A Surreal and Outrageous World: Jessica Anthony in Conversation with Joshua Ferris
Jessica Anthony’s surreal and outrageous Enter the Aardvark published on March 24 into a surreal and outrageous world. In the months leading up to publication, the novel saw an outpouring of love from indie booksellers, and Anthony had a tour planned with events in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Houston, and Denver, among other cities. She was particularly looking forward to a night at Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore, where she would have been joined in conversation by Joshua Ferris, a novelist she has long admired. It was an ideal pairing: Both Ferris and Anthony take aim at the absurdities of modern life in their work, walking the line between satire and soul and managing to be wickedly funny and greathearted at once. Luckily for readers, not even a pandemic could stop their conversation.
Ferris has said that Enter the Aardvark “estranges all over again our deplorable political moment, and thereby helps make it bearable.” Now, as the state of the world gets more deplorable every day, Anthony and Ferris aim to make it a little more bearable with this discussion of the exit of reason, Venetian dolphins, horses who eat cars, and how to resist the temptation to opt out of the world.
Joshua Ferris: Hello, Jessica. I’ve been so excited for such a long time now to speak to you in person and get to know the mind behind your new novel, Enter the Aardvark. Alas, the coronavirus came along and dashed our plans.
The virus is a mega-dasher, unlike any we have seen before. It was a strange and peculiar thing to watch the book tour fall away after spending years writing and editing the novel.—there was still quite a bit of uncertainty about the degree to which the virus would be a problem in the States. (This was just two days before was saying he would prefer the souls on the Grand Princess cruise simply stay put to prevent “rising numbers” that would fuck with the stock market, and then lying about the availability of testing.) So I made the call not to go. Ten days later, the college where I teach was closed, and my book tour evaporated.
