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Though Joshua Ferris’s first book Then We Came to the End was sweet and awkward and funny, his second book, The Unnamed, is like an ice pick to the heart. There are no loveable shenanigans in this amazingly compelling gale-force storm depicting the ravages of illness and its far-reaching consequences. In The Unnamed, Ferris explores how love and loyalty cannot overcome sickness, and he clearly shows the dark side of devotion.
Tim Farnsworth has made a comfortable life for himself and his family via his law practice, but every few years he becomes consumed by a strange mental illness that drives him away from the comfort of his Connecticut home. He’s overcome by an undefined sickness that makes him walk until he’s exhausted. Neither Medication nor therapy are able to help locate the source of this malady, and his wife Jane deals with it by tying him to the bed until it passes. Their teenage daughter, Becca, questions whether her father might be faking. His law firm partners clearly don’t understand. Eventually, Tim decides to take his chances and see how far this ambulatory obsession will take him.
There is nothing romantic about what happens to Tim. At the worst of it, he shambles about like a homeless person, which he is, though he’s a homeless person with a huge bank account. While his feet swell and parts of his body rot away, he can still buy mocha Frappuccinos. He calls home to be reminded of what his real life is like, with its designer kitchen and hearth-like warmth, but eventually he can’t even bring himself to be reminded. He becomes completely untethered by his illness.
Strangely, Tim appears to be a bit of a blank slate throughout the book. When he’s overtaken by the compulsion to walk, his life becomes about survival. But during his longest walk, his thoughts turn to his wife and daughter and the comfort and love they offered. It’s clear that in choosing the wandering life over his more normal life, he knows he has lost something in the process. His yearning for his family becomes more acute as time goes on.
The walking illness could be a metaphor for a lot of things—the wild, uncivilized part of people, passion that slides into obsession, the unknowable parts of people—and it’s interesting but not completely surprising that even great wealth can’t solve this man’s mental illness. Anyone who has seen family members deal with depression know that it’s much easier to enter rehab for drugs and alcohol than it is to get help for more nebulous mental illnesses. The situation is completely believable, as is Tim’s and Jane’s relationship. Jane’s love for Tim is evident each time she drives around town looking for him and with each knot she ties to keep him in bed. Jane’s love represents the stability of the home and the desire to maintain that stability at any cost. She puts her life on hold each time Tim succumbs to his illness, and she allows Tim to decide what he will do each time—wander or confine himself to the bed. It seems like a rather extreme version of the couple that stays together despite infidelity. But eventually, Jane’s eye begins to wander like her husband.
Ferris’s writing can be a little subtle, forcing a “between the lines” reading in many places. Jane’s love and patience is shown through the phone calls and searches she makes each time Tim leaves, and through lines such as this: “That was always the impulse when she finally located him: I have to get him. And then when she got to him: never let him go.” But she does, because it’s what Tim wants. Ferris also doesn’t analyze what is going on with Tim. It’s an itch, and an itch isn’t really explainable. That in itself makes the novel creepier, giving the impression that strange compulsions can overtake anyone at anytime, and disrupt or destroy a life.
Ferris’s language and storytelling still remain playful and sharp in the midst of this drama. During a calm period in Tim’s and Jane’s life, Ferris writes:
She woke in the bed alone and had no memory of his having left the room, and this surprised her. In the daze of half sleep she was vulnerable and for an instant she felt that bottomless fear. …
“I was scared when I woke up,”she said. “I didn’t hear you get out of bed.”
“Why were you scared?”
I don’t know,’ she said.
Jane and Tim make hard choices all throughout the book, and their outward calm covers intense turmoil. Tim’s choice to leave his comfortable life and walk unceasingly is not made easily, but when the moment comes, it’s completely believable.
Jane’s decision to stop reading a doctor’s diagnosis, to tie Tim to their bed, to stick with and love this difficult man also seems very authentic. But the emotions are telegraphed gently. Seeing Jane after an epic walk, Tim thinks, “He did not want to see the particulars of her face again or how they came together to make her beauty.” It’s these quiet, desperate moments that give The Unnamed its soul.
(February, 2010)
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