries celebrating the myth of the drunk or high (usually cis male) genius, and the trope now couldn’t be more out of touch. I know very little of Jehovah's Witnesses outside of a few snippets, such as they are the people who proselytize door-to-door, they don't celebrate birthdays, and they are adamantly opposed to LGBTQIA+ people. So going into this, I was curious to hear a first-hand account of what it was like growing up in this environment and then leaving it. Most writers are obsessed with their origin story, but it’s endings that preoccupy Daniel Allen Cox in his kaleidoscopic and deeply felt memoir, I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah’s Witness. The author of four award-winning novels, Cox has been chronicling queer life in Canada and abroad for nearly two decades. In his latest, he turns his gaze inward. The essay “The End of Times Square” is a particularly resonant account of the kind of delayed adolescence experienced by so many queer people. It chronicles Cox’s defiant period among the gay community in a late ’90s New York City being scrubbed clean by local politicians of its more permissive and freeing public spaces. “At some point I’d internalized the cliché that New York was the ultimate challenge for a young artist, a proving ground,” he writes, and his younger self takes on this challenge, balancing sexual escapades with an ongoing education in the political power of art. The essay also functions as the origin story of Cox as a writer.

HOWEVER, I LIKED LESS SO, MAYBE, ALTHOUGH THESE WEREN'T THAT BIG A DEAL, I JUST CAN'T ENJOY ANYTHING WITHOUT QUALIFICATION ANYMORE, THE FACTS THAT:Before I go I feel compelled to mention that as much as I liked the book, I felt the end dragged on a bit. So go ahead and skim the last couple of chapters, you'll get the gist. Cox’s memoir is smart, funny, and gripping throughout . . . His meticulous approach to dismantling and overcoming methods of control and manipulation will feel cathartic to many readers.” A candid and beautiful exploration of learning to save yourself from a fundamentalist childhood and the complications that come from the dizzying freedom after you leave its confines. A vital and unique addition to the queer coming-of-age genre.” The first thing to say about this book is that no matter what else I think about the plot, the themes, the point of view, or any other aspect of this novel, it was compulsively readable, which in itself is a mark of how fine a talent Joshua Ferris is. But Cox also identifies how JWs operate similarly to a cult, and goes through all of the ways in which they are similar. Leaving the fold sounds like the best thing that has happened to him, as he made his way in the world and listened and learned, essentially deprogramming from all of the harmful beliefs and ways of life that he was indoctrinated into.

Hard to deny the writing skill in this one—dense with little vignettes that move seamlessly between each other. Rail: Growing up you had a stutter, and you write that “music and stuttering are as key to the story of my departure from the Jehovah’s Witnesses as queerness and sex are.” I found this to be such an intriguing, and surprising, observation. How did stuttering help lead to your departure from the Jehovah’s Witnesses? If you’ve never worked in a large office environment, you may not be able to fully appreciate the near perfection which is Then We Came to the End. But, if you have you will recognize sooooooooo many of your current and/or former co-workers. People like the guy who just got “right-sized” out of his job and is taking the high road . . . . . The entire arc of the novel is set against a decline in their business and the drumbeat of layoffs, so that as the book moves along, one after another of the crew exits the building, usually clutching one pathetic box of "useless shit", as the unnamed narrator puts it.This was a read that was well worth the wait. Written in a style that won’t be everyone’s cuppa of the “we” (I’m no English major so I’m going to call it first person plural and hope that’s close enough to correct that y’all know what I mean), the tales of pointless meetings, pillaging the offices of the recently departed, coffee bar gatherings and cubicle discussions were just like coming to the office for me. Except I’m not smart enough to have ever thought of pulling a Hank Neary . . . . Elegant essays... The author approaches his subject with emotional nuance, and writes with a mix of self-aware humor and deep insight that sets his project apart from other former believer memoirs. This thoughtful rendering will captivate those with ties to the religious group and literary memoir fans alike." Like a lot of readers, I approached Then We Came to the End with a decent amount of wary skepticism. Could Joshua Ferris really pull this off? The first-person-plural narration? The multitude of characters? The humor in the face of such a depressing situation? The plight of a forty-something woman with breast cancer? Fortunately for all of us, the answer is an enthusiastic yes. I don't really know how Joshua Ferris did it, but he created something really special with this novel. It's hilarious and heartbreaking and, even though at the start you can't imagine sympathizing with most of the characters, eventually you root for them in spite of yourself. It's almost like working in a real office: You don't love or even like everyone, but if you spend enough time together you become a family of sorts, invested in everyone's outcome.