By: Vivian Wychil

To be honest, I bought this book when a local Borders was going out of business because the company filed for bankruptcy and all their products were about fifty percent off. I could not honestly sit here and tell you that I would’ve read this book under any other circumstances. With that said, though, I have no regrets about buying and reading it. It was surprisingly good, and makes me want to go buy Ferris’ first book, ‘Then We Came to the End.’ In terms of writers within this new century, Ferris is definitely one of those young talents that has compelled me to follow his career from now on—which is sure to be filled with greatness and innovative stories. But, to get back to ‘The Unnamed,’ the book reminds me of Tolstoy’s quote about families, which states, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It starts off introducing Tim Farnsworth, a New York attorney that has spent his life focused on his career, with a loving wife and depressed, antisocial and overweight teenage daughter that he’s neglected. Other than one aspect, the family is as normal as any other, but, like all other families, it is that one aspect that makes the Farnsworth’s so intriguing and baffling.

What is it? Well, that’s perhaps what the title refers to: The Unnamed. Essentially, it’s Tim’s bodily compulsion to walk without stopping, despite exhaustion and fatigue, until his body decides (on its own) to stop. Yes, modeled after the Platonian concept of the soul, Tim Farnsworth’s body and mind, we’re led to believe, are two separate entities, in which his mind, despite his genius as a top-notch attorney, cannot control what his body does in these walking spurts. In these intermittent periods of walking frenzy, we see that not only does the unnamed condition affect him and his health but his family as well. Worried beyond belief, Tim’s wife, Jane, and his daughter, Becka, try to manage and live with his condition, but are unable and breakdown inevitably.

At a certain point, around the last third of the book, Ferris takes us on an impressionistic whirlwind of a trip into the psychology and makeup of Tim and his family as his condition worsens. While confusing and frustrating at times, the style certainly accomplishes its intentions: to express the chaotic nature and degeneration of Tim’s condition. At one point it seems as if the condition is actually mental and that Tim has schizophrenia, as he’s institutionalized and prescribed a garbage-pail of anti-psychotics. He even becomes suicidal, convinced that the only way that his mind can beat his body is for him to keep walking no matter how sleep-deprived and fatigued and hungry he is, and eventually he walks from New York to the West coast. Is it mental? Well, that’s part of the mystery. As many readers will probably be convinced that it has to be, that it’s the only explanation since there is no medical precedent for constant perambulation, Ferris certainly makes us wonder whether modern science and medicine truly has the answers to all the mysteries of the world. What I thought was most tragic is captured in this quote that goes, “Before he [Tim] got sick he was under the illusion that he needed only to seek help from the medical community, and then all that American ingenuity, all that researched enlightenment, would bring about his inalienable right to good health.” Tim, like most modern people, believed that all his answers could be answered by medicine, and he was persistently let down by medicine’s failure.

It’s certainly an interesting take on modern-day life. Injecting bits and pieces of pop-psychology with philosophy and thoughts on religion, ‘The Unnamed’ certainly doesn’t lack with interesting ways and outlooks of the world. From what I’ve read about the book, most critics say that Ferris is making a commentary on the failing economic and political system of today’s society. Published in 2010, ‘The Unnamed’ might make some references to the disillusionment people are starting to feel after the grand ‘system’s safety net starts to singe at the edges, yet the book certainly seems to make more of a point to comment of society’s stigmatization of mental illness. How can a perfectly normal, middle-American with a wide pocket and dispensable income go crazy? Well, read the book and you’ll find out.

The other aspect I enjoyed about ‘The Unnamed’ was how it captured Tim’s perambulation. Many books and films make constant-walking a metaphor for escaping the mundane fetters of society (e.g. family, job, expectations, pressures), like John Updike’s ‘Rabbit, Run’ and Winston Groom’s ‘Forrest Gump,’ but Ferris makes the case that Tim Farnsworth’s condition is an all-consuming disease that has effectively robbed him of his freedom. The loving comfort of his wife and daughter is what gives him joy and happiness, though I don’t think Ferris intentionally tried to make it a metaphor for enjoying and appreciating people and things in life that we take for granted. Tim’s walking is more of an idiopathic neurosis that’s used to state the degeneration of the American Dream and Western invulnerability.

Mixing aspects of a murder mystery (right out a John Grisham novel) with that of a medical thriller and speculative fiction—Margaret Thatcher’s misnomer, not mine—Ferris’ ‘The Unnamed’ fits none of these genres. It’s a creature of its own that deserves to be read over and over. With amazingly unique prose and imagery, Joshua Ferris ‘The Unnamed’ has proven that contemporary writers do have the potential to be original (they just don’t like to do it too often).