Photo by Kelly Campbell

Joshua Ferris’ debut novel Then We Came To The End is a funny and deliciously detailed story about a group of coworkers at an ad agency in Chicago.

It’s a fun read, especially for those of us who work in and with ad agencies.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when one of the agency employees Jim Jackers — struggling to come up with concepts for a particularly difficult campaign — calls his ornery old Uncle Max (who has graced Jim with ideas in the past) seeking new ideas and inspiration.

Max gives him a good idea and Jim tells him “he’d missed his calling.”

“You should have been a creative,” [Jim] said.

“A creative?” said Max.

Jim explained that in the advertising industry, art directors and copywriters alike were called creatives.

“That’s the stupidest use of an English word I ever encountered,” said Max.

Jim also told him that the advertising product, whether it was a TV commercial, a print ad, a billboard, or a radio spot, was called the creative.

Then,

Sometime later in the afternoon, Max Jackers surprised Jim by calling him back. “You folks over there,” said Max, “you say you call yourselves creatives, is that what you’re telling me? And the work you do, you call that the creative, is that what you said?” Jim said that was correct. “And I suppose you think of yourselves as pretty creative over there, I bet.”

“I suppose so,” said Jim, wondering what Max was driving at.

“And the work you do, you probably think that’s pretty creative work.”

“What are you asking me, Uncle Max?”

“Well, if all that’s true,” said the old man, “that would make you creative creatives creating creative creative.” There was silence as Max allowed Jim to take this in. “And that right there,” he concluded, “is why I didn’t miss my calling. That’s a use of the English language just too absurd to even contemplate.”

With that, Max hung up.

[Excerpt Copyright 2007 by Joshua Ferris]