Walk Right Back. Or Don't.

Tim Farnsworth, the protagonist of The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris, is a lawyer leading a seemingly ideal life with his devoted wife Jane and their daughter, Becka, when he is afflicted by a nameless, unexplained compulsion to walk until he falls down. He leaves his office or his home when the urge to walk becomes impossible to ignore, takes the pack that Jane has lovingly prepared for him, and sets out to wander New York City until it becomes physically impossible and his wife has to come pick him up.

Needless to say, Farnsworth's disorder impacts every aspect of his life: his teenage daughter withdraws, his marriage becomes strained, and his work defending a wealthy and prominent murder suspect suffers. He and Jane seek advice and medical treatment from every expert they can think of, but no one is able to explain the compulsion--although it manifests physically and has serious health implications, it has the characteristics of a mental illness.

The Unnamed moves along briskly, fascinating for both its examination of a psyche under seige and for the legal drama lurking in the background. But what makes it so powerful a read isn't the reading, but the having read. I put this book down and could not stop asking myself, "wtf?" What did I just read? Who writes a book about a guy who just walks, inanely and dangerously, without explanation? And why? Why is it so interesting? Tim Farnsworth doesn't kill anyone or have any hidden childhood trauma or deep, dark past or engage in any bizarre sex acts. Then I remembered my secret weapon for answering questions about books I read: a B.A. in English.

I'm not claiming to have any definitive interpretation of The Unnamed. I'm not even claiming that there is or should be anything more than a thoughtful analysis of any work of literature. You can say whatever you want about a poem or a story or a novel and its "meaning," and that's fine with me. I might think you're a kook, but if (unlike far too many students I've worked with), you take the time to actually think about what you read and say something besides "that's stupid" or "that's boring" or "I don't get it," you're doing more with your brain than just storing it in your skull behind a sign that says Here I Am Now Entertain Me.

I want to be entertained by novels and stories and movies and songs. I want to "get" them. But there's something even more satisfying about not getting them and being forced to listen to their complexities rattle around in my brain for a few days until I form some sort of intelligible "aha!" That's what happened with The Unnamed. I went from "huh?" to "how about this...?"

My "how about this" regarding The Unnamed is that Farnsworth's compulsion to walk is a sort of metaphor or symbol for all our unexplainable compulsions--but his is just weird enough to make us stop and wonder. But then, it's not that weird. Ok, so he walks endlessly and suffers psychic and physical harm. But don't we all have compulsions, or at least habits, that are less than healthy or at least, when viewed by onlookers, a bit strange? Why do I bother to keep six chickens that don't lay eggs? Or a collection of several hundred rubber stamps that I don't use? Why do I keep ingesting cheese and candy and wine when I know they're as bad for my ass as Tim's walking was for his toes?

There is no magical formula for understanding novels or stories or poems or (especially) other people. But what is magical is reading something and letting it tickle your brain for the time it takes to makes some sort of sense of it; once you've accomplished that, you've been entertained in the best way possible.