Ask the Author: Joshua Ferris

“Ask me a question.” Joshua Ferris

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What inspired the bizarre religious plotline in To Rise Again At a Decent Hour? Is it generally man's search for meaning in unfulfilling jobs or something deeper about the protaganist's psyche? I understand you were in marketing which informed a lot of the antics in Then We Came to An End, but how do you know so much about dentists?

Joshua Ferris Hi Heather. I don't know much about dentists first-hand, beyond my going to one from time to time. But I do find them fascinating, for reasons pretty well covered in the book. To write about a dentist I just read some things, watched some YouTube videos, and got a couple of dental textbooks to keep me straight. I can't say now what inspired the book's religious plot line, beyond my belief that I wrote the first novel to explore the seductiveness of fake news as disseminated electronically. That's how I prefer the book to be read, anyway, as the gullible encountering the mystical.

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Is there a specific illness you based the illness in the Unnamed on?

Joshua Ferris I had ALS in mind, but a reverse ALS in which the victim wasn't wasted to death but its opposite: made to move, made to walk.

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