Required Reading

‘Young author’ is a strange term. While it is thrown around liberally in descriptions of Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace, both are well over 35. Even “wunderkind” Jonathan Safran Foer has eclipsed 30. Not only is this terrible news for English majors, it also shows that the literary world has changed quite a bit since Bret Easton Ellis took interviews in his dorm room.
Cue Joshua Ferris. His debut novel, a workplace satire entitled Then We Came to the End, was a 2007 National Book Award finalist. The darkly humorous look at the 1990s dot-com boom has received high praise from critics, as well as authors such as Stephen King and Nick Hornby. The New York Times Book Review called it one of the top 10 books of the year. While Ferris is pushing 34, it is still encouraging to see a debut garner so much praise.