Why Are You So Sad?
Jason Porter, 2014
Penguin Group (USA)
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780142180587
Summary
Have we all sunken into a species-wide bout of clinical depression?
Porter’s uproarious, intelligent debut centers on Raymond Champs, an illustrator of assembly manuals for a home furnishings corporation, who is charged with a huge task: To determine whether or not the world needs saving.
It comes to him in the midst of a losing battle with insomnia—everybody he knows, and maybe everybody on the planet, is suffering from severe clinical depression. He’s nearly certain something has gone wrong. A virus perhaps. It’s in the water, or it’s in the mosquitoes, or maybe in the ranch flavored snack foods. And what if we are all too sad and dispirited to do anything about it?
Obsessed as he becomes, Raymond composes an anonymous survey to submit to his unsuspecting coworkers—"Are you who you want to be?", "Do you believe in life after death?", "Is today better than yesterday?"—because what Raymond needs is data.
He needs to know if it can be proven. It’s a big responsibility. People might not believe him. People, like his wife and his boss, might think he is losing his mind. But only because they are also losing their minds. Or are they?
Reminiscent of Gary Shteyngart, George Saunders, Douglas Coupland and Jennifer Egan, Porter’s debut is an acutely perceptive and sharply funny meditation on what makes people tick. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Rasied—Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Hunter College
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Jason Porter was born and raised in Michigan. He is a graduate of the Hunter College MFA program. He has been an English teacher, customer support representative, landlord, traveling musician, and the overnight editor for Yahoo! News and New York Times. Currently, he writes fiction. Why Are You So Sad? (2014), his first novel, was shortlisted for the Paris Literary Prize. He lives in Brooklyn, with his girlfriend and their two dogs. (Adapted from the publisher and author's website.)
Book Reviews
Porter is a gleefully odd stylist. It's hard to think of a young writer who captures disassociation so well.
John Freeman -Toronto Star
Porter's humorous insight into the human condition is a highbrow/lowbrow tightrope walk between philosophical quandary and human desire.
NPR
(Starred review.) The book toggles deftly between its narrator's bummer of a worldview and his riotous, biting snark, peppered throughout with dashes of surprisingly transcendent philosophies. Porter's is a smart, compact debut that, despite sometimes hitting a nerve when it's aiming for the funny bone, resonates on both tragic and comic levels.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The only people who will be depressed are those who find themselves on the last page of Porter's novel and realize there's nothing more to read.
Shelf Awareness
An office drone uses absurdist surveys to measure the happiness of himself and his co-workers.... This exercise in satirizing the cookie-cutter lives of First-World suburbanites may prove taxing to many readers, especially those who crave a satisfying conclusion. The author pulls out a few tricks at the end,...[but] the finale falls flat, failing to lend our hero the sympathy he's intended to inspire.
Kirkus Reviews
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